Un-turfing yards, changing the landscape
March 30, 2020 9:48 AM   Subscribe

... for nature, lawns offer little. Their maintenance produces more greenhouse gases than they absorb, and they are biodiversity deserts that have contributed to vanishing insect populations. Residential lawns cover 2% of US land and require more irrigation than any agricultural crop grown in the country. Across California, more than half of household water is used outside of the house. ¶ If attitudes toward lawn care are shifted, however, these grassy green patches represent a gigantic opportunity. In 2005, a NASA satellite study found that American residential lawns take up 49,000 square miles (128,000 square km) -- nearly equal in size to the entire country of Greece. Designing an end to a toxic American obsession: The Lawn (Matthew Ponsford for CNN)

Un-turfing resources:
posted by filthy light thief (44 comments total) 51 users marked this as a favorite
 
I would love for rock gardens to proliferate and become commonplace. You can do some truly amazing landscaping this way and it helps cut back on the amount of pesticides and water usage.
posted by Fizz at 10:08 AM on March 30, 2020 [4 favorites]


We composted our front and back lawn and planted gardens w drip irrigation instead. Our yard is way prettier now, with a rock garden in front and shrubs and vines and perennials creating texture and color everywhere, and we have 5 blueberry bushes producing, and 2 raspberry bushes, and a fig tree and persimmon tree (in addition to raised beds for lots o veggies). And the birds and bees and butterflies are awesome.

Highly recommended.
posted by Lyme Drop at 10:11 AM on March 30, 2020 [12 favorites]


Thank you for this post. It is relevant to my interests. :-)

I HATE lawns. I really want to turn my mother's lawn into a beautiful pollinators' garden. Then my sister's.
posted by shoesietart at 10:21 AM on March 30, 2020


Thus far, I have managed to live in places where throwing down some grass seed and making sure to mow it back to 3-4" long 2-3 times a month during the seasons when it grows is sufficient to keep a decent carpet of grass around the house with no fertilizer, water other than what falls from the sky, or other maintenance. In return, I get a yard full of insects that attract a yard full of birds looking for a good meal.

It becomes an environmental issue when people take their lawn too damn seriously and listen to the marketing telling them they need to buy and spread bags of fertilizer, various poisons, and the like all over everything.
posted by wierdo at 10:24 AM on March 30, 2020 [6 favorites]


Such a lovely and inspiring post. I can't wait till the frost goes away (within days), and I can get out into the garden.
posted by mumimor at 10:26 AM on March 30, 2020


My lawn was uneven and patchy as hell when I bought this house. It's taken over three years, but the moss is staged a coup (I'm in PNW.) I still have to mow once a month in spring/summer, and probably will for a few more years until the moss makes even more headway...and in summer I just let it turn brown. But it's lovely plush green groundcover in the spring/fall/winter, and the bees are making a comeback! (The moss also seems to choke out the dandelions, so that's a plus.) In a few years I plan to put up some flower beds and populate those.
posted by Tailkinker to-Ennien at 10:27 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


We composted our front and back lawn and planted gardens w drip irrigation instead.

We're heading into the third year of a project to do something similar with our yard. We hired landscapers to kill off and mulch over the majority of our lawn, then we spent last year planting a bunch of herbs, berry bushes, and fruit trees, as well as some non-grass groundcover (clover and whatnot) to fill in the gaps and prevent grass from returning. This year, we're killing off the rest of the grass, with the long-term goal of replacing it with basically a rock garden and a covered outdoor hangout area.

It's a long process, but we're really looking forward to the results. We've already been able to harvest some of the herbs to use as seasoning, though it'll be a few years before we have any fruit production.
posted by tobascodagama at 10:34 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


First, you have to destroy HOAs.

The funniest thing about HOAs is that I see even die-hard libertarians hate on them, when they're the perfect example of the theoretical libertarian dream: a voluntary, private organization of property owners enforcing mutually-agreed upon community rules. That the myriad problems with HOAs this idealistic description papers over might hint at similar issues with the glorious free market utopia they claim to want seems lost on them.
posted by star gentle uterus at 10:46 AM on March 30, 2020 [31 favorites]


Fight the turf-industrial complex!

Unless you’re regularly using it for bocce ball etc, keeping turf is a moral failure.
posted by SaltySalticid at 10:51 AM on March 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


hey, you damn kids need to get off our lawns!

