A DOCUMENTARY FILM · 2026
In Minnesota, 42,000 homeowners applied to replace their lawns with native meadow. In Pennsylvania, the same program was oversubscribed by 300 percent. This is the story of the most resource-intensive landscape in America — and what comes back when we let it go.
Become a Founding PartnerThe traditional American lawn is the most resource-intensive and least productive landscape in the country. A homeowner spends roughly twenty thousand dollars per acre over twenty years to maintain it. A native meadow costs three thousand over the same period, with no irrigation, no chemicals, and almost no weekly labor.
The World's Best Office follows this movement at its most vivid — through the gardens of Sleepy Cat Farm, a thirteen-acre estate in Greenwich, Connecticut, the science of leading botanical institutions, and the homeowners who made the change and never looked back. It is not an environmental lecture. It is the story of a common-sense upgrade, told with cinematic ambition.
Impact statistics
40M+
acres of lawn in America — more than all food crops combined
$20K→$3K
per acre over 20 years — lawn vs. native meadow
10×
more pesticides per acre on lawns than on farmland
Statistics and data provided by the Tallamy Lab at the University of Delaware.
Sleepy Cat Farm is a thirteen-acre estate in Greenwich, Connecticut — a model for integrating elite landscape architecture with sustainable land management. Designed in collaboration with Charles J. Stick, the property blends European and Asian garden influences with a productive organic farm and thriving native pollinator habitat. Through its partnership with The Garden Conservancy, it serves as an educational hub, hosting public tours and workshops on native wildflower propagation.
Producer
Director of Netflix's Our Oceans; co-creator of Prehistoric Planet
Nick directed Netflix's Our Oceans, narrated by President Obama, and co-created Prehistoric Planet for Apple TV+ alongside Jon Favreau. He spent four years directing the BBC's Dynasties: Painted Wolf, which won Best Behavioral Film at Jackson Hole. Over a twenty-five-year career his work has ranged from forest nomads in Sumatra to wolves on the Arctic tundra.
Director
Creator of To Scale: The Solar System
Wylie is a filmmaker whose visual storytelling has reached tens of millions worldwide. He created the To Scale series, including the viral To Scale: The Solar System, built across a seven-mile stretch of Nevada desert. His work has been featured by The Atlantic, The Guardian, Scientific American, and PBS.
Writer
Novelist (The Gloaming, The Hare); co-founder of BirdStory
Melanie is an award-winning novelist — The Gloaming, The Underneath, The Hare — and the co-founder of BirdStory. As writer and producer of the Stories to Save Us series, she brings a literary sensibility to documentary filmmaking, exploring how we mythologize landscapes and how those myths shape the way we treat the land.
Creator
Creator of the American Roots Act
William is the creator of the American Roots Act, a bipartisan legislative initiative to scale native meadow restoration through tax incentives. He has collaborated with Senator Richard Blumenthal, Senate Majority Leader Bob Duff, and Representative Tom O'Dea, and has been invited to participate in federal Farm Bill discussions.
Founding Partners are credited permanently in the film and across all outreach, keep the right to share the finished film through their own channels, and join a coalition of leading conservation, scientific, and policy organizations — at no financial cost.