Growing Greener Podcast – Native Lawn 2.0 with Todd Bittner

Native Lawn 2.0 with Cornell’s Todd Bittner

For twenty years Cornell University horticulturists have been working on a blend of short-growing native grasses and wildflowers that could replace introduced turf grasses as the American lawn. Today, Todd Bittner, Director of Natural Areas at the Cornell Botanic Gardens details how his team is preparing to release onto the market a mix that flourishes without irrigation after establishment, without fertilizer, and pesticides, which requires mowing just once or twice a year, and can be installed by seeding or as sod.

November 4, 2026

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Transcript

Growing Greener host Tom Christopher

Welcome to Growing Greener, your guide to environmentally informed gardening. Produced in partnership with the Perfect Earth Project, this program brings you each week some expert who puts you in touch with a different aspect of gardening in partnership with nature. Our goal is to make your personal landscape healthier, more beautiful, more sustainable, and more fun.

This is your host, Tom Christopher, and today I will be speaking to Todd Bittner, Director of Natural Areas at the Cornell Botanic Gardens. Currently, Todd is bringing to fruition a project Cornell horticulturists have been pursuing for many years, a practical, easily installed, alternative lawn composed of mowable native grasses and flowers.

For decades, environmentalists have been decrying the damage caused to nature by the traditional American lawn. Its extreme lack of biological diversity, its ravenous appetite for water and synthetic fertilizers, and its need for constant mowing and applications of pesticides have made the lawn an eco-disaster. Yet Americans persist in their attachment to this style of landscape treatment. That’s why what Todd is in the process of readying for release onto the market, a lawn that satisfies homeowners’ desire for a neat and mowable greensward, but one which will also benefit the local ecosystem and drastically reduce the consumption of resources, is so exciting.

Before I go to my conversation with Todd, though, I want to thank Growing Greener’s sponsor, the Garden Conservancy, a national nonprofit dedicated to preserving, sharing, and celebrating America’s gardens and diverse gardening traditions. Through preservation, education, and public access, the Conservancy helps protect these living works of art for future generations. Learn more and discover gardens near you at GardenConservancy.org.

Welcome to Growing Greener, Todd.

Todd Bittner

Nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me.

Tom Christopher

Todd, you’re the Director of Natural Areas in the Cornell Botanic Gardens, and as such, I understand you’re responsible for the conservation and programs throughout a complex of 40 natural areas encompassing a total of 3,700 acres. That’s enormous. And in that huge mosaic, you are responsible not only for maintaining the biodiversity and health of native populations, you also lead educational programs, you lecture, and as a trained plant ecologist, you coordinate and collaborate on conservation-related research within the natural areas. That last activity, the research, brings us to the really fascinating topic I want to discuss with you today, the Cornell native lawn.

Todd Bittner

Yeah, it’s an exciting program that we’ve been working on for almost 20 years.

Tom Christopher

I guess that’s one of the great things about being at an academic institution, is that you can get that kind of continuity.

Todd Bittner

Absolutely. A lot of great partners, a lot of great staff at the Botanic Gardens have been involved with this from its inception.

Tom Christopher

Yeah, this project started, I believe, in 2009, when it was begun by one of the Cornell horticulturists, Krissy Boys, who was taken by a short-growing native grass, Danthonia spicata, which is common’s name is poverty oak grass. She came upon on a neglected dirt road while she was out hiking, and she and some volunteers collected seed of the grass. It wasn’t for sale at that time from commercial sources, and combined it with seed of a close relative, I think, Danthonia compressa, or flattened oak grass, which is also short-growing, and then intermingled them with 11 other native grasses and sedges and 10 species of low-growing native wildflowers, and used this blend to replace about a quarter acre of conventional turf. Am I giving a correct description so far?

Todd Bittner

You are. It was inspired by Chrissy, seeing these plants growing in a very lawn-like environment, out in lightly disturbed areas, along old roadsides and cemeteries, power line cuts, but also inspired by the plant composition and the aesthetic of the Alvar plant communities up in the Watertown area off of Lake Ontario. And those all kind of combined with the idea of creating this designed plant community that was planted as the original native lawn.

Tom Christopher

So, it was a good deal more complicated than I thought, but it’s not surprising. Was this initial planting all of seeds sown directly into the native lawn site, or did it also include plants started in the greenhouse planted out as plugs, I suppose?

