DNRP > SWD > Composting & Soils > Natural Yard Care > Northwest Natural Yard Days > Background

Yard Days History

Northwest Natural Yard Days An incentive that encourages residents of King County and surrounding areas to change the way they care for their yards.

Each spring Yard Days encourages residents in the Puget Sound region to buy and use environmentally preferable yard care products through discounts at local retailers. Yard Days takes place once a year in April and May. Electric mulch-mowers (which can be recycled) are especially popular because of their quiet operation, lack of air pollution (external), and because they deposit the grass clippings back on the lawn where they help fertilize the grass.

Since Yard Days began, Puget Sound region residents have purchased:

32,360 mulch-mowers
12,932 weed pullers
27,874 soaker hoses
9,483 water timers and water wands
412,886 bags of compost
45,141 bags of organic fertilizer
13,600 containers of insecticidal soap and
189,501 bags of bark mulch.

Yard Days is an outgrowth of the highly successful "Get Mower for Less" promotion that began in 1998, when a particularly rainy season overwhelmed the local composting facility with grass clippings - almost one-half ton for every lawn-mowing homeowner. In 2002, the program changed to a retail partnership and Yard Days products are now sold in 61 hardware stores, nurseries and home and garden centers all around the Puget Sound region. As interest in natural yard care has increased so have the sales and variety of discounted products offered by retailers.

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