Want to help the planet? Rethink your lawn

When Erica Tharp and her husband bought their home in Framingham four years ago, the lawn needed some work. Tharp looked at the scraggly grass with its dying tree, and decided she wanted something that was less work and more eco-friendly.

"That was the goal — minimal maintenance and as least harm as possible," she said.

So Tharp, a yoga teacher, decided to rip out her front lawn and replace it with drought-resistant grass and native wildflowers. Now there’s waist-high goldenrod, orange butterfly weed and black-eyed Susans.

It's not all free and easy; Tharp is fighting back some overly ambitious clover, and even the native plants are suffering from the summer drought. But it's a lot less work than a traditional lawn, she says: No weekly mowing, no fertilizer, and lots of happy bees.