The Grass is no longer greener on the other side of the fence.
August 25, 2020 1:23 PM   Subscribe

Banning Lawns. "Lawns occupy approximately three times more space than corn and twice as much as cotton, and consume up to sixty percent of potable municipal water supplies in Western cities and up to thirty percent in Eastern cities." It's time to give up the great American Institution of the Front Lawn.
posted by storybored (101 comments total) 49 users marked this as a favorite
 
My friends who used to live on Cape Cod would complain, "I constantly have to sweep sand from my front porch!!1"
posted by Melismata at 1:27 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


how the hell am i supposed to tell kids to get off my lawn if the kids take the lawn away?
posted by pyramid termite at 1:36 PM on August 25, 2020 [24 favorites]


get off my jawn?
posted by lalochezia at 1:40 PM on August 25, 2020 [22 favorites]


I'd like to see some of the specific problems addressed more directly than just banning lawns outright or offering rebates for giving up a lawn:

A lawnmower generates more greenhouse gas emissions per hour than 11 cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency;

Lawnmowers and other lawn equipment are painfully overdue for emissions and noise regulation. With the right combination of regulation of gasoline-powered equipment and subsidy of electric equipment, virtually everyone would switch to electric mowers, trimmers, etc. I did so about a decade ago and it's been fantastic. No more two-cycle engine exhaust stink, no fussing with toxic, flammable chemicals, virtually no maintenance, and so quiet you can listen to music or a podcast at normal volume while you work.

nitrous oxide emitted by fertilizer has 300 times the warming potential of carbon dioxide, and lingers in the atmosphere for as long as 120 years. Swept into waterways, those fertilizers strip the water of oxygen, causing algal blooms and “dead zones” that kill freshwater and marine life.

Tax fertilizers, pesticides, weed killer, etc to reduce usage and fund wastewater cleanup.

Then, of course, there’s water use. Americans consume around 9 billion gallons of water a day on average on outdoor use—most of it watering their lawns. That’s more water than families use for showering and laundry combined.

Tax water usage progressively. The tax should only start to kick in after typical usage for cooking, showering, laundry, etc is accounted for, and part of the tax should be used to subsidize water for low income households.
posted by jedicus at 1:41 PM on August 25, 2020 [57 favorites]


conventional turfgrass is a non-native
monocrop that contributes to a loss of biodiversity and typically requires vast
amounts of water, pesticides, and gas-powered mowing.


the key word there is "Typically", none of those are required.
posted by Dr. Twist at 1:43 PM on August 25, 2020 [7 favorites]


Shhhh. You're giving the Home Owners Association palpitations...
posted by jim in austin at 1:45 PM on August 25, 2020 [12 favorites]


One of the nicer trends in my neck of the woods since Covid is the conversion of front lawns into landscaping and/or food gardens.

I suppose it's people stuck at home who need projects, but quite a few households have torn up their lawns and replaced them with trees, bushes and other plantings, often with a bioswale as well, which is really interesting.

I'm not sure that the food plantings will last, once people are back at work or start to trust the food supply chain again, but I imagine the landscaping will last for a while.
posted by madajb at 1:50 PM on August 25, 2020 [8 favorites]


Tax water usage progressively. The tax should only start to kick in after typical usage for cooking, showering, laundry, etc is accounted for, and part of the tax should be used to subsidize water for low income households.

My area of the arid West already has progressive water rates.
All it means is that upper income people with big lawns water them and poorer people will small yards don't.
posted by madajb at 1:53 PM on August 25, 2020 [22 favorites]


Our front yard is sedge grass, ground cover, and other short native perennials. I never water it, mow it, or fertilize it other than mulching up leaves once in the fall. We are lucky to have shade trees.

We can't really play catch or run around out there, but we can go to the park with all the time not spent maintaining a lawn.
posted by HumanComplex at 1:54 PM on August 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


My new house has lots of trees, a little moss and no lawn. As a person, who abhors mowing, It has been an absolute delight not to have one.

Related: moss is awesome
posted by thivaia at 1:54 PM on August 25, 2020 [20 favorites]


We've gotten rid of our front lawn and put in a bunch of native plants. We're also in the process of removing the grass from the area between the sidewalk and road and replacing it with various thymes, and removing the grass between the side of our lot and the road and replacing it with wildflowers. For the latter two we've been doing it a section at a time so it'll probably be a couple of years before it's all done unless we just decide to rent a tiller one spring and do it all at once.

We've kept grass in the backyard but we've mixed it with clover, which gets by with less water. We had to water the grass a fair bit when it was planted - lockdown meant it was done in May/June instead of April, but since it established it's just been getting rainwater. Yes it's yellowish in places but that's fine.

Our water comes from Lake Ontario and the lake's been pretty high for the last few years so I don't know if we're in a situation that we need to conserve water here. But even if we don't need to conserve so much, there still must be better uses for water than keeping grass green.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:55 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


We have a hefty sized front yard, but not lawn. Most of the front yard is taken up with trees and pine straw. It'd be a great space for growing food, if it weren't for having to clear out 20 or so trees...
posted by jzb at 1:56 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


I find the areas that have gotten rid of front lawns (like Phoenix and some areas of New Mexico) yet still are standard single-family zoned areas with a lawn-space in front of homes like vestigial limbs or something. It's so bizarre to see the same space, except useless and uninviting with dust, hard rocks, and the occasional spiky plant. Just stop requiring it and get rid of it! Think of something else to put there, or put homes close to the street for really small front yards, which says nothing about the size of the backyard or total lot.

regulation of gasoline-powered equipment and subsidy of electric equipment,
It's really too late for subsidy. Gas powered mowers have gotten a lot cheaper and electric ones now are the higher priced models, so that shift is already occurring. And higher priced is relative here, electric mowers aren't that much more expensive. I don't think they run quite long enough for residential lawn companies yet, but any homeowner is checking them out and making the best choice.
posted by The_Vegetables at 1:56 PM on August 25, 2020 [6 favorites]


A subject I find myself deeply interested in! I've collected a variety of related links:

Dr. May Berenbaum, professor of entomology says:
“Lawns are total biological deserts. It’s just grass with pesticides. The way it’s grown does not support a lot of biodiversity.”
Some options for people who are tired of mowing, watering, weeding, seeding and feeding from the National Wildlife Federation.

Also apropos will be the term Xeriscaping.