Todd Bittner

It was an experiment, both direct seeding and growing plants and putting them in as plugs, as you suggest, specifically to determine the best methodology for establishment. And the outcome of that was that we really found no difference between direct seeding, and we did it at two different rates, and growing them as plugs. So, the most economical of those is what we kind of concluded was the most effective, which was the lowest seeding rate. Although you can still grow it by plugs, it’s just a lot more work.

Tom Christopher

Yeah, and a lot more expense. You know, that’s been one of the things that’s held back other people trying to create lawn-like ground covers based on other plants. I mean, things like Pennsylvania sedge, if you’ve got to come up with 10,000 plugs or something like that to do a relatively small area, that makes it very, very expensive and outside the reach of most gardeners.

Todd Bittner

Correct, yes. And that is actually part of what we evaluated with our most recent experiment on our Native Lawn 2.0 was actually looking at some of the economics of establishment and different site preparation treatments to inform what’s successful as well as how much it costs, because people are going to want to know that, and when they can start seeing a return on their original investment.

Tom Christopher

Yeah, I want to get to 2.0 in just a moment, because that’s really exciting. But the original goal was a ground cover that would preserve, I think, the general aesthetic of traditional turf, you know, a green, walkable carpet, but would also be biodiverse, supportive for pollinators and other wildlife, and it was also intended to be sustainable, needing little or no irrigation or fertilization once it was established, only very occasional mowing and no pesticides. Did the original model of the Native Lawn meet these goals?

Todd Bittner

It did. Eighty-five percent native plant cover was our original goal, and we met that with our original planting, and no pesticides, no fertilizers, no watering post-establishment. We had three times as many insects in general in families in the Native Lawn as traditional turf when we measured that, and significantly reduced carbon emissions. We only mowed the Native Lawn twice a year, and doing it with renewables, we eliminated all of our carbon emissions. So, by all of our original measures, the Native Lawn met or exceeded them.

Tom Christopher

That’s really impressive and really inspiring. The plants you incorporated into the Native Lawn then had to be robust enough in that setting that they could compete successfully with non-native weeds that might invade. How did you select those plants, or was that partly an artifact of how you created the site?

Todd Bittner

Well, the original plant selections were identified as plants that were naturally low-growing to begin with, so would it need to be mowed? But what we discovered over time was that we had some native plants that seeded in from our adjoining natural area, and those actually performed very well, and we originally brought them into our Native Lawn 2.0 mix. And even though they would grow taller, they were kept at a lower stature through the mowing regime that we had.

But really the key for how the Native Lawn functions and competes against non-native turf weeds, if you will, is that the native plants by themselves are inherently highly competitive, and so if you don’t do the things that turf and turf weeds like, then the native plants are going to out-compete them. So, the turf and turf weeds want fertilizer. Make sure that the site doesn’t get fertilizer. It benefits the native plants. Turf and turf weeds want extra water. Don’t water the Native Lawn. It’s going to be more competitive because a lot of those plants in it that we selected not only being low-growing but also drought-tolerant. And the turf and turf weed actually benefit from the low stature of conventional turf mowing, and so if you mow it at a higher height, you end up having the native plants kind of out-competing those turf and turf weeds for those resources.

And so, you kind of put all those things together, and you tip the scales towards the native plants establishing and then maintaining their dominance and becoming more impervious to non-native things wanting to come in to the Native Lawn.

Tom Christopher

So essentially I guess you tip the scales through your ecological knowledge of what benefits the native plants.

Todd Bittner

That’s really the driver of it, and how we came up with the species that we selected in the management regime was to give those plants all the advantages, and then we’ve obviously been successful in that selection.

Tom Christopher

How high do you mow it?

Todd Bittner

Just about 6 to 8 inches high. The thing is if you mow it lower than that, it really does become detrimental to the native plants. They still need to be able to photosynthesize and to grow, but most of the areas that people are walking 6 to 8 inches is not an unreasonable height to be able to utilize spaces, particularly if you think about homeowners’ lawns. Most people don’t use their front lawn, they don’t use their side lawns, not all of their back lawn is being used as turf, and so some of those areas that are used less frequently, it’s totally fine for them to be at a higher height.

