Feel hopeless about our planet? Here's how you can help solve a big problem right in your own backyard

It's easy to feel hopeless about climate change, to believe most solutions are out of your hands. But you can help fix one of the biggest environmental issues of our time, since it's probably growing right in your own yard: lawn grass.

Most Canadian yards are a sea of non-native, inedible turf grass. Not evolved for our climate, it requires intensive maintenance, watering and fertilizer inputs, and provides virtually no value to native species.

Yet this "eco-desert" is the largest irrigated crop in North America. 

"It's an ecological disaster, but it's also a moral disaster," said Doug Tallamy, an entomologist at the University of Delaware who has long advocated for homeowners to reduce their lawn space. 

Fortunately, he said, this is one of the rare ecological and climate issues driven almost entirely by individual choice, as the majority of lawn grass is maintained on privately owned residential property.

To Elaine Wiersma of Thunder Bay, Ont., that means the responsibility is in the hands of people like her. 

"Changing your lawn, you know, making those decisions to change is something that's within your own power," said Wiersma, an associate professor in Lakehead University's department of health sciences. "While we do need to do and to have collective action, there are things that individuals can do themselves that can make a huge contribution."

Over the last decade, Wiersma and her family have been slowly replacing their lawn grass with native species. She said the result has been incredible. 

"It's this oasis of biodiversity and life within this eco-desert of lawns. It's just such an incredible privilege to be able to provide this space and to be able to nurture it in the little way that we can."

Tallamy said homeowners often want to support ecosystems, but convention gets in the way. 

"We need to change our mindset about esthetics," said Wiersma. "We tend to look at natural areas and naturalized yards as being kind of messy. It doesn't have to be messy. It can be very, very beautiful in its own right."

Nina-Marie Lister is a professional planner and director of the Ecological Design Lab at Toronto Metropolitan University, where she's a professor and graduate director of the School of Urban and Regional Planning.

Lister said naturalizing your lawn can be empowering. 

"Lawn naturalization is easy because it's right at your doorstep. If you have a lawn, it's an easy place to start and it shows immediate results. ... it's something very tangible. When you dig in the sod, you turn it over, you plant something else, you see the result. So it's a very rewarding thing to do."