Getting your lawn off drugs
By Fiona Wagner • Bankrate.com

For Cheryl Strachan, a holistic nutritionist and avid gardener in Georgetown, Ont., the decision to grow an organic lawn was easy one. "I've been trying to do things naturally for a long time, and I've never had to resort to anything dastardly," she says. "Even when it came to controlling pests, I could usually find something in the kitchen to take care of the garden."

Her newly built home is constructed close to the Credit River, and she didn't want pesticide run-off contaminating the groundwater. More importantly, she didn't want toxic sprays affecting her children's health.

According to a number of polls, Strachan isn't alone. The majority of Canadians say they'd stop using pesticides if they were provided with other ways to grow a weed-free garden. That's good news, as a growing number of municipalities are getting on board with new bylaws that restrict the use of cosmetic pesticides.

But does getting rid of pesticides mean homeowners will have to put up with fields of dandelions? Absolutely not, says Frank Reddick of natural lawn care service Turf Logic. Inc. "When you do natural lawn care, we fix the soil and nourish the lawn," he says. "A natural lawn actually looks better. It's thicker, softer and the colour becomes deeper. It's a healthier grass."

The trouble with chemicals
Once you start applying pesticides to your lawn, the grass can become addicted to synthetic chemical treatments. The risk is, the more chemicals you use, the more frequently you have to spray to get the same results. Eventually, beneficial organisms are killed off, soil becomes sterile and you've got a host of pesticide-resistant insects and weeds infiltrating your yard.

"People have lost a sense of what a healthy lawn looks like," says Christine Upton, managing director of the Organic Landscape Alliance (OLA), a non-profit group dedicated to non-toxic landscaping. "A sprayed lawn may look healthy, but it's not."

That's because pesticides not only kill weeds and insects but beneficial organisms too. This disrupts the nature of your lawn's ecosystem and forces it to rely on synthetic inputs for sustenance.

There's also the health effects of pesticide use to consider. Pesticides, which were originally designed for agricultural use, are sold with what are known as acceptable tolerance levels, but that doesn't mean they are safe.

"They're probably as safe as they can be when used as designed in the major market [for agricultural usage], but being used in a tight urban community surrounded by houses, children and pets, being applied in the middle of the day when things drift in the window -- that's not the right way to use these industrial tools," says Reddick. "The urban community uses eight to 10 times more pesticides per acre than a farmer. We're only growing grass here, not crops."

A growing body of research has linked pesticide use to everything from neurological problems to cancer to reproductive disorders. Children are especially vulnerable, because their immature metabolic systems can't excrete toxic like adults do.

And it's not just direct contact with sprayed grass that's the problem. Pesticide residue can be trekked into your home and deposited on carpets or collected in house dust.