I'm curious to hear what people do with the $6,000 that California is paying out after reading a prior article that found:
Given that the costs to switch to a low water consumption option may be over $10,000, and watering the yard could only cost around $250 per year (at $.005 cents per gallon), it would take over 40 years for the investment to be repaid.
I'm particularly interested in diving into Banning Lawns to further my anti-lawn materials because some folks just don't agree that Lawns are a soul-crushing timesuck and most of us would be better off without them.
posted by noop at 2:01 PM on August 25, 2020 [14 favorites]


The trend is picking up steam, I see it in my neighborhood and even on nextdoor there is a lot of discussion and curiosity. I converted 1/3rd of my backyard to a native prairie mix this spring (not much to look at yet, it will fill in next year and mature with all the fancy flowers in year three).

I was planning on doing the backyard conversion regardless, but like many others I really got into gardening this year due to COVID and it turns out I enjoy it. My front yard will also be completely converted to something other than grass over the next few years as well, what exactly gets planted will depend on how much I like or dislike garden maintenance on my expanding gardens this next season.
posted by MillMan at 2:03 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


Huh. I don't ever water or fertilize my yard or use pesticides. It's not super lush or green, and I've got some weeds, but I think that's fairly standard for my neighborhood. I have an electric mower, which everyone considers a ridiculous extravagance, but I kind of love it. I have considered converting my front yard to native plants, mostly because I never, ever use the front yard, and I think native plants would be easier to maintain. But I think that some of the harms cited in the article have less to do with lawns than with particular expectations and practices surrounding lawns, which are not universal.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 2:03 PM on August 25, 2020 [16 favorites]


Seattle has a weird thing where it is understood your lawn should be brown during the summer.
We have quite a large back yard and the idea of doing anything but mowing it is completely foreign to me.

People who have bright green lawns are generally seen as some form of psycho. Even in incredibly affluent neighborhoods you’ll usually see brown, faded lawns during the drier months. Was really a shock to me when I moved here.
posted by lattiboy at 2:04 PM on August 25, 2020 [15 favorites]


I'd like to rip my yard out, but in the Plague Years I kinda feel like the money would be better shoved under my mattress so I can afford to escape the Republican nightmare if it comes to that.
posted by aramaic at 2:09 PM on August 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


My area of the arid West already has progressive water rates.
All it means is that upper income people with big lawns water them and poorer people will small yards don't.


If it's not having a substantial effect on behavior, then the rate isn't progressive enough.

It's really too late for subsidy. Gas powered mowers have gotten a lot cheaper and electric ones now are the higher priced models, so that shift is already occurring.

I don't follow. If electric models are higher priced, then they would seem ripe for subsidy.

I don't think they run quite long enough for residential lawn companies yet

That's changing, with commercial electric riding mowers available that can run for 7-8 hours and cut 20-30 acres on a charge.
posted by jedicus at 2:11 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


Los Angeles and 25 other southern California cities are paying their residents up to $6,000 to dig up their lawns and put in fake turf and woodchips

OMG I would take advantage of this so fast if it were a thing in FL. The city I live in actually went after a home owner with fines and legal action for daring to rip out his lawn and replace it with artificial turf 10 years ago. Now, it's becoming a trend to rip out lawns for FL friendly plants that need little to no water. The biggest issue is that it's extremely expensive in the short term but obviously you save in the long run. I stopped watering this year because of the tremendous guilt I feel for washing fertilizer down the sewer into Tampa Bay. When the weather cools off I'm going to come up with a plan to eliminate my front lawn once and for all.
posted by photoslob at 2:13 PM on August 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


Just like we have rules on indoor lighting fixtures, maybe we need to prohibit or restrict lawns in new housing stock? People may not necessarily want lawns, but they're paying for the land, and you can't exactly convert an existing lawn to a porch. The home is built around the idea of a lawn. If I could buy a home right now, I have the option of a single-family home with a vestigial lawn that I have to do *something* with; or a condo/townhouse that still has a lawn that someone else has to maintain.

Even a rule like "lawns only exist in your backyard" would be a step forward. People who want lawns can put them in, everyone else can make a gazebo/pool/workshop/dirt pile, and the HOAs and neighborhood busybodies won't be as offended.
posted by meowzilla at 2:15 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


When we moved into our house, the front yard was covered in English ivy. Last autumn we ripped it all out and mulched the whole area, and this spring planted wildflowers and vegetables. This also seems to be becoming increasingly popular in my neighborhood, even before COVID, which is great. Our back yard still has grass, which we make no effort to maintain beyond mowing it, and we use an unpowered push mower for that. For a small yard, it's great, and I'd definitely encourage people to consider trying it if they don't have a large lawn. It's good exercise and very effective; the only downside is it doesn't handle twigs very well and gets jammed on them fairly frequently, so you have to be ready to pause and clear it out a lot.

There's one house in our neighborhood that at first glance looks like it has a weirdo super-over-manicured lawn, but then when you get closer you realize it's actually all plastic artificial turf. It's absolutely hilarious; I've never seen that in a residential neighborhood before.
posted by biogeo at 2:19 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


"I find the areas that have gotten rid of front lawns (like Phoenix and some areas of New Mexico) yet still are standard single-family zoned areas with a lawn-space in front of homes like vestigial limbs or something"

I grew up in the Phx area, and moved to Tucson 12+ years ago, and the differences between yards in Phx and Tucson are vastly different. In Tucson proper, we have had a xeriscape ordinance since 1991. Even houses that could be grandfathered in under the code have mostly converted to the "desert look" landscape. They don't have the weird lawn space filled with gravel that I see a lot of say, Chandler, houses have. However, I would estimate there are 20X more houses with patches of grass in the greater Phx metropolitan area than in Tucson. Neighborhoods in Phx also are more likely to have large green-belt areas that maintain a lawn in a way that Tucson neighborhoods will just have non-landscaped washes.

One weird thing about talking to Phoenician friends, post move, is they always describe Tucson as "dirty", and I've always wondered if it's the adoption of xeriscaping that color their perception.
posted by lizjohn at 2:22 PM on August 25, 2020 [7 favorites]


I live across the road from a lake. Just the effect of the many households' septic systems causes problems. It used to be summer-only camps, then lots of camps like mine got winterized. There are few summer-only camps left. Now there are teardowns and big fancy houses, and they all have nice lawns, and really don't get that paving, fertilizer, and residents can ruin the lake, which would, in turn, wreck all of our property values.

