This Florida homeowner is making a bold statement against the monoculture lawn cult that has America in a death grip.
About Kill Your Lawn: Best friends Joey and Al set out across America to accomplish their mission: carry out a turficidal killing spree and leave a trail of pollinator-friendly, native plant gardens in their wake. It’s time to laugh our way to a lawn-less future!
This clip comes from Season 1, Episode 2: "Tiny Cups & Big Trees"
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00:00We mercilessly blasted Charlie's lawn with a power washer, and now it's ready for rebirth as a native plant showplace.
00:10Who's this guy? I heard about this guy. Nice to meet you.
00:13We've seen your work in the backyard.
00:15The botanical maestro responsible for fully killing this lawn is Miami's top lawn assassin, Howard Tonkin.
00:22It was like The Bachelor, interviewing a long list of different landscapers.
00:25I would tell them, hey, here's an ecosystem diagram of Florida wetlands and different ecology zones, and they all looked like I was crazy.
00:32And I talked to Howard, and I finally found someone crazier than I was, and it was a perfect fit.
00:36What we're going to be doing here is very, very much forest down to the shoreline.
00:42Bold cypress, pond cypress, Miami-Dade pine.
00:46You know, each tree has a different flower or a different berry or fruit, and that'll bring different birds.
00:52So you put all those trees back, the animals just show up.
00:55So everything's coming down except that gumbo limbo?
00:58The gumbo stays.
01:00Gumbo limbo, a.k.a. Bursaris Simaruba, develops unusual red bark that peels back, reminiscent of sunburned skin, which gives gumbo limbo the nickname of tourist tree.
01:11It endures blasts of salt water during king tides, and it withstands the wind during hurricanes nights.
01:16So you're recreating ecosystems, basically, whether it's a forest or pine rockland savannah or wetland.
01:22We're going to be leaving out some of the mid-range heights to open up the vista, so have more skinny tall things and then lower things.
01:31You know, a couple of hundred species of native plants out towards the front.
01:34We're going to be cognizant that the client wants a front garden feeling, something more controlled-looking, to be more commercially appealing to the neighborhood.
01:43They might freak out on the forest, total forest look that we have back there.