Tom Christopher

Todd, I need to pause here for a moment to remind listeners that this radio station is WESU 88.1 FM, and this program is Growing Greener, a weekly conversation about gardening in partnership with nature. This is your host, Tom Christopher, and today I am speaking with Todd Bittner, Director of Natural Areas at the Cornell Botanic Garden, about exciting developments in a program he has been pursuing for almost 20 years to make that institution’s native lawn replicable in the broader American landscape.

So, Todd, the first native lawn was the beginning, I think, of a long period of experimentation and refinement that led to what you call Native Lawn 2.0. For example, you found there was a natural evolution of its species composition. So, bluets, a lovely but ephemeral early spring wildflower, were a notable element of the lawn at first, but they gradually disappeared over time. And I guess, in a way, that isn’t surprising, is there? My experience is that there’s constant succession of species within, for instance, my meadow, and that’s true in most ecosystems. And you said that new species appeared within the lawn.

Todd Bittner

Yeah, that’s correct. And succession is really the right term to think about in this ecology of the native lawn. As the native plant community and that native lawn got more competitive, some of the species that are less competitive, like bluets, kind of diminished. And other species that found the mowing regime and the opportunity to grow were able to establish from adjoining areas, including some asters and goldenrods that were in our adjoining meadows.

Tom Christopher

You’ve also worked on making the planting and establishment routine efficient and effective. Could you tell us about that?

Todd Bittner

Well, our actual Native Lawn 2.0 was a study to evaluate different site preparation treatments to determine the benefits and detriments of those. On our original native lawn, we used sod removal as the main treatment. We still think that that’s the superior approach. It removes some of the organics, some of the fertilizer for some of those non-native species, and it removes some of the seed bank. But it’s labor-intensive and requires equipment, and some people may not be up for that. Conversely, there might be areas that are sensitive that you don’t want to cut the sod away from, in areas where there’s tree and shrub root zones, for example. So, our Native Lawn 2.0 looked at sod removal; it looked at herbicide treatment; and it looked at solarization with black fabric; and then what those outcomes were.

We expected, as I said, the sod removal to be the best. We thought solarization would kind of fall in the middle of that, having left the organics in place, but then potentially removing some of the seed bank. And the herbicide treatment to probably perform the poorest, although being the most cost-effective, environmental negatives for using pesticides, but also probably not controlling all the species that were present, and obviously not affecting the fertilization or the seed bank at all.

So, two years in on that evaluation, we actually found sod removal was the most effective, as we expected. In terms of native plant cover, we had over 90% native plant cover for Native Lawn 2.0 after the two years were finished.The herbicide treatment surprisingly came in second. It was about 60% native plant cover. The biggest surprise for us was the solarization treatment, where we actually ended up having 80-85% non-native plant cover that dominated the site. So, solarization was not an effective approach for establishing the native lawn.

Tom Christopher

Now, in this Native Lawn 2.0, did you use direct seeding into the site as your establishment method, or did you add plants as well?

Todd Bittner

So, on this particular study, in addition to the site preparation treatments, all the other methodology was the same. We had the same seed mix that went in for all three treatments. The only difference was the solarization treatment was seeded in the late fall with natural seed stratification across that winter, and the other treatments, we stratified the seeds in cold-moist stratification in our refrigerators. So, we tried to have, aside from that difference, everything else be the same, and at the same time, we were also tracking labor and economics, the cost of our establishment and first-year maintenance as benchmarks for each of the treatments.

Tom Christopher

And which were the most economical treatments?

Todd Bittner

Yeah, it was exciting to see that we believe that we’ll get a return on investment for the sod removal in three to four years. And the cost, the upfront cost, for each of the three treatments was not that much significant. It was only about $150 difference. Solarization was the most. The fabric itself was the most expensive component outside of the seed. So, sod removal was fairly economical, but the real savings came in the labor for weeding. So, the sod removal treatment had very limited amount of time needed for weeding.

Herbicide treatment and the solarization were much more significant. So, we had both for upfront cost and labor, sod removal ended up being the most economical with a three- to four-year return on investment. Which is pretty exciting because after four years, and you’re talking about, you don’t only have this amazing, functional, diverse backyard native lawn habitat, but you’re also spending less money and time maintaining your lawn.