(someone had to say it - but aside from a space for kids to play, i never really got why we have lawns - they're a waste)
posted by pyramid termite at 10:52 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


I've owned homes for over 30 years, and I've never, ever, ever watered a lawn. That's what rain is for. Dry summer? Oh, well. Less mowing for me.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:58 AM on March 30, 2020 [9 favorites]


I don’t do anything to our small lawn besides sprinkle some slow growing drought-tolerant grass seed (“Eco-Lawn”) on bare spots every spring and mow it with an electric mower when it looks too shaggy. No pesticides, no fertilizer, no watering. I pull out anything that is too prickly, the rest I just ignore and mow. I love looking at yards that are all nice gardens, but that is way too much effort for me compared to my current lassez-faire yard.
posted by fimbulvetr at 11:08 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


My HOA maintains and improves our rock landscaping. It's not like HOAs can't do the right thing.
posted by asperity at 11:20 AM on March 30, 2020 [4 favorites]


That's what rain is for. Dry summer? Oh, well. Less mowing for me.

Mostly in agreement with this except for when it impacts your house. Maybe things have changed (and they probably have) but our old home in Texas was built on a concrete slab foundation and if the ground around it gets too dry, it'll shift and crack and that will lead to a bunch of nightmares as a home-owner.

Back in the late 90s when Dallas had serious drought, there were watering restrictions and so we had soaker hoses around the four sides of our house and we'd water at night to make sure this didn't happen. That's how dry the lawn would get, you could see the earth cracking.

I know next to nothing about how modern homes are built now, so maybe this isn't an issue, but letting your lawn become super dry (at that time) wasn't ideal.
posted by Fizz at 11:40 AM on March 30, 2020 [6 favorites]


I live in a drought-prone area and deliberately chose a home that was already xeriscaped. Well, turns out xeriscaping can take a lot of maintenance too. The dirt under all that rock must be extremely fertile. Anywhere a bit of dirt shows through under a cactus paddle, a million flowers and grasses have bloomed. I'm slowly going through and trying to identify each plant and weeding out the invasive ones. I'm not sure what I will do with the native ones though. Let them flourish and rewild the edges of my desert-themed landscaping? Weed them out now? Let the heat of summer take care of them?

Right now I'm going for "rewild" but it looks sloppy as heck so I would like to make it look more deliberate, so no one complains.
posted by tofu_crouton at 11:44 AM on March 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


I came to an awakening on lawns in the last HOA-house we lived in. I had just started keeping bees (which is a whole other story), and swore off any and all chemicals in my yard on principle. First thing I did was overseed the mostly-fescue lawn with white clover, which served two purposes: it spread into all the areas where the grass was thin and fixed nitrogen in the soil which eliminated the need for any sort of fertilizer. I've never seen it so green and thick.

Then we moved, because I was afraid that swarm season would call undue attention to my secretive beekeeping. We live on land that was once pasture now. All I do is cut it. There's about a bazillion different things living out there.
posted by jquinby at 11:50 AM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


By the way - you can buy white clover seed at any feed/seed store or co-op. As I recall, it's pretty inexpensive and you'd only need a pound or so of it to overseed the average yard. Bees love it, and it's a perennial to boot.
posted by jquinby at 11:53 AM on March 30, 2020 [7 favorites]


I like lawn. I like the way it looks, I like a place for my kids to play in and I actually like taking care of it. It shouldn't be the defacto standard for yards, especially in dry places, but there's nothing inherently bad about lawn, only the way it's installed (or installing it in a place it shouldn't be) and managed.

Like weirdo said, lawns are only an issue if you listen to the marketing from the chemical companies. if you seed with microclovers and you use a push mower and leave the clippings to decompose you vastly reduce fertilizer needs. You can use non-petrochemical fertilizers like Milorganite. Just blasting nitrogen at lawns makes them get out of balance and be unhealthy. Judicious choice of seed tailored to your climate lowers maintenance etc. soil testing lets you add what your lawn needs to keep it healthy. letting it go dormant in the summer because there's no rain is fine.

Just listening to marketing because you don't know there is an alternative makes for ecologically un-sound things, lawns included. lawns don't have to be a by-definition mono-culture ecological monstrosity.

