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.
I had to pay a $250 fine a year ago, because the dandelions in my yard had gotten over 10 inches in height (the grass was still under 3-inches).
The lawn police came with their tape measures and issued me a citation. It had only been 7 days since the lawn was last cut.
We got there in the height of summer it was very hot and dry. The lawn started to look bad. The front had sprinklers but the back did not. So, I am out there watering every day. Thinking, hey it's NC--water is every where, I can practically wring it out of the air.
Well, let me put it is perspective. My highest water bill, ever in Arizona--after filling a pool was about $60. I get my first water bill in NC and it's $400. My husband and I say, "Wow, must be a mistake" We call, short of with a chuckle and are, like, "hey got this water bill, looks like some sort of error". ( it looked to have double charges)
She actually says to us, "You wanna have that big green lawn, well, water is expensive" Apparently we could have paid a couple fo thousand dollars to have some sort of meter installed which would have removed the double charges. I know I am not explaining that very well. I knew, at that point, well long before that, I was not going to be there a day longer than I had to be.
“Wasting water on non-productive crops is stupid.”
Liberals believe in “purpose” for the greater good. Welcome to liberalism.
Fine, I’ll follow the lead of Al Gore, George Soros, any Hollywood big shot, etc.
“Wasting water on non-productive crops is stupid.”
P.S. “Wasting water” is a stupid liberal concept that somehow water is “wasted”. Water goes nowhere. It is all still on the planet.
So we need the Federal Government to ban lawns because there might not be enough water in Vegas to keep your Kentucky Bluegrass looking good.
hear, hear
While they never take their own advice. I haven’t in probably my whole life made a bigger “carbon footprint” than Al Gore does on just one of his overseas trips by private jet.
Soviet Union, but it could be NORK, or China.
Our neighbors are in their 80s and keep a flawless lawn. They enjoy the results of their efforts and get healthy exercise. However, many Americans are slobs in sweat suits who never sweat.
So are those miles of concrete cities in which leftists love to congregate(a penthouse if they’re rich enough to suck up even more environment with huge third and fourth homes all over the globe), an environmental nightmare.
thank you for that politically correct insight comrade
Just across the street from my house is a good size park, full of oak trees, every fall, every single leaf from all those trees blows into my yard and stays in my yard until I dispose of them.
One fall, a few years back, the county brought a bunch of trustees from the county jail and they raked the entire park. Best fall I’ve had here but I haven’t seen that gang since.
He can KMA.
My lawn, trees, and garden are my contribution to dust control in a desert environment. I pay for the water. I pay the property taxes. I maintain it because it’s MY land.
NIMBY jerk.
If you’re spending a lot of time on a lawn and think it sucks, you’re doing it wrong. I have 2 acres and spend about an hour a month working on the yard, with maybe an extra hour on the fall and spring for planting flower beds. I consider getting outside for an hour cheap therapy for getting some fresh air and taking my mind off my problems.
Just ask the professionally incompetent simian morons in Big Media.
To Hell with the lot of ‘em.
Tell that to my local government that demands that my lawn is always green and lush otherwise I get fined...
Looks like another problem caused by government that the libs want to solve by throwing MORE government at it.
Good luck with ongoing foundation repairs then.
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.