Tom Christopher

Yeah, which is, as anybody who’s ever hired a lawn service knows, can be very expensive. I’ve actually been working with a cemetery board in my home in Middletown, Connecticut, to reduce mowings, because it’s becoming crippling for them. The ecological landscaping world had been interested in this project from early on. I mean, I remember hearing Krissy Boys talk about the subject at Larry Weaner’s annual New Directions in the American Landscape Symposium back maybe a decade ago. And she spoke to me on this program back in 2021. But the watershed event in the development of this project was an article about it, which was based on an interview with you by Margaret Roach.

And this appeared in The New York Times in 2023. Can you tell me about the kind of reaction that brought?

Todd Bittner

Yeah, that was fantastic. We knew we had something special all of these years, and would go out and share information. But it was really kind of bits and pieces. And when The New York Times article came out, then our phones had been ringing off the hook ever since. It was really fantastic, the public response. And it really gave us a validation that the demand was out there to advance this work and to try to really scale it up. There’s 40 million acres of turf in the United States. It’s equivalent to the size of the state of Wisconsin. So, the amount of conservation benefit that could occur by converting even a part of that would be really significant. And so that was really the exciting catalyst for us to move forward with Native Lawn 2.0. And now we’re doing research with growing the Native Lawn as a side as well. So, really excited about moving this forward, including moving it towards commercialization, which is now a goal that the Botanic Gardens has.

Tom Christopher

Well, you know, this is, as you said, very exciting. And I want to mention, too, something that neither one of us has addressed so far, which is aesthetics. I sometimes avoid that because I don’t feel like I’m the best critic on aesthetics. I mean, just look at the way I dress. But nonetheless, these lawns are beautiful. As opposed to, I know a lot of people, especially it seems like older men, are into the sort of green map of a traditional lawn. But the colors and the flowers and the constant change through the seasons of these lawns makes them really attractive, as well as functional and ecologically beneficial.

Todd Bittner

I agree. Not the easiest thing to demonstrate on a podcast, but the change across seasons is really remarkable, as you said. The other thing, and I think this is actually understated, is if you don’t have the ability to irrigate your lawn and you have a drought, you have ugly brown turf grass with a bunch of green weeds popping out of it. And I recall back in 2016, when we had one of the most significant droughts in about three decades, all the turf grass on campus and in Ithaca and the surrounding region was crispy brown, and the native lawn was green and healthy and flowering. And so not only is it aesthetic in all four seasons, but because it doesn’t need to be irrigated and it could grow in basically any condition, it is really aesthetic even in drought years.

Tom Christopher

Todd, just to clarify this in my mind and that of listeners, I guess, what did you feel were the requirements in making the Cornell native lawn replicable?

Todd Bittner

Well, to begin with, diversity. And that was one of the main take-home messages from the original native lawn. It actually became more resilient the more of the native plants that fit our original criteria were in it. And so, our native lawn 2.0 now has two to three dozen species, depending on exactly how we tailor the mix. And that diversity is kind of the foundation of the native lawn and part of the reason that it’s been successful. As I said before, plants that can tolerate trampling, that can tolerate being mowed to six to eight inches tall, that are drought adapted, those are all kind of fundamental characteristics that these native plants share in common.

Tom Christopher

I guess it also has to be, the installation has to be simple enough that non-specialists can follow the procedures. And it also has to be reliable. And it sounds like you’ve gotten to both places in your research.

Todd Bittner

Yes, so the methodology for establishing the native lawn isn’t a lot different from doing other kind of ecological restorations. As I said before, you take the turf away, you have kind of a clean slate, you have stratified your seed mix for two to three months in cold moist stratification, you mix it with a carrying media, sawdust or sand, and then seed the area by hand, and then water it in really well. And at least during the first couple months, water it if there’s ever a prolonged period where you’re not getting any rain, just to make sure that those young seedlings don’t succumb to too little water. And let the native plants really kind of do their thing.

The only other really significant thing is if you need to take out certain things that came in from the seed bank over that first year, which requires a little bit of work. And as I said, some of the work is really kind of on the front end, and then you get the long-term benefits. But you’re going to have things like black medic and dandelions and a couple plantains or whatever other kinds of turf weeds are likely to grow spontaneously. You need to become familiar with those and then know that those need to be removed. If you don’t remove them, it’s probably not a terrible thing. The native plants will ultimately out-compete them, but you want to just give them as much of a helping hand as possible.