My 'lawn' is scraggly, weedy, seldom mown. I have some nice wildflowers and birds. New residents look askance, people who've been here just smile and usually get what I'm doing, even if they mow frequently. You have to mow annually or volunteer trees eat your house.
posted by theora55 at 2:26 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


I don't follow. If electric models are higher priced, then they would seem ripe for subsidy.

I mean they have driven the price of gas powered mowers way below what they used to be, so the market is working without subsidy. And by relative price, I mean you can currently get a rechargeable electric mower big enough for a quarter acre lawn for $190. I see one with a cord for $130.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:28 PM on August 25, 2020


Any subsidy would be the equivalent of Tesla cars, ie: mostly for upper incomes to buy larger, fancier mowers than they need.
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:29 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


I always thought turf would be a great idea, but one challenge is that it gets HOT and reflects heat too. Multiple landscapers have warned that replacing grass with turf will make the lawn space less pleasant to use, and may increase our aircon costs.
posted by BlueBlueElectricBlue at 2:29 PM on August 25, 2020


Seattle has a weird thing where it is understood your lawn should be brown during the summer.

'Weird' my Csb foot.

If your domestic grasses survive with a reasonable amount of input, you don’t need to tear them out, you just need to enjoy the progression of the seasons. If your grasses don’t survive a season of benign neglect, you don’t need to rip them out, you can just replace their conveniently dead selves. I’ve done both.

I’m also grimly furious at a lot of SoCal - inflected xeriscapes that new householders in Seattle put in, often replacing well adapted regional deciduous gardens. Xeriscapes take enormous maintenance here because Seattle isn’t xeric, so after a few years they often get replaced with concrete berms and either pebbles or liriope. Next those houses are going to be a lot hotter than they would have been with leaf shade as designed, so air conditioning goes in. And they’re probably congratulating themselves on eco-modernity through all of it, because there’s a huge green washing scrim thrown over fashionable renovations. Grrrrr.

As jedicus said, we should regulate the damaging externalities, not attempt to replace one universalized Approved Ecotype with a different universalized Approved Ecotype.
posted by clew at 2:29 PM on August 25, 2020 [17 favorites]


Our back yard still has grass, which we make no effort to maintain beyond mowing it, and we use an unpowered push mower for that.

Same here. My grassy backyard is extremely small (a few hundred square feet, more garden than lawn - most of our back area is my wife's large flower collection) and a push mower has been perfect for it. No fumes, quiet, minimal maintenance and cheaper than a gas mower. Makes a cleaner cut that's better for the grass too.
posted by photo guy at 2:32 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


I'm a very recent homeowner, and my home came with a very small amount of yard. I got myself one of those little push reel mowers. It's so nice. I think if my yard were any larger it wouldn't be the right answer, but for my tiny yard it's great.

If you have a very small yard and want to make the switch from a gas powered mower but can't afford an electric, I can't speak highly enough about the extremely satisfying scissor snip snip snip noise that the reel mower makes. 10/10
posted by phunniemee at 2:34 PM on August 25, 2020 [7 favorites]


Finally my long held anti-lawn sentiment is vindicated! I always said y'all was wasting your time and money for nothing.
posted by some loser at 2:36 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


Wayyy more skill involved, but even quieter:

https://youtu.be/URJ31uqH07E
posted by clew at 2:37 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


A lawnmower generates more greenhouse gas emissions per hour than 11 cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency

Not sure if it is a function of where I live, too, but gas lawnmowers are terribly difficult to get rid of, due to the gasoline and oil. Goodwill will not take them, and the mower has to be drained before it can be trashed. We switched to an electric mower and it does about 1.5x lawns on one charge. It's much nicer to start and use. Recharging takes about 8-10 hours.

I switched to a low-pressure line irrigation system last year, to help make the front and back gardens manageable. I may try to feed that line under the sidewalk lining the front of the house, so that I can replace the street-facing strip of lawn with some raised garden beds filled with pollinators and other PNW goodies. It will make our street nicer, and having more places for bees to feed might help them out in a very small way against the ongoing encroachment of giant hornets.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 2:41 PM on August 25, 2020 [3 favorites]


My people! Maybe one of you can talk to my dad, who after decades of suburban homeownership is scandalized by my "the lawn gets water when it rains, anything more is a waste of resources" attitude. Next to go: golf courses.
posted by Flannery Culp at 2:43 PM on August 25, 2020 [9 favorites]


Countdown to "Liberals Want to Take Your Lawns!!!!"
posted by Liquidwolf at 2:45 PM on August 25, 2020 [17 favorites]


I use a corded mower and it's fine. I do cut through the power cord about every 5 - 6 years.
posted by theora55 at 2:46 PM on August 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


I grew up in the Phx area, and moved to Tucson 12+ years ago, and the differences between yards in Phx and Tucson are vastly different.

A quick Google maps drive around various areas of Tuscon didn't look that different to me, but it could be that I'm missing some subtlety or just poorly picking neighborhoods.

an example - E Bellvue St Tuscon AZ All those homes don't have lawns, but still have a really deep set space in front of the house, where a lawn should be.

Here's an example of half-size front yards:
South Shields England, UK
posted by The_Vegetables at 2:46 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


I grew up with an unpowered pushmower and boy howdy was I happy when we got a powered mower. Never again. Of course, I don't have a lawn, but if I did... I'd have an electric mower.

Overall it seems that the issue with lawns isn't the grass itself, which in all likelihood is better for the environment than concrete or rocks, but with the care of the grass, namely fertilizer and mowing. I hear all the time about how great it is to put lawns on top of buildings to reduce urban heat signatures. So, lawns are not de facto bad things.

On review, clew said it better.
posted by grumpybear69 at 2:47 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


I use a corded mower and it's fine. I do cut through the power cord about every 5 - 6 years.

How are you alive? Signed, puzzled
posted by Melismata at 2:47 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


The last time I looked at electric lawnmowers, the problem was not the cost, it was the deck height.

Many of them topped out at under 3 inches, presumably because they lacked the torque to cut anything taller.
That would have meant that I was basically scalping my lawn, since most of the ground coverings grow 4 inches or more.
My current gas mower cuts a bit over 4 inches, which leaves most things alive for as long as possible.

I see that that is changing now, with more powerful motors, so maybe it is time to consider investing in one again.
I am loathe to get rid of a perfectly working garden tool though.
posted by madajb at 2:59 PM on August 25, 2020


If it's not having a substantial effect on behavior, then the rate isn't progressive enough.

