As a horticulturist, I appreciate beautiful landscapes. I also understand the positive and negative roles landscapes can play relative to the environment.

For example, poor lawn care techniques and other landscape management practices are often partly to blame for the pollution and algae growth in our lakes and ponds. Leaves, grass clippings, pet waste and fertilizers can wash into water bodies if they are not managed or disposed of properly. Once in the water, they release nutrients as they decay, causing algae blooms and weed growth and disrupting the balance of plant and animal life.

Excess nutrients can cause green, algae and weed-ridden lakes and can lower water quality, reduce navigation lanes and decrease fish populations. In short, they reduce our ability to enjoy our state’s incredible water resources – including those in the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District (MCWD).

How can you help while taking care of your lawn and landscape this summer and fall?

* First and foremost, keep organic matter, fertilizers and other materials from washing down storm drains that lead to our wetlands, lakes and streams.

* Leave grass clippings on the lawn (where they function as a slow-release fertilizer) and sweep them up if they fall on the sidewalk, driveway or street. When mowing your lawn, blow the clippings onto the grass and away from hardscapes, or use a rear discharge or mulching mower. As an alternative, compost grass clippings along with your leaves and never rake grass clippings or leaves directly into surface waters.

* Pick up and throw away or bury pet waste. It contains both phosphorus and harmful bacteria that makes lakes and streams unsafe.

* Make sure loose dirt stays put by installing edging around landscape beds, reseeding bare spots in lawns, planting ground covers and mulching planting beds.

* Direct downspouts toward the lawn, where the runoff and nutrients from your roof and gutters will be appreciated instead of washed into storm sewers.

* Sweep up excess fertilizer that lands on hardscapes like walks and driveways and don’t apply fertilizers before a storm or on frozen ground.

Most Minnesota soils have enough phosphorus for a healthy lawn, so you don’t need it in your fertilizer. Kentucky bluegrass lawns do, however, need supplemental nitrogen in order to maintain healthy, vigorous turf that will stabilize the soil and prevent erosion which is detrimental to surface waters.

If you think fertilizer is needed, test the soil first. Tests are available for $15 per sample through the University of Minnesota’s Soil Testing Laboratory. Late August and September are the most effective times for fertilizing your lawn. The same goes for seeding, sodding, aerating and dethatching.

Remember, too, that wherever you live, you live in a watershed. The Minnehaha Creek watershed alone covers 181 square miles. So while working to keep your yard beautiful, remember that you don’t need to live near a body of water to harm it by causing excessive plant growth and pollution, or to help keep it blue, clear, healthy and fun.

Jim Calkins, Minnetonka, is president of the Minnehaha Creek Watershed District Board of Managers and is an educator and landscape horticulturist. To learn more about the MCWD and its programs visit www.minnehahacreek.org.