Tom Christopher

So, I guess this brings me to a question, which is, how close do you feel this process is going to become a product is to commercialization, to finding some company that will distribute it?

Todd Bittner

So, that is a $64,000 question. It’s like, when is this going to happen? Hopefully within the next two years. So, in addition to growing all of this by seed, we’re also under research trials with a company called Meadow Labs, growing the Native Lawn 2.0 as sod. That then even makes the whole system that much faster. Remove the old turf sod, have the Native Lawn sod grown off-site, deliver to you installed just like turf sod would be installed, and just make sure that it gets watered until it really establishes its roots.

And we just had a trial with Meadow Lab this past year where they grew the sod starting in May. And at 12 weeks, it was harvested and transported to the Botanic Gardens and installed at the Mundy Wildflower Garden right next to our original Native Lawn. And it performed really well. It didn’t fall apart. And 20 of our 22 species were found in it within that first 16 weeks. And I just looked at it this morning before coming over to the podcast, so we’re about 22 weeks in. And we’re almost 100% native plant cover in the Native Lawn sod. That includes an average of about 8 to 10 native plants per quarter square meter, which means it’s fairly uniform and fairly diverse at a really small scale. So, we’re really excited about seeing where our partnership with Meadow Labs goes.

But to answer your broader question, our technology has been licensed with Cornell University Center for Technology Licensing, and we’re in the process of doing a market analysis to determine and validate. We know the market wants this, but investors in a company need to see the actual data. And so, we’re doing a market analysis to kind of have that proof of concept that the consumer demand is out there for both sod and direct seeding. And from there, then, we’re on to a startup company to then license the technology to nurseries that would then be able to sell the Native Lawn seed at retail. And then the botanic gardens and the startup company would provide a lot of the how-to information so that homeowners could do it yourself, or landscape companies that want to add this to their portfolio can know how to do it and do it if people are uncomfortable themselves and want professionals to help. So, that’s kind of where we are presently, and it’s hard to know how quickly all of those things will kind of fall into place to have this be available commercially. But the goal is either in the next one or two years.

Tom Christopher

Well, I think this is terrifically exciting. The idea of a native alternative to introduce turfgrasses has been kind of a holy grail for a lot of ecological landscapers and garden designers. But it’s always in the past, as I say, any kind of alternatives they’ve come up with have been very expensive and slow to get going. And this just sounds so well thought out, and there’s this great body of research data to back this up. So, I’m going to be very excited to see what happens next. And thank you so much for sharing your time with us this morning.

Todd Bittner

Thank you, Tom. It’s been a pleasure.

Tom Christopher

Just one last question, which is if people want to learn more about the Native Lawn, obviously they can come up to the Cornell Botanic Gardens. But can you suggest any sort of online resources they might dig into?

Todd Bittner

Sure. We have a number of resources on our website, cornellbotanicgardens.org. Just type in Native Lawn in the search bar, and you’ll come across our page that talks about the original Native Lawn. But also, we recently added a page on our Native Lawn research. And so, we’ve been updating that regularly with photos, videos, where we are in terms of analyzing Native Lawn 2.0. And the Native Lawn sod is all on cornellbotanicgardens.org with our current research. And some of that now is including evaluations of soil health, including how much more stormwater capture the Native Lawn has than traditional turf. So, we think that’s going to be really the most exciting new research angle that we’re pursuing at the moment. And so, all that information is there at cornellbotanicgardens.org.

Tom Christopher

Well, thank you again.

That’s all for this week’s Growing Greener. Please join us again at the same time next week on this radio station, WESU 88.1 FM for another episode. Or listen to Growing Greener as a podcast at www.thomaschristophergardens.com. If you have comments or suggestions, please share them with me, Tom Christopher, via the same website, www.thomaschristophergardens.com. Growing Greener is produced as a community service in partnership with the Perfect Earth Project, a nonprofit dedicated to educating, engaging, and inspiring individuals, land care professionals, and decision makers to adopt toxic-free, nature-based, and climate-responsible landscaping practices.

 Transcribed by TurboScribe.

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