John Greenlee has targeted the Great American Lawn - that notorious sink of fossil fuels, water, chemicals and spare time - for destruction. "The revolution is clearly on," he says, adding: "It's a one-garden-at-a-time revolution." With his manifesto "The American Meadow Garden," sumptuously illustrated by Novato photographer Saxon Holt and published this month by Timber Press, Greenlee is hoping to reach lawn owners ready to change.

"I get what lawn does from a design standpoint; it's a cool place for your eye to rest," he says. "But if you don't have to play golf on it, there are all these other great things you could consider. I drive out to the suburbs and see hundred- to 800-hundred-foot square rugs of turfgrass in various stages of looking crummy. You have to water, weed, fertilize, plug and spray them. Maybe your kids have moved out, the shade trees have grown up, the lawn's not looking all that good. Why have a crappy lawn when you can have a fabulous meadow?"

Unlike such grassland ecosystems as savannah, prairie and veldt, there is no scientific definition of a meadow. "A meadow is whatever you want it to be," Greenlee says. "It's one of the most exciting new directions in horticulture and design. You couldn't have made the gardens in the book 10 years ago, even five years ago, because no nurseries were growing the plants."

In the book, Greenlee, a pioneering nurseryman and designer who lives in Brisbane, recounts his own fascination with meadow gardening and describes exemplary natural meadows, from coastal grasslands and the Sierra to Midwestern prairies and Southern pine savannahs. He provides design ideas and suggests combinations of grasses and compatible accent plants for different kinds of meadows. One chapter catalogs grasses and grasslike plants now available in the horticultural trade; another showcases outstanding domestic meadows, including some of Greenlee's own designs.

West Coast view

With practical guidelines for installation and maintenance, this is the rare species of garden book with a continentwide scope from a West Coast point of view.

"Mine is one of the first grass books that talk about what requires winter chill. The grasses you see in garden magazines don't work in a Mediterranean environment like ours." Another notable difference here is that fall - right now - is an ideal time to plant.

Maintenance is a big selling point. "A sedge lawn needs mowing maybe four times a year and watering once a week in the hottest part of summer; turfgreases need weekly watering and 40 mowings a year," Greenlee said.

But that's not the only argument for the natural meadow: "If my book converts 10 percent of California gardens into meadows, that's amazing ecological savings. Consider the habitat you're creating. People think of habitat as being down the road at the state park, but your yard can be habitat for an endangered butterfly."

Meadows offer endless aesthetic possibilities: "Grasses soften the landscape," Greenlee says. "They're a fairly neutral design element." Grasses are compatible with roses in a cottage meadow or, for a different feel, succulents. "Adding Mediterranean bulbs, babianas, freesias or species tulips creates flowering panels that are sustainable and beautiful. You can have golden foliage, or grasses that reflect light."

Greenlee finds meadows work in small spaces as well as large estates: "The smaller the garden gets, the better it is that it's a sedge lawn with mixed grasses. There are small-scale applications on narrow side yards, dog yards or places with tree root competition or tree shade."

Though he likes to work with native grasses, particularly sedges, Greenlee feels there's a place in the meadow for better-behaved varieties of problematic species like pampas grass and giant reed.

Still, it can be an uphill battle. Former neighbors weren't ready to love a meadow that Greenlee planted because it looked "disorderly and weedy," in contrast to their billiard-table lawns.

"I wear my citations like badges of honor." Many such problems have involved prairie plantings: "Maybe the meadow is the place of compromise between the lawn and the prairie."

Drawing attention

Greenlee's work has caught the attention of Antonia Adezio, president of the Garden Conservancy, a nonprofit that preserves gardens for education and enjoyment.

"He's found ways to merge all this plant knowledge into a new style," she says. "His work is very timely because we're all thinking about using less water, not mowing as much, pointing out ways for people to apply those ideas in their gardens."

Recently transplanted from Pomona to Brisbane, Greenlee has a design studio in San Francisco. At home, his sedge-based postage-stamp-size meadow surrounds an old pepper tree.

Greenlee said he's happy to be in Northern California, where people are more receptive to the meadow message, and he's been able to work with "some of the giants of landscape architecture." He's designing a Persian-carpet garden for a Woodside property. "My current project is always the favorite," he said. His portfolio includes tiger and gorilla enclosures at the San Diego Zoo ("You think kids are tough on gardens? Try gorillas.").

What's next? Greenlee has been thinking about the edible meadow: "The first real agriculture in California was First Nations people diverting streams in the Eastern Sierra to flood nutgrass fields. How about edible lawns of native nutgrass? Someone is working with precursor grains from the Fertile Crescent. Edible grasses are the next phase.

"I like to win people over with a message of love: Isn't this just so much more visually satisfying than a lawn?"