Fuck Lawns

[citrakayah]

I loathe lawns. I have hated them for a long, long time, and my hatred has only grown over time. The sins attributable to the lawn seem to grow yearly. It consumes vast amounts of water. It is a barren landscape with little animal or plant diversity. The fertilizer applied to them washes off and pollutes waterways. And also, on a personal life, I find them kind of ugly.

I've been on many lawns, and I've been in grassland, meadows, and forest glades. When I'm in the former, you're lucky to see to see more than a few wolf spiders and a couple crickets. In the latter, there's life everywhere (compared to lawns, anyway).

There are so many better options than lawns. Grass-free lawns (technically called a lawn, but I'm not considering it one), xeriscaping... even planting native plants and letting them take over a section of the lawn. You can't walk there if the plants grow too high, but I've seen giant-ass lawns that no one ever ran around on. Just these vast, featureless expanses of green, uniformly cropped as short as possible. Huge, nearly sterile monocultures.

Fuck lawns.

Comments

[siliconshaman]

Think of them as a blank canvas... there are hundreds of varieties of grass, some of which are on the endangered list, many of which support wild species. One can create trails, pathways, with pockets of planting into the space in between creating micro-habitats.

Yeah, not a fan of mono-culture green deserts myself either. I fought a battle with our local council over this [and won!] after I turned mine into a wildlife sanctuary.

[citrakayah]

That's awesome! What plant species did you plant it with? Native grasses?

[siliconshaman]

Native grasses, native wild flowers, perennials known to support native wildlife and so on.. plus a few non-natives just for some extra splashes of colour. [kinda like roadside diner billboards for insects.]

I had 50+ species of native grass, twice that many native wild flowers and at the last transect I did 300+ species of insect, 40 of which were on the list as critically endangered. Which is not at all bad for a garden that's 20x20 feet.

I applied for and got an SSI order. [site of scientific interest] meaning that my garden was legally protected under the same rules as wildlife preserves. The council backed down on their order to mow my lawn.

[citrakayah]

Nice! If you've got photos, I'd love to see them.

[yourdeer]

Definitely agreed.
I'm trying to come up with a plan to talk to our landlord about letting me do away with at least some of the lawn at our house in favor of some native grasses and pollinator-friendly plants.
If I can't get him to fully agree, then I'm at least planning to plant a dense border of critter-friendly plants or some raised beds for food plants. >:)

[citrakayah]

Cool. Any plants you have your eyes on?

[moonvoice]

I am not a huge fan, though we did end up going with artificial turf made from recycled plastic, mostly because we do actually use it (we play soccer on it, among other things). The rest of the garden is fully xeriscaped with no reticulation (and the front has zero lawn). I was on the fence about it, since we did need some kind of turf for our personal habits, but being able to do away with water wastage / fertiliser runoff (which kills native plants anyway) etc. tipped in favourably in the direction of xeriscaping + artificial turf.

In general though, I prefer grass-free lawns, or using local grasses or local ground-runners. Australia is low on local grasses that make good 'lawns', and those that are built for our weather are often horrifically invasive and choke out other plants in the first place.