I just read another article about the on-going/deepening drought here in the western US. As with a lot of these articles, they talk a lot about people tearing out their lawns because of how much water they consume.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/13/ga...new-green.html

From what I've read it seems that lawns in general... at least the way folks typically do them here in the US, are super resource intensive/wasting. Another article that I read a while back said that the average US lawn gets way more fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide, than even the worst of the industrial agricultural fields... which was pretty surprising.

Got me thinking that there must be a better way!?

At least on the water front, I would think that a recirculating aquaponic system would have a huge benefit.

I'm not sure what the best approach might be though. Anyone tried/heard of an aquaponic lawn?

I'd kind of like to try one in my backyard.

Turns out that my back yard (like most unbuilt land here in the city) is pretty highly contaminated with lead. Luckily we are below the "hazardous waste" cut-off, but it is not a good idea for kids, or really anyone, to play out there, and you don't want to grow green vegetables either. The traditional solutions are either to pave it with concrete and call it a patio or dig out the top 18" inches and ship it off to be someone else's problem. I'm not very psyched about either solution.

I was thinking of sculpting the surface a bit, and then laying a HDPE pond liner over it. Then put down a layer of sand and gravel, then some porous pavers for drainage, and then try and build a new soil bed on top of that.

The question though is if I might be better off going soilless and making the whole thing into one big aquaponic grow bed? Clearly I'd need a lot of fish to feed that much grow bead (approximately 30'x30'). But it would be super cool if I could figure something out that my kids could play on/in.

Just throwing this wacky idea out there. Anyone have any suggestions?

B