Littleton, Colo. — When Lena Astilli first bought her home outside of Denver, she had no interest in matching the wall-to-wall green lawns that dominated her block. She wanted native plants — the kind she remembered and loved as a child in New Mexico, that require far less water and have far more to offer insects and birds that are in decline.

“A monoculture of Kentucky bluegrass is not helping anybody,” Astilli said. After checking several nurseries before finding one that had what she wanted, she has slowly been reintroducing those native plants to her yard.

Though Astilli was replacing grass just last month, it remains ubiquitous in American yards. It's a tradition that began more than two centuries ago with the landed gentry copying the landscaping of Europe's wealthy, and grass now

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