When my wife and I bought our 1,000-square-foot suburban palace on a modest 0.25-acre lot in southeastern Pennsylvania in 2018, I did what many Americans do: I poured hundreds of dollars’ worth of weed killer, fertilizers, ultra-premium grass seed, and water into my lawn.Why? I suppose I thought a well-manicured lawn was the mark of a responsible homeowner. How wrong I was.Two years later, I had an epiphany. Why was I indiscriminately murdering local wildlife, poisoning my land, and wasting precious resources to maintain what I considered the ecological equivalent of a parking lot?My turnabout was influenced by Douglas Tallamy’s thoughtful proposal in Nature’s Best Hope, which advocates for restoring biodiversity by converting traditional yards into “productive native plant communities.”And now, six years after I abandoned much of my lawn to nature’s glory, I’ve planted scores of native species and reduced my turf by 40%. My yard puts me entirely at odds with the folks on #LawnTok (and, um, some of my lawn-loving neighbors). And yet, even though my loyalties in the great lawn wars are clearly declared, even I, a die-hard native-plant advocate, can’t deny the appeal of a crisp, clean lawn edge.