The top rate is a little over 3 times the lowest rate.
I agree it could be higher, but at some point, people are going to have green lawns no matter what it costs them.
posted by madajb at 3:02 PM on August 25, 2020


Technically you could set the top rate high enough to both subsidize the survival bracket and act as a quiet inheritance tax.
posted by clew at 3:03 PM on August 25, 2020


Anyone looking for outdoor power equipment should check out the (terribly named) Ego line. They're pretty much great, their mower was revelatory compared to my old electric, and just entirely on another planet compared to gas. For one thing, I can store it standing on end.
posted by aramaic at 3:06 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


Countdown to "Liberals Want to Take Your Lawns!!!!"

I came in to say more or less the same thing. If you thought white surburbia was enraged about having to wear a mask in Home Depot, wait until you tell them they can't have their precious front lawn status symbols. ("If we can't have lawns, where are we supposed to put our giant blow-up Santa Claus dolls? It's all part of the War on Christmas!")

Anyway, I would bet this is already being circulated. I know that "the socialists want to destroy golf" is circulating at least as an ironic meme amongst the leftist shitposters, so it's only a matter of time before your Trump-supporting relatives start forwarding it to you.
posted by Saxon Kane at 3:07 PM on August 25, 2020 [9 favorites]


How are you alive?

when I was a teenager my dad got a corded mower to replace the gas one that died.My weekly chore was to mow the 3/4 acre of grass we had in the back. This involved me having to drag hundreds of feet of extension cord around the yard. When I was too hot and sweaty and wanted get out of doing the rest of the lawn I'd just run over the cord and be done with it. Dad bought a self propelled gas mower later that summer
posted by Dr. Twist at 3:20 PM on August 25, 2020 [12 favorites]


1. In the Mountain West of the USA, potable water use is not the problem, total water use is.
2. In Colorado, 80% of water use is by agriculture. A significant percentage is for sugar beet farming. Repealing the idiotic sugar price support system would eliminate this water usage in its entirety.
3. In greater Denver, Denver Water has seen declining per capita water use over the last decade plus. At the margins people are shifting to more Xeriscaping, low-flow toilets, showers, and appliances.

Screw the lawn thieves. I am going to keep my 300 sqft lawn.
posted by davebarnes at 3:25 PM on August 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


I love my tiny lawn and have no plans to give it up. Having a spot of green that feels good on my feet is a joy. However, it's clearly just one more way I'm betraying my class, like admitting I've ever eaten at McDonalds or shopped at Walmart. I get a little worn out on it. I live in the shadows of Chevron, a several very toxic industrial sites, and a giant, uncovered pile of coal waiting to be shipped to China. My 10' x 10' lawn is not the problem with my environment. (and neither are my roses, before that starts up, as it always does in California.)

Mine is the only lawn in the neighborhood- the others are paved or tiled theirs.

Apparently too much pavement means rain water doesn't push the encroaching salt water away well enough each winter, so there's that.
posted by small_ruminant at 3:26 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


If you thought white surburbia was enraged about having to wear a mask in Home Depot, wait until you tell them they can't have their precious front lawn status symbols.

Exactly. It's really just a Leftist Deep State Soros-funded plot to eliminate your God given plot of grass in which to display your American Flags and Nativity Scenes.
posted by Liquidwolf at 4:03 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


I grew up in the middle of nowhere in north-central Connecticut, where my parents had decided that the right thing to do was to live on five acres of land and turn it all into neatly trimmed lawn. When I was 9 years old, ownership of lawn-mowing was given to me. We had a riding mower that for some reason everyone was cool with my 9-year-old self operating, but it still took the better part of a day to mow that monstrosity, every week. This continued until I left for college. I took away two things from that experience. 1. No one should own that much land unless they're feeding themselves with the food grown on it, and 2. Every blade of grass that has ever sprung forth from the soil needs to be hunted down and terminated with maximum prejudice.

Now I live in the city. We have a front yard, but it's a postage stamp, and every year I accidentally encroach on what little grass remains when it comes time to edge the gardens that border it on every side. We've been here for four years, and are down to about 40% of the amount of lawn we started with, and so far no one in the condo association has said anything. I reckon I can kill the last of it off in two years, and avoid any unpleasantness by offering up some of the vegetables from the garden we've planted in its stead to placate the neighbors. You can grow an unbelievable number of tomatoes and peppers in a hundred square feet of garden. I can't imagine why anyone would rather worship at the temple of water-intensive green monoculture.
posted by Mayor West at 4:36 PM on August 25, 2020 [3 favorites]


> Seattle has a weird thing where it is understood your lawn should be brown during the summer.

"Summer gold," please.
posted by The corpse in the library at 4:41 PM on August 25, 2020 [8 favorites]


@jedicus - You're looking for excuses and some sort of economic solution for every single item, requiring technology we don't have and financial outlays that most people and communities aren't ready for.

Meanwhile there's an obvious solution: ban lawns.

It requires no new technology, the cost is fairly minimal, and the long term benefits are massive.
posted by bshort at 4:56 PM on August 25, 2020 [3 favorites]


an example - E Bellvue St Tuscon AZ All those homes don't have lawns, but still have a really deep set space in front of the house, where a lawn should be.
Hi! So those houses look like they were probably built in the 60s and 70s based on the type of construction. Maybe the red brick is older. I am pretty sure that those houses used to have big big lawns at the time they were built. Newer infill neighborhoods tend to have smaller yards, but people are still going to want at least a car's length between them and the street, it seems.
posted by eckeric at 4:57 PM on August 25, 2020


Countdown to "Liberals Want to Take Your Lawns!!!!"

People in this very thread are discussing raising water rates enough to be an effective inheritance tax, so we won't even need a countdown.

