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’ve always like the surfaces of miniature golf courses.
**** “Doing my part through neglect, laziness, and attrition!” ****
It has been my SOP for the last 10 years, the Code Enforcement folks have finally been convinced that I am Right
The only point he made is that he is lazy and anti-lawn. He's probably also anti-BBQ grill. I do my own lawn. I work full time and have lots of other things to do. However, as a homeowner, I take pride in the curb appeal of my house and take the time to do the work. Keeping my lawn neat also helps me burn off some calories and carbs. If I didn't do the lawn, I'd just have to spend more time on my stationary bike.
I run a gas-powered lawn mower and a gas-powered edger. I probably fill up my gas can twice a season; three if I use my gas-powered pressure washer a lot. The idea that lawn mowers use a lot of gas is BS. This author just sounds like another leftard "there oughtta be a law" control freak/loser.
The only thing worse than a lazy, smug, liberal holier-than-thou, suburbanite is one that's from Texass. They really know it all.
I keep trying to tell my husband this! Lawns make no sense to me - we water and fertilize it so it will grow. Once it grows, are we happy? NO! We then have to mow it so it doesn’t look “weedy”. Total waste of effort and land, in my opinion.
“Yes I spend thousands on my yard every year, you commies want to take that from me too?”
Yes, they do. They think choice must have limits, their limits. I think we need to limit liberals.
In Texas, he’s probably got a point. Does anything other than tumbleweed grow there?
AKA Toilet for stray cats ;)
That "established science" fact was covered in Earth Science in freshman year of high school but they were all absent that day, I guess.
But I thought they were “PRO-CHOICE” without limits?
/s
Thanks for posting the video. They have a lovely front garden. Good on them.
I traded in most of my lawn on my double lot for potatoes, tomatoes, peppers, beans, cucumbers, onions, asparagus, sugar beets, sweet corn, carrots, squash, melons, etc.
I find that they taste much better.
However, this writer simply comes across as a lazy liberal.
If we ever get rain again I’m going to try planting clover again.
Needs far less water than a lawn.
Attracts bees for the garden.
The drought and the threat of high water bills made us give up on the lawn which was really a scruffy patchwork of tree litter, tufts of grass and broadleaf items.
I felt like an idiot when I’d go water my sorry excuse for a lawn. Very difficult to maintain under cedar trees.
And by the way, the little bit of lawn I still have left I never water. First of all, the dang water is too expensive since the DNR’s policies drove our local water and sewage rates sky high, and second, why would I want to encourage it anyhow? :-)
Not to mention chiggers. I’m usually good at keeping up with grass mowing. One time years ago I got behind for some reason and the grass was pretty high. That was the only time I ever had a problem with chiggers.
You’re welcome. I love their front yard garden setup.
This is another neat setup. He’s got a channel of his own. Some of his stuff is wacky but the following link should show the genesis of his setup from the beginning:
https://www.youtube.com/user/growingyourgreens/videos?flow=grid&sort=da&view=0
“But don’t lawns turn CO2 into Oxygen? Seems like a good thing to me.”
_____________________________________
That benefit and others as well...
“CALIFORNIA DROUGHT: Grass may keep yards cooler”
“Experts laud lawns for keeping temps down, warning that rock and artificial turf could heat things up
(snip)Some researchers agree, saying the mass extraction of turf and the demise of shrubs and trees as Californians stop watering their landscapes will have a detrimental effect on the environment.
Dennis Pittenger, an environmental horticulturist for UC Cooperative Extension at UC Riverside, and colleague Donald Hodel contend that the turf removal trend began as a knee-jerk reaction to the drought, without consideration for grass’ capacity to cool, store carbon, filter pollution and control erosion and dust.
“There’s really been no public discussion of this. It’s being forced down people’s throats whether it makes sense or not,” Pittenger said. “There’s some real value to landscapes, and the water they use is justified to provide those benefits.”
http://www.pe.com/articles/water-779947-grass-percent.html
I have the same issue, but I get a whole city blocks’ worth of leaves on top of those from the city park. I have taken to putting up hurricane fence so that the bulk of them don’t accumulate in my yard anymore.
I was tired of dealing with disposal of 90+ bags of leaves that weren’t mine.
No. He never makes a point. Lots of logical fallacies in this piece. In Florida i don’t water my lawn from April through September because it rains almost every day.
The author is just another lefty who never got over having his feelings hurt as a child so his answer is to control every aspect of everyone else’s lives.
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