A DOCUMENTARY FILM · 2026
Over 40 million acres of American lawn – roughly twice as much as every cotton field, rice paddy, potato crop, and fruit, nut, and berry orchard in the country combined. This is the story of the Americans who turned it back into something alive.
Join the CoalitionA documentary short about Americans from many walks of life – the weekend gardener, the lifelong naturalist, the family on the grand estate – who turned the unused parts of their yards into native meadows, and got the fireflies, the butterflies, and the community back.
Entomologist & Conservationist · University of Delaware
When Doug Tallamy was in the third grade, he watched a bulldozer bury the pond beside his childhood home to build the house next door. It was, he has said, his first conservation lesson — watching something ordinary and alive simply disappear.
He has spent the decades since studying what that loss means at scale. An entomologist, conservationist, and professor at the University of Delaware, his research and books — including Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope — have inspired millions to see their own yards as part of the solution to the biodiversity crisis. Driven by the belief that everyone can play a role, Doug co-founded Homegrown National Park to encourage people to plant natives in the spaces they care for.
The renowned Doug Tallamy, speaking on the importance of this film:
“If you have watched a bulldozer destroy a part of the natural world you loved, you can picture what used to exist in the areas that are now lawn. We can and must restore what once thrived in our yards. Few things are as rewarding as watching life return!”
Sixty acres · Ohio
Ryan Dressler spent the first half of his life lobbying for impact investing. He converted sixty acres in Ohio, and the fireflies returned first, then the Baltimore orioles, then a pair of trumpeter swans he has no explanation for. He intends to spend the second half lobbying for nature.
A front lawn · Pennsylvania
Sara did not tear out her front lawn — she worked with it for two years, putting a small sign in the yard so the neighbors would know what was coming. The morning the first partridge pea pushed through the grass, she understood that she had been waiting for permission she never needed.
Twenty-eight Julys · Connecticut
Every Fourth of July for twenty-eight years, Victor DeMasi has counted the butterflies in his Connecticut meadow. Since the mid-nineties, the count has fallen by half. He keeps coming back because the number can still change.
A brewery strip · Connecticut
David Kaye did not build his meadow to make a point. The strip beside the Nod Hill Brewery was going to become an eyesore, so he turned it into the view from the beer garden and the filter for the river beside it. He is still surprised by how many conversations it starts.
These are the people whose stories inspire this film. If your own land has a version of this story, we would be glad to hear it.
A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Impact statistics
What maintaining a lawn actually costs you
7–22×
more expensive to run a conventional lawn each year than a native meadow — confirmed in peer-reviewed research across multiple climates and management approaches.
25×
times a year the average lawn gets mowed. After its first season, a native meadow needs no irrigation, no fertilizer — and mows once or twice a year at most.
40M acres
of conventional lawn in the United States — roughly twice as much as every cotton field, rice paddy, potato crop, and fruit, nut, and berry orchard in the country combined.
What it puts in your yard and air
26 of 40
of the most commonly used lawn pesticides have been identified as probable or possible carcinogens by government toxicology reviews — spread across the same grass where children and pets spend their summers.
80M lbs
of pesticides applied to North American lawns and gardens each year — more chemicals per acre than most commercial cropland.
300×
the heat-trapping power of nitrous oxide versus CO₂. The fertilizer spread to keep grass green breaks down in the soil and releases it — invisibly, every season.
The living world
3 billion
birds lost from North American skies since 1970. Forty million acres of lawn means forty million acres that feed no insects — and insects are what birds eat.
37%
of native bee species now face extinction risk. Native bees — not the managed honeybees in commercial hives — are the ones disappearing.
100 miles
One hour on a gas mower produces as much air pollution as driving 100 miles — before you've left your yard.
Sources: Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management (peer-reviewed); EPA WaterSense; Beyond Pesticides (2021); IPCC Sixth Assessment Report (2021); U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service; Rosenberg et al. / Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Science 2019; NatureServe / Center for Biological Diversity 2023; California Air Resources Board SORE Fact Sheet (2021); Milesi et al. / NASA Ames, Environmental Management 2005.
The Founding Coalition
Founding partners join the movement on record — named in the film, in the outreach, and in every conversation this work starts. Here is who is already in.
5 founding partners · 170,000+ acres logged on the HNP Biodiversity Map · 300+ corridors
The national movement for native habitat restoration, co-founded by Doug Tallamy — 170,000+ acres logged and growing.
The ecologist whose books Bringing Nature Home and Nature's Best Hope defined the native plant movement for a generation.
The grassroots network of pesticide-free native corridors spanning 300+ towns across 24 states and Canada.
Connecticut's flagship research university, backing this film through a grant championed by Dr. David Wagner.
The ecological landscape design and stewardship education organization founded in 1990 by Larry Weaner — his daughter Sara Weaner Cooper, NDAL's principal, is one of the film's featured subjects.
More organizations in conversation — add your organization before the window closes August 13.
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.
Novelist — The Gloaming, The Underneath, The Hare
Melanie Finn is an award-winning novelist and journalist — The Gloaming, The Underneath, The Hare — whose work is known for its moral seriousness and its treatment of landscape as a force of character. Based in Vermont, she works across literary fiction and documentary film, investigating the stories we tell about the natural world and how those stories determine what we do to it.
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.
The film travels to properties of every kind. One of them is Sleepy Cat Farm, a thirteen-acre estate in Greenwich, Connecticut. Designed in collaboration with Charles J. Stick, it 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.
For Organizations
The founding coalition is where this movement puts its name on record. Your organization joins leading groups — including Homegrown National Park, Doug Tallamy, and the Pollinator Pathway — as a permanent part of the story: in the film, in the outreach, and in every conversation this work starts.
Founding Partner registration closes August 13, 2026.
Your information is never shared or sold.
For Individuals
One email when the film launches — no newsletters, no noise. And if you're ready to move now, there's more you can do.
Your email is never shared. Unsubscribe any time.
