Grass lawns are a landscape staple, but here's why an environmental reckoning may change that

In the summer, Denise Whitebread Fanning’s yard is filled with flowers like zinnias, black-eyed Susans and milkweed.

Her overgrown yard typically sticks out among the rows of tidy lawns in Mount Pleasant, Michigan, but she said she’s never understood the desire for manicured, green grass.

“It’s so beautiful to come out here and witness this evolving ecosystem, and to see all the new life that is finding home here, that didn’t exist on this land two years ago,” Fanning said.