Organic Lawn Care by Paul Tukey is a great starting place to have an (eventually) low-maintenance, synthetic chemical free yard.

I finally saw clover seed in the lawn area at home depot the other day so i'll take that as a sign that more people are looking to have a more well balanced yard which is a nice sign. popularizing the idea that you don't HAVE to have a lawn is great, and more people should get rid of their lawn, but painting all lawn as evil incarnate is inappropriate.
posted by Dr. Twist at 11:58 AM on March 30, 2020 [5 favorites]


A soft green place to play and run is great, but as others have said, clover works perfectly fine for that. So long as it doesn't have thistles/stickers, kids can play on it.

I rent, so my rental house yard was already entirely weed-colonized, and all I do is have mowers come twice a month to cut it level. The back yard has basically zero landscaping so I'm thinking of seeding native plants back there and seeing if they'll turn it into a little meadow along the fence, attract some bees and butterflies.
posted by emjaybee at 12:09 PM on March 30, 2020


The pollinator garden guides look very comprehensive. I have been planting natives in my yard for over 20 years but there is always more to learn. I just found out about the different nectar plant needs not just of bumblebees but of short, medium and long tongue bumble bees (mentioned in the guides) and that many of the recommended plants may only favor one type. Also, seed should be as local as possible because the genetics can vary enough to be less useful to local wildlife. Bloom time and emergence of pollinators is finely tuned for some rare species and is being disrupted by climate change. I guess we have to do the best we can with the information and resources available and adjust our plantings as we learn more. It's fascinating and vital. Thank you for this post.
posted by Botanizer at 12:24 PM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]


I've been letting daisies completely takeover my front lawn, which I know would horrify the previous homeowner and probably still horrifies some of my neighbors, but I think they're cheery and good for the bees and I enjoy doing much less mowing.
posted by TwoStride at 12:34 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


This is timely because I've been looking at the muddy strip in front of my house and thinking that if I spread some clover seeds on it it'll probably grow before the city comes around to lay down sod (they did construction last year and tore up all the grass at the time). The actual plan is to put down some lavender and creeping thyme but my seedlings are tiny right now and even when I plant them in a couple of months there'll still be a lot of bare dirt (or weeds) .
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:50 PM on March 30, 2020


A soft green place to play and run is great, but as others have said, clover works perfectly fine for that. So long as it doesn't have thistles/stickers, kids can play on it.

Yes and no.
Clover doesn't tend to hold up to foot traffic, especially in areas of repeated use, like near a play structure or a door.
I've had the best luck with clover and "eco lawn" mixes, which is basically native-ish grasses, yarrow and clover.

Also, if you've ever had to find the last baseball in a thick clover patch, you know that tall lawns have their downsides!

We've gone with a sort of hybrid system, where we have a patch of unfertilized, unwatered, mixed grass, kept cut fairly short (about 2-3 inches depending on rainfall) and then the rest of the yard is left to do its own thing, occasionally overseeded with clover or flower seeds.

Once the kids are old enough, I'll probably give up on the grass patch entirely and just let whatever is in the rest of the lawn take over.
posted by madajb at 12:50 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


Clover doesn't tend to hold up to foot traffic, especially in areas of repeated use, like near a play structure or a door.

Neither does St Augustine, which is a very common turfgrass.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:52 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


Been whittling away at my lawn since we moved into this house 5 years ago. Got rid of most of the lawn out front - now a native plant garden, big chunk out back is veggies. Will expand both this year and mix some white clover in with the moss, creeping charlie, violets and other things crowding out actual grass. Planting lots of pollinator friendly flowers and edibles and I only water flowers, veggies and the multiple trees we put in last year. We have neighbors who are far more into conventional lawns but I hope by making it both beautiful and clearly intentional I can inspire some behavioral changes.
posted by leslies at 1:07 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


It's taken over three years, but the moss is staged a coup (I'm in PNW.)

FWIW, Robin Wall Kimmerer assures me that moss is incapable of competing with vascular plants. It's not that moss is beating out the grass, it's just that it's thriving where grass can't.
posted by polecat at 1:07 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


It's not that moss is beating out the grass, it's just that it's thriving where grass can't

usually that means poorly drained soil, soil that's too acid, soil with too little calcium, or too much shade for the grass variety (or grass at all). all of which are fixable if you want grass, or plantable with something that enjoys those soil conditions.
posted by Dr. Twist at 1:13 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


I live in an area where very few people have fences, so doing unto your own yard means doing unto others. Nobody waters unless there are new seeds down (summers are very wet; when they aren't wet, you just let the grass go dormant). There are lots of little creeks about (and the Erie Canal!), so people also tend to restrain themselves from using pesticides.

