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Landscape designer offers simple steps to shrink lawns and increase biodiversity
Summary
Leslie Needham outlined hands-on design strategies for homeowners: start with small 5x5 native-plant plots, under-plant beneath existing trees, create paths and neat edges for legibility, and use on-site materials and composting to close the waste loop.
Leslie Needham, a Bedford-based landscape designer, walked the audience through practical, homeowner-scale steps to reduce lawn area and increase biodiversity, repeatedly urging people to "start small" — for example, a 5-by-5 plot that can be managed without major infrastructure changes. "I like to say, let's think of our lawns as a throw rug," Needham said, describing how a smaller framed lawn and native planting edges can preserve recreational space while creating habitat.
Needham emphasized planting under trees with native perennials and using plugs for economical establishment, noted alternatives to intensive irrigation and pesticides, and encouraged community approaches — PTAs and neighborhood projects — for larger interventions. She also recommended on-site reuse (milling down removed trees for benches or compost bins) and described "gateway" actions like composting leaves to build wider acceptance for wilder landscapes.
