Posted on 09/30/2015 8:49:25 AM PDT by Arec Barrwin
THE AMERICAN LAWN NEEDS TO DIE
BY ERIC NICHOLSONWEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2015
My first inkling that America's lawn obsession might not be terribly healthy came around 1995. We'd just moved into a new house in Far North Dallas, and 10- or 11-year-old me decided that the next-door neighbor's lawn — green and smooth as flawless as a golf-course fairway with manicured grass to cushion falls — was the perfect spot for football. The neighbor, a hard-nosed high school track coach, promptly ran us off and upbraided my father for letting me trespass. This struck me as backward. What good was such cushiony grass if not for play?
At the time, I chalked this up to my neighbor being an uptight jerk, an assessment I stand by. But that explanation is incomplete in that it overlooks the bigger picture: Lawns are awful.
This conclusion is admittedly self-serving. Two years ago, in one of those compromises a married person with two small children and two large dogs sometimes has to make, I agreed to swap our cramped apartment just south of White Rock Lake for a three-bedroom house in Richardson, but I was decidedly unenthusiastic about once again having a yard. Since then, I've waged a half-intentional campaign of aggressive neglect. We haven't watered since we've been there. I own a lawnmower, but it's one of those human-powered reel contraptions and it's no match for the shin-high bluestem that seems to spring up overnight. Sometimes I borrow a gas mower from my fall-prone, 70-something-year-old neighbor, but between work and kids, this can be infrequent. The other day, I peeked outside the window and found that 70-something neighbor had taken it upon himself to mow our front yard. It's not something I'm proud of, but my wife and I figured it'd be best to retreat quietly from the windows. We wouldn't want to startle him and make him fall.
But the awfulness of lawns is something close to an objective fact. Maintaining them is time-consuming and expensive. They suck up ungodly amounts of water. When it rains, their fertilizer-heavy runoff pollutes waterways. They pit neighbor against neighbor's kids. They are decadent and unsustainable totems of middle-class prosperity.
RELATED STORIES Long Live Expensive Water In Far North Dallas, Big Fences Make Mad Neighbors and a 9-year Court Battle Think Your Water Bill Is Too High? Blame the Rain. For several centuries, lawns were the exclusive purview of very rich Europeans, people who were wealthy enough to keep large swaths of land out of productive cultivation and afford the labor required to keep the grass neatly scythed. European-style lawns began to take root in America in the mid-1800s after Andrew Jackson Downing recommended expanses of "grass mown into a softness like velvet" as part of a popular gardening treatise he published in 1841. His ideas were later incorporated into the broad lawns of New York's Central Park and lush, pre-automobile suburbs like Riverside, Illinois, which were aped in subsequent decades by the developers of less exclusive suburbs. “No single feature of a suburban residential community contributes as much to the charm and beauty of the individual home and the locality as well-kept lawns,” declared Abraham Levitt, whose name would become synonymous with the post-war explosion of inexpensive, mass-produced suburbs. In post-war America, lawns became a standard feature of the single-family home.
The cumulative size of lawns is vast. By acreage, tur grass is the largest irrigated crop in America, according to a decade-old NASA estimate, covering three times the area devoted to corn. Clumped together, it would more than cover the state of Mississippi.
Lawns are clustered in cities and suburbs. Lawns are clustered in cities and suburbs. NASA Since the non-native grasses that compose most lawns can't be kept green with rainfall alone, and because water and sunlight make the plant grow, lawns require intensive intervention, sucking up a total of about 9 billion gallons of water per day in aggregate and costing the average homeowners about 70 hours of labor per year. Lawns tend to be punishing for the environment as well. In addition to the ecological effects of runoff, which can overwhelm water bodies with excess levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, there's the act of lawn-mowing itself. According to National Geographic, one hour running a gas mower can pollute as much as driving a car for four hours.
Lawns are particularly troublesome in arid cities such as Phoenix and Las Vegas, where it's a challenge to find enough water for people to drink, much less keep a bunch of ornamental grass verdant. The water crunch in a place like Dallas is less acute, but the principles at play are the same. There isn't nearly enough available water to sustain the population long-term without intensive conservation efforts or massive infrastructure investment. North Texans remain attached to their lawns, though recent price hikes for water may spur many to reassess the value of a green yard.
There really aren't that many good reasons for lawns. Responding to a Wonkblog piece describing lawns (accurately) as a "soul-crushing time suck," Turf magazine editor Ron Hall critiques the author for failing to mention "the economic value that nicely maintained lawns add to properties. It doesn’t hint at the good will and sense of civility lawns engender in our neighborhoods. But, the biggest omission in the piece is piece is its failure to mention the well-documented environmental pluses lawns contribute to our communities — capturing dust, their cooling effect, reducing runoff, etc."
