Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory:
Unearthing to Rewild, Remember, Look Forward
???????Lawn Lab is sleeping for the winter. Get in touch if you’d like to participate in our spring re-awakening activities! In the meantime, if you missed our fall audio tour, you can get a taste by checking out the video version.
ABOUT
The Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory is an ongoing art-science experiment now in its third season. A project of the NEXT EPOCH SEED LIBRARY, it involves re-wilding interventions in institutional and residential lawns from seeds lying dormant in the soil. From plant-based sculptures and community science workshops to unconventional approaches to data collection and presentation, the project offers multiple entry points through which to consider lawn habitats and their impacts on the communities—human and nonhuman—who live in and among them.
- Season 1 (2018) took place in institutional and residential lawns throughout the city of Troy, NY.
- Season 2 (2019) took place at Wheaton College in Massachusetts and Seton Hall University in New Jersey. You can see our Seton Hall informational brochure here.
- Season 3 (2020) was planned for plots at RPI, The Sanctuary for Independent Media, and Radix Sustainability Center, all in the New York Capital Region. Due to the pandemic, it was scaled back to six plots at the NATURE Labenvironmental education campus of The Sanctuary for Independent Media in North Central Troy, which will be expanded in 2021. We’re also excited to be partnering with The Land Institute’s perennial oilseed civic science project to host more than two dozen Silphium integrifolium plants in this lawn.
Follow project progress at #lawnredisturbancelaboratory. City Lab wrote about the project in September 2019: Uncovering the Seeds of a Post-Lawn Future. In August 2020, Media+Environment’s “Mediating Art and Science” Stream published Ellie’s article about the project’s first season: The Next Epoch Seed Library’s Lawn Lab: A Public Experiment in Collaboration with Seeds, Time, and Weeds. Also in August 2020, Ellie presented the project with a 5 minute lightening talk for the Ecological Society of America’s annual conference.
Upcoming Events:
- September/October 2020: Fall Audio Tour at 3333 Sixth Avenue, Troy, NY
Earth Week Ruderal Rewilding Festival, April 21st, 5-7 pm, hosted with The Sanctuary for Independent Media, Troy, NY. Temporarily cancelled, stay home folks! And stay tuned for updates on a virtual edition
Past Workshops:
- Seed Collecting Workshop and Lawn Lab Tour with Wheaton College Students, Fall 2019
- Herbarium Specimen Workshops with 21st Century/Doyle Middle School Students at the Sanctuary for Independent Media’s NATURE Lab, Fall 2018/Spring 2019/Fall 2019
- Fall wrap up and plot re-domestication with Vasudha Living & Learning Community, RPI, Fall 2018
- Plant ID with Uptown Summer Youth at Media Sanctuary’s NATURE Lab, Summer 2018
- June 20th, 4-6 pm, Cohoes, NY, Plot Establishment Workshop with CMA
- April 27th, 1-3 pm, Plot Establishment Workshop with Vasudha Living & Learning Community, RPI, April 22nd, 2-4 pm with NATURE Lab, North Troy
LAWN (RE)DISTURBANCE = SOIL SEED BANK REAWAKENING
What seeds are sleeping, dormant in the soil, beneath the myriad institutional and residential lawns of Troy? By removing 1 x 1 meter patch of lawn, we can invite them to reveal themselves!
“Pioneer species” are those plants that respond to disaster and disturbance, sprouting rapidly in bare, exposed or otherwise de-vegetated earth to jumpstart the process of ecosystem recovery. Large-scale events like earthquakes, floods, and landslides can churn up soil, exposing it to light, warmth, air and moisture. These ingredients unlock latent energy in the living soil seed bank- seeds that may have been dormant for years or even decades spring into action, providing the basis for ecosystem recovery and restoration.
Often labeled as “weedy”, many of the plants that emerge from disturbances produce relatively large numbers of seeds that have a long shelf life. This means their seeds can stay dormant in the soil for many generations until the right kind of disturbance occurs, at which point they sprout and grow rapidly, stabilizing the soil and regenerating habitat until slower growing species can root and flourish.
Through both in-situ and lab-based disturbance and germination tests across a variety of lawn-scapes, from long term turf grass monocultures to abandoned industrial sites that are regularly mowed, this art-ecology experiment uncovers the hidden power of past seed burial for future rewilding in the face of a rapidly changing climate.
To see a record of some of the species recorded in Lawn Lab plots in 2018 and 2019, visit our iNaturalist Project Page.
Below: 1 x 1 meter test plots were established in the landscape and observed over the growing season.
We’re working on video documentation of the project including plot establishment, as seen below:
Below: A sculptural representation of the project is being shown in gallery settings
Below: Soil germination tests are being carried out in a controlled setting at The Sanctuary for Independent Media’s NATURE Lab, and results tracked over the course of the study
Press:
Uncovering the Seeds of a Post-Lawn Future, City Lab, Fall 2019
Lawn (Re)Disturbance Laboratory, C-Platform, Fall 2019
Relevant Related Studies and Articles:
Albrecht, Harald, Elisabeth Eder, Thomas Langbehn, and Clara Tschiersch. “The Soil Seed Bank and Its Relationship to the Established Vegetation in Urban Wastelands.” Landscape and Urban Planning 100, no. 1 (March 30, 2011): 87–97. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.landurbplan.2010.11.011
Robbins, Paul, and Julie Sharp. “Turfgross Subjects: The Political Economy of Urban Monoculture.” In In the Nature of Cities: Urban Political Ecology and the Politics of Urban Metabolism, edited by Nik Heynen, Maria Kaika, and Erik Swyngedouw, 1 edition. London ; New York: Routledge, 2006.
Ian Graber-Stiehl, “Lawns are an Ecological Disaster“, Earther, May 2018
Ian Johnston, “Keep off the grass: Research confirms that highly manicured lawns produce more greenhouse gases than they soak up“, UK Independent, January 2015
Gu, Chuanhui, John A. Crane, George Z. Hornberger and Amanda R. Carrico. “The effects of household management practices on the global warming potential of urban lawns.” Journal of Environmental Management 151 (2015): 233-42.
Ma, Hongyuan, Haoyu Yang, Zhengwei Liang, and Mark K. J. Ooi. “Effects of 10-Year Management Regimes on the Soil Seed Bank in Saline-Alkaline Grassland.” PLOS ONE 10, no. 4 (April 22, 2015): e0122319. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0122319.
Thompson, Ken, Stephen Colsell, Jennifer Carpenter, Richard M. Smith, Philip H. Warren, and Kevin J. Gaston. “Urban Domestic Gardens (VII): A Preliminary Survey of Soil Seed Banks.” Seed Science Research 15, no. 2 (June 2005): 133–41. https://doi.org/10.1079/SSR2005201.
Seeds Buried in 1967 Time Capsule with be Unearthed to See how BC Crops Have Changed