I'm not sure how many of you have been to a city council meeting, especially a place where it doesn't rain enough to have a nice lawn without sprinklers, but you might as well be asking for the nationalization of all private business because that would be a much easier sell than getting people to give up their lawns. Any city council that went though with it would find themselves on the wrong side of the quickest recall elections in history.
posted by sideshow at 5:06 PM on August 25, 2020 [5 favorites]


Phoenician friends...always describe Tucson as "dirty"

Meanwhile I always describe Phoenix as "hell".
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:10 PM on August 25, 2020 [11 favorites]


We are going to start seeing the lawn equivalents of those trucks that burn coal to own the libs, aren't we? People in suburbs tearing up any semblance of anything that seems like it should be there and strategically putting in the most water-wasting stuff possible. And then they'll throw fits about how expensive and inefficient municipal water has become and make privatizing it a priority.
posted by treepour at 5:13 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


FIGHT the Turf-Industrial Complex!
posted by SaltySalticid at 5:16 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


A lawnmower generates more greenhouse gas emissions per hour than 11 cars, according to the Environmental Protection Agency

This is a bad misreading of the actual claim, which refers only to non-CO2 pollutants such as carbon monoxide, VOCs, and so on. These have health and air quality issues, and can be dealt with by better engines or catalytic converters (which is why lawnmowers are so bad and environmental regulations about smog so very good.)

But it's not "greenhouse gas" emissions.
posted by mark k at 5:28 PM on August 25, 2020 [7 favorites]


Lawns are a waste of water but I have the sneaking suspicion that agriculture and industrial uses consume much more water and that that is where conservation efforts should be focused.

But lawns are also a wasted opportunity as far as land is concerned. Plant a garden and include a few local plants to support local insect life. The garden could be ornamental, edible, or even both. Much nicer to look at than a boring patch of green, will still absorb rain-water and help out the storm sewer system, and you can still compete with your neighbours to prove who cares the most about their property.

One big downside of getting replacing my front lawn with a garden is that every dog seems to stop by and pee on (aka poison) the plants closest to the sidewalk. I wouldn't notice or care if it was still a patch of grass.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:34 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


Front lawns are of limited utility. Back yards are where it's at. Kids playing, barbecues, badminton, dogs running around, naps. The kind of stuff that the forgiving softness and coolness of lawns is well-suited to.
posted by grumpybear69 at 5:39 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


Gas lawn and garden engines are regulated, by the EPA and California. There were a couple rounds of emissions tightening around the turn of the century. If you have a gas weed eater made in the last 15 years, it has a catalytic converter.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 5:50 PM on August 25, 2020


At least for my case, planting a garden in our front yard has been a far greater increase in water usage than a lawn would have been, since we're in Pennsylvania and we wouldn't be watering a lawn much. I'm much more interested in being able to provide some good insect habitat and just a more pleasant, interesting environment overall. I'm really happy at the noticeable increase in insect biodiversity in my yard this year. The butterflies are always nice, of course, but I'm noticing more beetles and such as well. Purely subjective assessment but it does seem like an increase. Our original plan was to try to plant a bunch of native plants and native wildflowers this spring, but COVID put a stop to that since only the big home centers were open. Even so I was able to just get a big bag of generic wildflower seeds, under the theory that generic wildflowers was better than no wildflowers. Hopefully next year we'll be able to do the native plants we wanted to do this year, and get an even more productive insect habitat as a result.
posted by biogeo at 5:51 PM on August 25, 2020


At least for my case, planting a garden in our front yard has been a far greater increase in water usage than a lawn would have been, since we're in Pennsylvania and we wouldn't be watering a lawn much.

I'm no hydrologist, but by my advanced scientific reckoning, water being poured into the ground to keep the (useless) grass green = shitty use of water that should make us feel bad. But, water poured into the ground to grow juicy red tomatoes = less net harm than pouring that same water into the ground when it's traveled hundreds of miles from a place where water is scarce (AKA buying grocery store tomatoes fed by the Colorado River Aqueduct).

Plus, y'know, you get tomatoes out of the deal.
posted by Mayor West at 6:02 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


in Peoria we had converted almost our entire back yard (which was unusually deep, due to a weird utility variance) to more environmentally-friendly plantings. We had a small area of grass interplanted with clover -- maybe 8 feet by 10 feet -- that we didn't water or fertilize, and mowed with an (unpowered, 1950s-style) reel mower, right next to the patio, which allowed people to spread out from the patio to the grass at parties. (This also had bird-and-butterfly-friendly flowers underneath a crabapple tree, as well as a little stream we built to carry water away from the foundation and to a depressed area filled with swamp milkweed.) Then we had a 15x15 vegetable garden in raised beds, and then the biggest portion of the lawn -- probably 40 feet by 40 feet -- was a huge circle of native prairie grasses (seeds mostly gathered within 15 miles of the house, my husband did a lot of prairie restoration), ringed with a path of clover and soft weeds, and on the outside we had sunflowers, espaliered fruit trees along the privacy fence, grapevines along the chain link back fence, apple trees trained to meet over the gate, and lots of creeping charlie we were constantly beating back where the kids had a playhouse, that we were always battling back. There was a massively overgrown elderberry bush; we cut out the undergrowth and that made for a green tunnel/playhouse that was easily 10 degrees cooler than the rest of the yard. It was beautiful, and we hosted not just squirrels and chipmunks and rabbits, but possums and foxes, hawks and hummingbirds, butterflies and praying mantises. And a toad! A little toad in my vegetable garden! This required 10 minutes with the reel mower twice a month, and then a weekend of spring maintenance and a weekend of fall maintenance. It was on local garden tours and much-admired.

We tried to do a much more formal, much more showy-native-flower-focused version in the front yard, that looked much more "front-yard-ish" and landscape-y.

Code enforcement ticketed us for weeds.

"I don't know if we're in a situation that we need to conserve water here. But even if we don't need to conserve so much, there still must be better uses for water than keeping grass green."

Even if you don't need to conserve, water basically just runs off lawn grass because the roots are so shallow, and all goes into the storm sewers and waterways. Planting native plants helps trap water where it falls, which helps recharge the aquifers (even where fresh water is plentiful, aquifers are being depleted by human overuse) and helps prevent flooding by helping prevent big rainstorms from overwhelming the storm sewers.

"Overall it seems that the issue with lawns isn't the grass itself, which in all likelihood is better for the environment than concrete or rocks, but with the care of the grass, namely fertilizer and mowing. I hear all the time about how great it is to put lawns on top of buildings to reduce urban heat signatures. So, lawns are not de facto bad things."

Grass is very, very bad, see above. Grass is also really bad at supporting local animal communities, and it's a wasteland for pollinators. Save bees, plant natives. Also green roofs on top of buildings aren't generally lawn grass, they're a mix of local natives that thrive in hot, dry-ish, and windy conditions.

