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.
North Korea?
The author is a liberal loser who’s just trying to justify his laziness.
A very old argument.
The US has more fresh water then most anywhere else but we do have regions of draught and water supply issues that have existed for many decades, largely due to urban sprawl.
In many of these regions, lawns are not advisable, and most use rock gardens etc..
There is no imperative for government to step into this in any direct way, IMO.
Water is regulated already and has always been so, and customers will have to deal with these regs on a case by case basis. lawn or no lawn is a matter of money and personal taste or in some cases impossible..
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.
Bet it was a good party!
I looked into that stuff...it can run between $10 and $20 a square foot.
Like a knucklehead I parked myself on about an acre and a half of lawn...60,000 square feet!...I may as well cover it in Italian marble or whatever...
We deliberately leave the natural clover patches every spring until they’ve stopped blooming. Specifically for the bees.
I’’m more of a fan of this type of front yard:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vpU-SS_CbWI
This American’s lawn died a long time ago. I have a Dirt landscape with an interesting collection of flowering weeds. I do pull out the stick-tights and sandspurs and try to keep down the smilax but I don’t sweat the St Augustine or Bahia..
No lawns for me. Give me an orchard or a field with cattle and horses. Not only a waste of water (all the green grass is burned up in the tribulation so maybe God doesn’t agree with lawn mowers either) but also a stinking waste of time. Gardens. Grow veggies and flowers. Maybe a patch 10 feet around a bird bath in the middle of a tree grove where the sun shines through every once in a blood moon.
That is what Agenda 21 i about and it IS coming to you.
You want to see lawn crazies? Go to Denver sometime!
Another watermelon. I’ll keep my lawn. If he wants to save water, he can find alternatives to washing his clothes. By far, washing clothes does more to harm the environment than any other water activity.
The other thing he can do is find other uses for his time other than looking over my fence and feeling inferior.
Weeds. LOL I call it prairie grass.
The writer is lazy, got it. :)
The biggest libs I know have the biggest lawns.
No well or sprinkler system, so I’m good.
When you live in an area which snakes are know to exist, the best thing you can do is maintain short grass.
There’s an advantage to living in central Florida. I haven’t watered my lawn in ten years and it looks as good as or better than neighboring lawns. We get some much regular rain the place stays green with nothing more than a little fertilizer. That’s one thing I don’t miss about living in the desert southwest ... the brown-ness.
I have an acre of Bermuda lawn where the front, sides and a small part of the backyard gets chemical ministrations from Tru-Green with the remainder of the back having a mix of Bermuda grass, dandelions, clover, and assorted grasses/weeds including a small forested area totally given over to Nature. I notice the local honeybee population making regular visits to the clover areas. The forested area is used by wildlife of every kind for cover. The deer use it as their approach to the persimmon tree in the back part of the property.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.