Residential yards are a unique component of the urban environment because they compose a large proportion of urban and suburban land but are managed on a small-scale level by individual household members. Humans can alter the plant communities in their yards by adding or removing species and essential resources (water, nutrients, and sunlight). To better understand how homeowners influence the biodiversity of their yards, we conducted in-person interviews, distributed written surveys, and inventoried the lawn and flower diversity of residential yards in low, middle, and high income neighborhoods. We investigated how residents use their front and back yards, their preferences for variety, and what variety means to them. We hypothesized that homeowners would have different expectations for their front versus back yards, would value having a variety of flowers, but would want a green lawn monoculture. Next, we examined how the luxury effect plays out across different yard locations (front/back) and plant types (lawn and flowers). We hypothesized that we would find higher floral diversity in front versus back yards and that income would enable homeowners to better realize their preferences of floral variety and a lawn monoculture.
Results/Conclusions
We found that across income levels, homeowners unanimously liked variety in their yard flowers, especially color variety, but preferred a monoculture of green turf grass in their lawns. However, there were disconnects between what homeowners wanted and what they actually had in their yards. This disconnect was most obviously due to income. Higher income households had higher numbers of flower genera and colors, and income had a significant effect on nearly every other flower diversity metric measured. Similarly, higher income households’ lawns had lower diversity due to the lack of weedy species. We also found that homeowners viewed their front yards as serving the purpose of curb appeal, and in turn there were more flowers in the front yards. Overall, our study demonstrates the homeowners desire variety in their flowers but not in their lawn, presents differences between homeowners’ preferences and realized yard plant diversity and composition, and identifies income as one of the major causes of this disconnect.