It would be good to have less grass and more fruit trees/veggies in the back. My house is technically a farm house, so perhaps return it to its roots (pun intended)...
posted by thomas j wise at 1:16 PM on March 30, 2020


Getting rid of my lawn is my favorite hobby! I killed most of the grass in my front yard a couple years ago by planting over a dozen types of winter squash and turning it into a pumpkin patch (my husband was not pleased). Last year I officially dug up the dead grass, built 3 ten-foot-long tomato trellises, planted a bunch of different stuff, and I realized last week that you can see my front yard farm from Google satellite view! Last year the only things I bought at the farmers market were some leeks, cantaloupes, and bonus lettuce and corn. The rest of our produce came from our Minneapolis yard, and this year I’m hoping the apple and plum trees set fruit.

The CNN article linked in the post mentions how if one person in the block gets rid of their lawn, more will follow. That hasn’t been the case yet on my street, but so far all the comments have been positive or at least a Minnesotan “interesting.” Last year I dug up most of the rest of my grass and planted native meadow seed mixes and pollinator-friendly shrubs, but the first year you have to keep things cut low so the weeds don’t take over, so there wasn’t much to see. This year I’ll be able to let a bigger part of my prairie grow, so hopefully it will look pretty and colorful and inspire others.
posted by Maarika at 1:25 PM on March 30, 2020 [6 favorites]


Does anyone have pointers to how-to resources for newbies? I have about 5000sqft of ugly, weed-riddled lawn that I'd love to do something else with, but I also don't have a ton of time or a massive budget. Mowing the lawn, at least, is manageable. Weeding a huge garden seems like an impossible time sink and I don't want to involve pesticides.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 1:42 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


qxnypqbbbqxl, this document from Prairie Moon Nursery (where I buy my meadow seed mixes) has been my guide. Growing from seed is quite affordable, but it takes a lot of time and/or effort to prep the site.
posted by Maarika at 2:35 PM on March 30, 2020 [2 favorites]


By the way - you can buy white clover seed at any feed/seed store or co-op. As I recall, it's pretty inexpensive and you'd only need a pound or so of it to overseed the average yard.

Oh, man...The nastygram my HOA would send me when the clover bloomed would be epic.
posted by Thorzdad at 2:40 PM on March 30, 2020


What fimbulvetr said. I get out our electric mower and push it around every couple of weeks during the summer. My partner made the mistake of using sheep poop as an organic fertilizer. Some of the toughest, hardiest wide blade grass spouted out of it and is colonizing our yard now.
Is there an idiot's guide to easy, low maintenance, wildlife-friendly yards? Sign me up.
posted by diode at 3:04 PM on March 30, 2020


My HOA maintains and improves our rock landscaping.

Be careful. A lot of HOA bylaws require the board to do this. Every year they must improve the landscaping by purchasing bigger and bigger rocks. The HOA starts out with pea gravel. New homeowners have starry-eyed visions of the future. "Soon they will rake the pea gravel, and I will contemplate a zen rock garden," they think.

Wrong. The HOA moves on up to cobbles. Next year, it's cheap, basketball-sized waste rock from the mysterious quarry at the end of the road. Pretty soon there are dope boulders, which increases the curb appeal and adds some value. But it also attracts climbing hooligans and their unsightly trucks, which they carelessly park on the street.

Eventually that problem seems quaint, for soon the neighborhood is full of towering monadnocks. Year by year the shadows grow longer and the mountains grow taller. Every spring, basements are inundated by snowmelt from the icy peaks that surround them. Soon the neighborhood is buried underneath glacial till.

By this point the HOA has spent all their money on rocks and recovery is impossible. You will realize why people prefer lawns. You will tell others to beware, and they will ignore you. "What nice clouds, what a nice microclimate in this hot weather," they will say.