If you must have a lawn, at least interplant with clover (white Dutch clover, is the trade name of what you're after, in North America). With the front lawn we couldn't get rid of, we literally never watered (we were so resentful we had to have that lawn) or fertilized, and we always had the greenest lawn on the block, even in droughts. The clover leaves help shade the grass's roots, so they absorb more water from rain and don't get as hot and wilty in the sun. Plus clover is a nitrogen-fixer, so it was fertilizing the grass for me, and bees looooooooooove clover. (You just mow it with a regular mower when you feel like it, the clover comes back fine.) Cheapest place for clover seed is a farm-and-feed store or catalog; farmers use it for green mulch on fallow fields, so you can get gigantic sacks of seeds at commodity prices instead of retail prices.

If you're anti-lawn, a good place to apply local pressure is on religious organizations -- churches, temples, mosques -- that often have big grassy lawns they just mow because it's cheap and easy landscaping (because most landscaping companies charge more for not-lawns). Most mainline-to-liberal groups in the US have explicit commands to combat climate change now, and an easy way for them to do that is by restoring native plantings on their properties! Plus your town generally isn't going to ticket a church for growing native plants when they claim it's a religious mandate, and it helps normalize native plantings and educate local people. Often you can partner with local conservation organizations who will happily provide the manpower to convert and maintain a big chunk o' church lawn, because the biggest hurdle is usually that the religious body lacks the expertise to do it itself. Beyond that, a lot of states also have grants now for schools to add green roofs or native plantings, and some organizations will help with native plant "classrooms" at schools, and definitely you can get curriculum aligned to your state's standards to go with the native plant classrooms. A little parent or PTO interest can often get that process going.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:04 PM on August 25, 2020 [15 favorites]


people are still going to want at least a car's length between them and the street, it seems

Yeah, I don’t like the idea of the front of the house being right up on the street, so that passers-by can stare directly into your windows. The space doesn’t need to be turfgrass. But some amount of setback for privacy is reasonable. I mean, two of my friends live in a 1900s-era rowhouse in DC, and even they get a little patch of space between the street and their porch. It’s flowers and shrubs and things, not grass, but it’s there. I’m not sure why “ban lawns” turned into “ban any amount of setback from the street.”
posted by snowmentality at 6:05 PM on August 25, 2020 [4 favorites]


One problem with 'native' landscaping is that a lot of native plant communities had burnover events every few years — even with the large herbivores we no longer have keeping accumulation down.
posted by jamjam at 6:18 PM on August 25, 2020


Any city council that went though with it would find themselves on the wrong side of the quickest recall elections in history.

It would be an interesting fight to be sure.
The city closest to me has sort of been stealthily discouraging lawns for a while now.
Mandating a certain amount of open space per development forces builders to use smaller lot sizes if they want to build the same size house results in less lawn area.
Shrinking minimum lot sizes so people who don't want giant lawns are required to have them.
Offering incentives for low water use landscaping usually equals not planting grass.
A generous interpretation of what is and isn't a "nuisance" when it comes to lawn height which encourages people to plant taller grasses which are often native-ish.

On the other hand, my agricultural neighbors grow a significant portion of all of the grass seed used in the U.S. Grass seed is a huge economic driver, it is something like 2/3 of the farmland around here.
There would be serious lobbying against any effort to legislate lawns out of existence.
posted by madajb at 6:18 PM on August 25, 2020 [1 favorite]


"The kind of stuff that the forgiving softness and coolness of lawns is well-suited to."

Here's a company that does nothing but sell groundcovers you can walk on. Some are soft, some are pokey; some are yellowish, others are bluish; some get spangled all over with tiny white or purple flowers in the spring and look like fairies visited in the night; some smell DELICIOUS when stepped on. Creeping thyme is a ceaseless delight when your feet crush it, and creeping charlie (which is a horrible weed where I live, but nevertheless --) smells sort-of like licorice and fir tree.

I am happy to tell you that there are much softer and cooler alternatives to lawns that you can run around on and play soccer on and lie out on a picnic blanket on and so on. In fact, once you've had a leafy groundcover and compared it to a lawn grass groundcover, you'll realize that lawn grass is a sahara, because the blades don't respire nearly as much as tiny broadleaves do, so the grass part of your yard will feel hotter than the leafy groundcover part, even if they're both in the same amount of sun.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 6:19 PM on August 25, 2020 [14 favorites]


The last time I looked at electric lawnmowers, the problem was not the cost, it was the deck height.

madajb, I bought a Dewalt electric mower when the lawn guy stopped showing up (but still invoicing us) and the deck height is plenty high for Zoysia and St Augustine grass. Best of all, it uses the same batteries as my Dewalt drill and other battery powered tools.

But seriously, save your money and tear out the grass.
posted by photoslob at 6:46 PM on August 25, 2020


Thing 1. The Omnibus Project has a podcast episode about lawns which covers some interesting things.

Thing 2. In which episode, they mention the name of the Italian emigrant to our glorious American grad school programs, Cristina Milesi, who was probably the first person EVER to actually estimate the amount of lawn in America, in her 2005 paper (which was tricky, she had to work up an algorithm relating it to the amount of artificial lighting, a more measurable proxy)

Thing 3. I've been killing off my lawn for years, shading it off with trees, building raised beds, mulching vigorously. It's great. I mow what little is left a couple of times a year, and let it get shaggy for native critter habitat.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 7:33 PM on August 25, 2020


Code enforcement ticketed us for weeds.

Our last house was fully xeriscaped. We still got ticketed for "weeds". When local ordinances are written to be pro-lawn, it is hard to duck the enforcement.

who was probably the first person EVER to actually estimate the amount of lawn in America

Is that correct? I can remember reading anti-lawn diatribes, with percentages, well before that.
posted by Dip Flash at 7:45 PM on August 25, 2020


A friend told me he wanted to tear up his front lawn and replace it with bushes and trees for some privacy as local building codes prohibit front fences, but his wife put her foot down and insisted that it stay as grass. I said ‘you know bamboo is a type of grass, right?’, and he started looking thoughtful. Haven’t heard from him since. I’m sure it all worked out.
posted by um at 7:48 PM on August 25, 2020 [7 favorites]


My area of the arid West already has progressive water rates.
All it means is that upper income people with big lawns water them and poorer people will small yards don't.


No. It means poorer people (or in some cases people who don't care that much about lawns) don't water their yards as much or at all, and richer people (or in some cases people who aren't rich but really love their lawns) pay higher taxes. That means lower taxes for everyone else or additional spending on other priorities.

