With their wild look, native gardens bloom despite cultural and social hurdles

Xilin Zhang was tired of the pressures of maintaining the “perfect lawn,” she said.

So Zhang, a homeowner in the village of New Hyde Park, yanked out her grass and turned her front lawn into a native plant garden: She planted milkweed, false sunflower, New York Ironweed and other plants native to the area. She began the work in 2021 and, over the past few years, her yard started to look like a “little national park,” she said, and was better for the environment, too.

She had received a $350 rebate as part of a native plant program the Town of North Hempstead administers on behalf of the Nassau County Soil and Water Conservation District. The goal of the program is to encourage residents to contribute to the town’s environmental efforts.

Then, last Aug. 19, Zhang was issued a summons from New Hyde Park. The description for the violation was brief and unspecific. “Failure maint. yard,” it read. Zhang was ordered to attend village court.

Zhang and the village settled on a “conditional dismissal” in May, she said — she was not fined and agreed to replant her tallest plants in her backyard and regularly trim those in the front.  North Hempstead officials said they are not aware of any other participants who have received complaints from their respective village governments. But the back-and-forth underscores why Long Island has been slow to embrace native plant gardens despite their environmental benefits, experts in environmental conservation say.

“The lawns are so manicured and predictable and there’s a whole industry around their maintenance. It’s more socially acceptable,” Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in an interview. “It’s a public perception barrier that we’re working to change.”

Wild aesthetic

Native gardens present something of a wild aesthetic, with plants of various shapes and sizes growing on top of each other in a swirling cascade of color. The plants are adapted to local conditions and help promote biodiversity.

They have several ecological benefits, Hildur Palsdottir, co-founder of ReWild Long Island, said in an interview, including attracting pollinators and preserving drinking water: They require much less water than traditional lawns and don’t need chemical fertilizers, which can filter into water sources. Native plant roots can be up to 100 times deeper than non-natives, directing water farther into the ground to replenish the aquifer, she added.

Palsdottir noted that several Long Island municipalities have spent millions of taxpayer dollars to build water treatment systems that remove toxins, many of which stem from pesticides. 

“Why [are we] applying harmful chemicals to nature that we then have to get rid of?” Palsdottir said. “So when people are insisting on this perfect lawn — none of these chemicals go away; they cause problems downstream.”

The shift away from traditional lawns is moving at a faster clip on the West Coast. In 2021, the Nevada State Legislature enacted a law prohibiting the use of water from the Colorado River to irrigate "nonfunctional grass" during droughts. The law will take effect at the start of 2027 and includes grass that doesn't have a recreational or communal use, such as turf for streetscaping and at the entrances of storefronts and apartment complexes.

But there are incentives for those looking to make the switch. The Long Island Garden Rewards Program offers up to $500 to install native plant gardens, rain gardens and instant rain barrels.

North Hempstead received $15,000 from Nassau's Soil and Water Conservation District for the rebate program last year and will receive $10,000 this year, Derek Betts, the agency's district manager, said in an interview. The money for the program comes from the state.

Budding interest

While growth in North Hempstead’s rebate program has been steady — there were 34 participants last year, up from 31 in 2023, 28 in 2022 and 13 in 2021 — Hempstead and Oyster Bay towns have not applied to participate in the program, Betts said.

“If other townships wanted to submit applications for a similar program across their townships, in Hempstead and Oyster Bay, they would have a really fighting chance of getting funded by us,” Betts said.

Betts noted that a lot of Long Islanders like to plant Japanese ornamental plants that grow fast and provide a "pop of color," but are invasive, such as Japanese barberry and Japanese honeysuckle. 

“Grass lawns are very much the norm here, so I think that was just the average of what people expected to have on their property," Betts said. "As we’re moving forward and we’re learning about what’s required of us as residents, to help maintain the ecosystem functioning of our county, we’re starting to realize that these large monoculture grass lawns here — they’re not really helping us out.”

That’s part of what motivated Zhang to reimagine her yard. Among the plants she added was milkweed, which is the only host plant for monarch butterflies, whose numbers have dwindled sharply. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service proposed listing the species as "threatened" last year.

“You feel good when you provide the food for them, and the host plant for them. And you see hummingbirds, you see different pollinators coming, it’s a very enjoyable process,” she said. “Almost every day I go around once in the garden just to see what’s new.”

Zhang said that last August, during her first appearance in village court, she was told she could face a fine of up to $2,000. After she explained she was participating in the town’s rebate program, she was told to return in December. At that court date, she said, the village asked her to move all her plants to her backyard.

New Hyde Park Mayor Christopher Devane said in an interview that he wished Zhang had approached the village before she started the garden so they could “have worked collaboratively.” He said he generally supported pro-environmental measures, including native plant gardens.

“Native plants and native gardens can look beautiful, but it doesn’t look beautiful. It’s an eyesore,” Devane said. “I’m glad I don’t have to live next door to it.”

Nancy Shahverdi, North Hempstead’s planning commissioner, said in an interview she wasn’t aware of any villages in the town prohibiting native plants. 

“Every village has their own maintenance regulations, so you have to watch out that it doesn’t overgrow and you maintain it,” Shahverdi said in an interview. “I can’t imagine a village would be against it. If that were the case, the only thing they could do would be to apply their nuisance maintenance laws. They can’t say you can’t have native plants.”

In 2023, Newsday previously reported, civic and environmental groups transformed a meadow with invasive plants at the Custer Preserve in Southold into a 3,600-square-foot native garden. Nancy DePas Reinertsen helped lead the effort to create the garden, which is on Southold Town property. 

"We really need pollinators, we need the native plants, and we wanted to also get rid of some of the invasive plants," Reinertsen, a co-founder of ReWild's North Fork chapter, said in an interview. "You can protect and help pollinators, you don't need to do this huge thing. You can start one little area of your backyard."

'Taking care of itself'

Jack Velez, 37, grew up in Rego Park, Queens, with a “tiny patch of grass” outside. It wasn’t until he moved to a Mineola home in 2022 that he grasped the cultural significance of lawns on Long Island.

After about a year of struggling to keep the grass green — Velez couldn’t stop it from turning yellow — he said he pivoted to a native garden and participated in the town’s rebate program. Now his yard is full of cardinal flowers, honeysuckles and more.

“I’m not spraying pesticides all over, and reseeding and paying landscapers every week, because it’s all taking care of itself,” he said. “It smells like a bunch of herbal tea.”

Velez left some grass in his yard for his kids to run around on. Merideth Mulroney, a Port Washington resident who also made the switch to a native garden, did not. She takes her kids to the nearby park when that urge arises.

Mulroney, 47, grew up in her grandmother’s Smithtown home, which was framed by a sprawling lawn that took all day to mow.

She does not miss her own lawn. 

“You’re paying someone else to cut what looks like a green carpet,” Mulroney said. “Why do that if you could have a meadow?”