New neighborhoods are built on top of your mountains and new HOAs are established and more mountains grow and soon the entire earth begins to sink under the weight of infinite rock landscaping. Contractors will bring the moon in to crush the earth. Still it is not enough. We harvest the asteroid belt, Jovian satellites, the Oort cloud. Still the HOA hungers for bigger rocks. It is not enough; it is never enough. Scientists invent a way to convert sunlight into rock. The earth becomes encased in itself. Its orbit slows. We spiral into the sun. Too late, we have all learned our lesson. But finally the HOA board is satisfied.
posted by compartment at 3:54 PM on March 30, 2020 [29 favorites]


Most of our front yard is shaded out by a very healthy walnut tree. My life became much easier, and our random mud patches less plentiful, after I just covered the entire thing with wood chip mulch. I plant early bulbs like crocus and tulip under the wood chips. They establish nicely before the walnut leaves come in and block all the light. In a number of cases, the entire lifecycle of the aboveground plant is done before the shade comes back.

After a few more generations of chips break down, I may look into planting some shade tolerant shrubs and the like. In conclusion, make Chipdrop or the local equivalent your friend, and you'll never have to mow again.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 4:46 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


Walnuts also produce a chemical called juglone, which is toxic to a lot of plants. Keeps thing from growing too close to the trees and competing with them.
posted by fimbulvetr at 5:20 PM on March 30, 2020 [1 favorite]


qxnypqbbbqxl, in preparation for replanting, you can lay down cardboard and get a landscaping company to deliver woodchips, usually for free.

Also, don't do this to your rental. A previous landlord of mine lacked enthusiasm for our prairie restoration efforts.
posted by head full of air at 7:14 PM on March 30, 2020 [3 favorites]


We have gradually been de-lawning our house. I've documented the process a bit here.
posted by lollusc at 7:48 PM on March 30, 2020 [9 favorites]


Thank you for documenting this lollusc. It's really inspiring to see that it can be taken step-by-step.
posted by tofu_crouton at 5:59 AM on March 31, 2020


I am expanding our yard's vegetable beds by 1.5x this year (maybe more if I get around to the front yard), which is a lot of time digging up overgrown brick pavers and roots, relocating removed turd to bare patches in the yard, and preparing beds, but ultimately going to get me about 500 sqft of total planting space on our zone 5b garden. For the largest section, where I put my tomatoes, I'm just doing lasagna bed prep with all the cardboard boxes that have piled up from ordering more shit off Amazon during this past month. But overall the physicality of the task has been pretty satisfying so far. If COVID-19 really impacts California harvests and availability of fresh produce, we should be in good shape. And if it doesn't, I'm going to have a lot of veggies to give away to friends, neighbors, and our local homeless shelter this year.
posted by deludingmyself at 6:10 AM on March 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


Lollusc I love it! So envious.
posted by obfuscation at 6:19 AM on March 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


Oh preach! I love it! Long ago, when Flickr was first a thing, I started a group called "I Hate Lawns." Even back then there were some amazing examples of things other than lawns that made yards look gorgeous. Thank you Filthy Light Thief for posting this, and thanks to everyone chiming in to say you are de-lawning your lives. You all make me so happy! We must save the insects, you know, and this is a good start. Now, just don't cover your new non-lawns with herbacides and pesticides, and we might all have a chance of surving the next 100 years.
posted by WalkerWestridge at 8:27 AM on March 31, 2020 [1 favorite]


If COVID-19 really impacts California harvests and availability of fresh produce, we should be in good shape. And if it doesn't, I'm going to have a lot of veggies to give away to friends, neighbors, and our local homeless shelter this year.

I suspect you will be quite happy to have your vegetable garden sooner than that. Here in Florida, farmers are beginning to plow under tomatoes, green beans, and other fresh produce because the food banks are already at capacity (like, their warehouses and trucks are all full despite scrambling for more space and the surge of need caused by the recent mass layoffs) and the restaurants they were expecting to sell to aren't buying much if anything since they are all closed or doing a severely reduced takeout business. So far it hasn't been an issue of labor.

Seems like someone in the Department of Agriculture should be figuring out a way to get stuff canned that would normally have been sold fresh, but a lack of leadership from the feds has been the most enduring feature of the past few years...
posted by wierdo at 1:30 PM on March 31, 2020 [2 favorites]


Lollusc, great use of Aussie natives!
posted by chronic sublime at 4:36 AM on April 1, 2020 [1 favorite]


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