If you think they still aren't paying the true social cost of the water they use, then the tax should be higher. If you think water use should be banned, then you think the true social cost of water is infinite (or, if it's easier to think about, call it $1 billion a gallon). And it isn't, unless people are literally dying of dehydration.
posted by Mr.Know-it-some at 8:38 PM on August 25, 2020


I removed almost all the non-native species from my property 20 years ago, and planted local natives that don't require watering (apart from the first year or two to give them a good start). The handful of non-natives left are also very low water need.

The mown fire-buffer 'paddock' around the house that passes for my lawn gets no water at all, apart from a small patch next to the verandah where we sit by the fire at night and watch the heavens above.
posted by Pouteria at 8:53 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


Oh dear, does this mean that the folksy musical group from New Zealand known as The Front Lawn will need a name change?

(my fave songs.. Andy, Tomorrow Night)
posted by Metro Gnome at 11:12 PM on August 25, 2020


richer people (or in some cases people who aren't rich but really love their lawns) pay higher taxes. That means lower taxes for everyone else or additional spending on other priorities.

Or, following what's happened when this has been attempted, rich people get their lawns reclassified as a golf course or the like and pay almost nothing. They're the ones writing the rules, after all. Much as the IRS found, if you have enough money, it can be worth it to spend whatever it costs to work the refs until your refs take control again. Much cheaper to harass poor people with audits instead.
posted by CrystalDave at 11:24 PM on August 25, 2020 [2 favorites]


madajb, I bought a Dewalt electric mower when the lawn guy stopped showing up (but still invoicing us) and the deck height is plenty high for Zoysia and St Augustine grass.

3.4 inch isn't bad, definitely better than it used to be.
The Ego referenced above can do 4 inches.

But seriously, save your money and tear out the grass.

My ground cover is native, so I'm ok with it.
But it is happiest when you let it grow tallish which until recently was out of bounds for most electric mowers.
posted by madajb at 11:47 PM on August 25, 2020


I get it. Lawns are bad.

If we were to switch to, say, indigenous plants for ground cover in our small yard, we’d likely not spend any time there at all thanks to deer ticks. Ticks love tall plants from which they can easily snag their next blood meal.

We have spent a huge amount of time this summer in our yard. We feed birds and raise plants that attract pollinators. We use a push mower and eschew chemicals. Tick tubes are placed in key spots. We still picked a few off early in the season. Grass kept short seems to be the one thing that keeps them at bay. Putting away the mower would give the ticks carte blanche.
posted by kinnakeet at 4:23 AM on August 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


If you got rid of front lawns, my next door neighbor's (and his spouse) raison d'être would be gone. This is very American.
posted by DJZouke at 4:48 AM on August 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


I’m also grimly furious at a lot of SoCal - inflected xeriscapes that new householders in Seattle put in, often replacing well adapted regional deciduous gardens. Xeriscapes take enormous maintenance here because Seattle isn’t xeric, so after a few years they often get replaced with concrete berms and either pebbles or liriope. Next those houses are going to be a lot hotter than they would have been with leaf shade as designed, so air conditioning goes in. And they’re probably congratulating themselves on eco-modernity through all of it, because there’s a huge green washing scrim thrown over fashionable renovations. Grrrrr.

This is pretty key. Many environmental issues are truly global - CO2 emissions that I save here in England, that you save in Seattle, and that someone in LA saves all count exactly the same. That is very much not true for water.

Water issues and the appropriateness of lawns are local issues. Even here in the most densely populated part of England, my lawn will survive every summer without ever being watered. If I want to keep it green, it needs watering every few weeks at most and some summers not at all.

My friend outside of Cardiff has never watered her lawn and if she did, she would be doing so with abundant water, the production of which has a very small environmental impact.

In both cases, our lawns are mixes of native (the meaning of which is obviously locally specific) grasses and clover, allowed to grow high and mown only a few times a season. (My friend does it with a scythe and is heavily involved in meadow restoration projects, I am not so hardcore). Neither of them have ever been fertilised, treated with moss killers, or anything else. Lawns are basically a manicured version of our native plants.

Someone in Seattle vs someone in SoCal are facing totally different situations. As you point out, Xeriscaping is very appropriate... if you live in the xeri! Planting cactuses in Seattle and wondering why they're not doing well is hilarious.

In some places, short grass keeps disease vector insects and snakes away from humans.

Part of the problem, and I absolutely see it in this thread, is the treatment of lawns as an aesthetic / culture war issue rather than a locally specific habitat and water use issue. Large parts of the US are perfectly well suited for various types of lawn. Yes, there are issues with fertiliser run-off, with pesticide use, and with monoculture but those actually can be addressed pretty well without banning lawns.

For instance: honest question for people who are super against golf courses - have you reluctantly given up your beloved golf because of the ecological impact of courses (although again, natural courses in Scotland can get by without irrigation or other interventions)? Or have you always disliked golf, the people who play it, and what it stands for in our society and this happens to align naturally with that?

I'm no hydrologist, but by my advanced scientific reckoning, water being poured into the ground to keep the (useless) grass green = shitty use of water that should make us feel bad. But, water poured into the ground to grow juicy red tomatoes = less net harm than pouring that same water into the ground when it's traveled hundreds of miles from a place where water is scarce (AKA buying grocery store tomatoes fed by the Colorado River Aqueduct).

Sure, but that is also locally specific. Is it any more appropriate to grow a water hungry food crop in a dry area than a lawn? In both cases you are basically doing something for personal enjoyment (professionally grown tomatoes, even organic heritage varieties are vastly cheaper than doing it yourself and more water efficient). I would argue that we think about it differently because we think lawns are for people who are basically chumps.

We have plenty of extremely inappropriately located agriculture that could do with similar rationalisation and takes place on a vastly larger scale. That doesn't mean we shouldn't think about the impact of residential lawns until those are addressed, that's an easy out, but it is nonetheless true that it is madness to expend political capital on compelling certain behaviours in residential areas and simultaneously do nothing to the use of industrial agriculture.

@jedicus - You're looking for excuses and some sort of economic solution for every single item, requiring technology we don't have and financial outlays that most people and communities aren't ready for.

Meanwhile there's an obvious solution: ban lawns.

It requires no new technology, the cost is fairly minimal, and the long term benefits are massive.


Jedicus is proposing:
1) Improved regulation of lawnmowers - already being done and could easily adjust local bylaws to require electric equipment
2) Taxation / regulation of fertilisers - again, we know how to do that and in many places farms already have to do it, not hard to plant nitrogen hungry plants in the lowest part of your garden
3) Progressive water rates - again, these already exist, the rate design may need to be adjusted.