But nicely maintained lawns only boost property values and engender civility because that's what decades of increasing suburbanization has led people to expect, not because of some virtue inherent to a well-tended piece of grass. On the latter point, whatever environmental pluses are associated with the typical American lawn would be matched by yards of native plants and grasses without most of the damaging effects.
Lawns aren't going to disappear anytime soon. They are effectively part of North Texas' infrastructure, there for however long the house it surrounds stands. But at the very least people can water a little less, rely on native plants a little bit more. If one simply must have the perfect golf-course lawn, at least let some kids play on it. Finally, if you see a lawn that's a bit overgrown or rough around the edges, don't call code enforcement; congratulate the neighbor on taking a principled stand with their forward-thinking mowing and irrigation policies.
Yup. We live in the sticks, way back off the road; house not visible from the one-way access road. Yard full of moss; a little bit of grass, sparse backyard. Husband mows it; but it’s not manicured. Big dog rolling in the dusty bare spots; her and the cat.
If that were the author's only point I'd be in full agreement, but I have seen liberals jump on this "lawns are an ecological nightmare" bandwagon before, and frankly, this article seems to be a thin attempt to drive that agenda.
For some reason, liberals are never satisfied until everybody is as slovenly and degraded as they are. And then they moan and complain with contempt and envy that the only reason all those hard-working people got to where they are is because of "white privilege". You know, the "rich" stole it off the backs of others so we must tear them down.
Yeah, he's just talking about lawns, but it is a unique metaphorical example of the liberal mindset.
Look at the rest of the world. It is how the vast majority of the serfs live. From Europe to Asia to South America —commie blocs blight the landscape and open land sits.
He has a point... on his head.
Look, the lawn is native to damp Scotland. It works great in the Eastern US. If it doesn’t work great in Texas, say Texans shouldn’t imitate those Easterners. Leave us Easterners alone.
Yup, lawns suck. Time wasted keeping them manicured, gardening space wasted, natural diversity forbidden.
Housing development (a poorly applied term in this case) Serenbe in Georgia http://serenbe.com bans mowed lawns. Most lawns are nicely kept and interesting, either as gardens or curated natural mini fields/forests.
“At the time, I chalked this up to my neighbor being an uptight jerk, an assessment I stand by.”
Wrong. My lawn, my land. Stay the hell off it and keep your opinions to yourself.
I like my lawn, I like doing my lawn, I like looking at my lawn because it relaxes me, and I like my children being able to play on my lawn. It is my lawn on my property to do with as I wish. Someone else’s judgement of that doesn’t matter to me because it’s mine, not theirs.
Well said.
But don’t lawns turn CO2 into Oxygen? Seems like a good thing to me.
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...but not necessarily a good one. I've been in neighborhoods where lawns are beautiful, except for one that looks like the home is abandoned. When one person's behavior affects others, there is what is called an externality. Externalities can be good or bad. If you choose not to mow your lawn, you create a bad externality for your neighbors, especially if they are trying to sell their house. If you don't want to care for your lawn, why buy a house with a yard? Buy a condo with no yard or one where the HOA fees cover lawn care. Imposing your slovenly behavior on your neighbors, to me at least, is simply wrong.
I agree but in a different way...we are Bee Keepers and the obsession to have the “perfect” lawn is killing the bees.
Our “perfect” lawn is a lawn covered in dandelions and clover...
Instead of a lawn everyone should put in a nice vegetable garden. In the war they were called Victory Gardens and planted for a different reason.
I like the natural rock gardens too. Just not the white rock of the southwest so much. I welcome the native species to my semi-rural property: wild grapevines, poison ivy, stinging nettles, blackberries, virginia creeper, jewelweed, and in springtime, the trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, mayflowers, etc. All part of nature’s gift to the American eastern decidious forest. Grass? An illegal immigrant!
Another excellent point! Just like a liberal. He is too snotty and lazy to take care of his own yard so he sends his kids to play on his neighbors!
Just like every other liberal who is too lazy to work and sucks off the public teat.
Nice. Of course, it makes it very difficult for neighborhood kids to sneak on the lawn to retrieve a football.
I imagine this a-hole is a stranger to paint, too. Too cheap to buy a power mower, he mooches off his elderly neighbor, who, to help keep the neighborhood from looking like a-holes live there, mows the a-hole’s lawn himself at constant risk of falling. Screw this lazy slob.
>>Liberal utopian apartments. This is what they think people should live in. It is what all communists force people to live in.
The article is about using native ground cover that can survive with only natural rainfall. A well-manicured lawn that must meet strict community standards is actually a collectivist ideal.
Wasting water on non-productive crops is stupid.
I think that sums it up without any further modifiers.
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