I recent linked to an article by Odum on ecological landscaping, or sustainable gardening, or whatever you want to call it. Her article linked to a number of other articles in the mainstream press. These are the articles I would share with friends and neighbors if they were to express an interest (or quite possibly, skepticism) about my own gardening methods. I’ll grab an interesting paragraph from each. The articles also have lots of interesting pictures and links to even more articles.
“Outgrowing the Traditional Grass Lawn” from Scientific American

Experimenting with alternatives to grass lawns does not require banishing turfgrass altogether, however. As Smith’s research underscores, turfgrass has a useful property not easily matched by other plants: its impressive material resilience. Grass tolerates a lot of trampling without dying and will spring back when compressed by cleats and lounging people’s backsides. Some scientists are currently focusing on how to make regions of private lawns and public green spaces more attractive to native pollinators, without uprooting a lawn altogether. Emily Dobbs of the University of Kentucky and her colleagues visit golf courses in the state and persuade the managers to transform some out of the way spots into wild habitat by planting a mix of perennial, native, low-maintenance wildflowers that bloom from April to October—coneflowers, columbines, black-eyed susans, clover, hyssop, and goldenrod, for example. The owners of five golf courses, including one belonging to Marriott Hotels and Resorts, have agreed so far—and the results are astounding.

“What is Sustainable Landscaping?” from Daily Kos

A landscape based on a small palette of non-native species supports less than 10% of the insect species needed to sustain native birds (Bringing Nature Home). Replacing these landscapes with a diversity of native trees, shrubs, grasses and wildflowers supports the hundreds of species of native insects needed to sustain birds and other organisms such as frogs, toads, lizards, and bats, which help control annoying or dangerous insects such as flies and mosquitoes.  It also links together an increasingly fragmented landscape that isolates natural areas between areas of biological desert.

“It’s come to this, yards are the next frontier of conservation” from Fusion

Native plants boost insect populations significantly, Louderman said.

“In your backyard, if you have just a lawn and non-native plants, you’d find just about a dozen species of native insects. If you have native plants, you can usually find hundreds of almost all native and beneficial insects,” Louderman said.

These are not bad or dangerous insects, Louderman pointed out. In fact, the honeybee is the only one that might sting a human.