None of these are either technology we don't have nor are there substantial economic nor financial barriers to these things.

You then imply that in contrast to these supposedly unrealistic alternatives, we just ban lawns, as if that is something that "we" can do in a society where actually quite a lot of people seem to like them. Of course there may well be places in the dry American West where grass lawns simply aren't appropriate and only a completely disproportionate investment of resources keeps them artificially alive, probably it is right to use local code to remove or minimise the amount of lawn.

We also need to be careful about what will replace them. It seems to be taken for granted that removed lawns will be replaced with a mix of appropriate local plants but then you are actually making two arguments:
1) We should get rid of lawns
2) We should specifically replace them with a mix of plants appropriate to the local climate

Many removed lawns are actually replaced with artificial turf or with impervious paving which creates run-off, stormwater flooding issues and which is even worse as a habitat than the grass monoculture it replaced.
posted by atrazine at 5:51 AM on August 26, 2020 [12 favorites]


If we were to switch to, say, indigenous plants for ground cover in our small yard, we’d likely not spend any time there at all thanks to deer ticks. Ticks love tall plants from which they can easily snag their next blood meal.

Most parts of the US have native grasses that will survive without fertilization or extra water and make perfectly nice lawns. A good mix of grasses can get you the nice lush barefoot lawn during spring or whatever your rainy season is while still giving you a not-dead, if somewhat more crispy, lawn in the dry season.

The only time in most areas this is impossible is if you're in a brand new subdivision built on mined dirt that lacks biological material that naturally decomposes into nutrient-rich humus. Even then, after 5-10 years enough grass cuttings, leaf litter, and animal shit is absorbed into the soil to make additional fertilizer unnecessary as long as you don't require an unnaturally green lawn in the middle of the dry season.

The main things that people do that result in problematic lawns are insisting on an inappropriate species of grass for the climate and poor mowing habits. Don't cut the grass to the lowest setting your mower will go. Leave a few inches rather than giving it a buzz cut and the lawn will retain moisture better and shade weeds enough that they can't grow quickly. Cut it back relatively frequently, after it has grown about 2 inches, and you'll cut down whatever weeds are trying to pop up long before they can go to seed and become a problem. IME, that kind of length isn't enough to cause tick problems.

Reel mowers are fantastic, BTW. As others said, they are less damaging to the grass and are nice and quiet. Make sure to rake up any sticks beforehand and clean off all the cuttings that are stuck to it when you're done and give it a light spray of WD-40 or whatever and they remain very easy to push for years. They're only hard to use if you let them get rusty and full of gunk.

My point being that you needn't have waist high prairie grass like you might find on a fallow farm field to reduce both the ecological impact of your lawn and the money and time involved in maintaining it with various products from the hardware store. As long as you're willing to tolerate a dormant lawn in the hottest months, you can get away with nothing but a rake and a mower.
posted by wierdo at 6:24 AM on August 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


So my folks live in a condo complex where the condos are freestanding houses and the lawns, which all connect, are both pretty much useless and also very green. I'm sure they use chemicals and water them excessively. They are Bad Lawns.

Grumpybearbride's folks live in a rural area and have a huge swath of property, most of which is covered in an almost entirely un-maintained mix of grass and weeds which gets mowed maybe a couple of times per year. There are trees peppered throughout and bushes along the perimeter. There is no stormwater collection or sewage system, so all rain just goes into the ground. Lots of critters much on the grass and frolic there. That is a Good Lawn.

Our house (a rowhome) has no frontage - it abuts the sidewalk directly, which we don't mind but apparently some people in this thread do - and our small back patio is entirely concrete, with a drain that connects to the sewer line. Any and all precipitation that goes into our back yard is directed straight into the stormwater system. If we dug up all of that concrete, closed that drain and planted grass, the water would go into the ground. It would also reduce the heat signature of our patio. That would be a net positive. It would also be enormously expensive and is not happening.

So while I can get on-board with greatly reducing or eliminating the negative environmental impact related to the upkeep of and water-management issues related to predominantly ornamental street-facing front lawns, I cannot subscribe to "Ban All Lawns" because, as many people above have noted in detail, It Really Depends.

Eyebrows, I love that site with the various ground covers! If any when we ever move and there is a chance to do some environmentally-friendly landscaping, I will use that as a resource.
posted by grumpybear69 at 7:02 AM on August 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


have you reluctantly given up your beloved golf because of the ecological impact of courses (although again, natural courses in Scotland can get by without irrigation or other interventions)? Or have you always disliked golf, the people who play it, and what it stands for in our society and this happens to align naturally with that?

I'm anti-irrigation of enormous single-use tracts of land. If there's abundant local rain, great. If not and the greens turn brown, well, that's a natural consequence of living in a drier climate and the game can still be played without wasting huge amounts of water just to make the course prettier.
posted by Flannery Culp at 7:05 AM on August 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


We have an original lawn mixed with alternate grown cover that we seeded and are letting do its thing (creeping thyme and bungleweed in the back, clover in the front where it's quite sunny and goes brown at times, although not this year) and we don't water or fertilize our lawn (weed killers are outlawed, and I do dig dandelions out out of solidarity with my neighbours more than anything else since I like them.) We have an electric mower. I did put in a veggie garden this year thanks to being home and we're really enjoying it but it does take a lot of water. I'm right on the edge of a great lake so that's not a huge issue.

I am literally on the edge of the lake (well, across the street from the park and houses on the edge) and we have a lot of soil erosion across the road due in part to climate change (the prevailing winds shifted, so the clay bluffs get hammered with waves.) Our park's trees and scrubby bushes are pretty important in keeping as much bluff as possible, even though the erosion itself is a pretty natural process if accelerated.

That said, people here take their gardens and lawns very seriously (they are smallish but decidedly suburban-sized lots, detached homes for the most part). Although the city has stopped weeding and so the parks are gradually shifting over to a cycle of regular plants (though mowed) which seeds all our lawns, it really is an act of aggression on my street to let weeds grow.

Lawns are also how we/they express care for each other, and seeing a neighbour mow another neighbour's lawn is a reason to stop and ask if everyone's okay, and often...someone is in hospital, or having a baby, and the community both does the lawn care and shows up with food. At my old house, our mower broke and we were really busy and the city threatened to fine us. BUT a few years later when my baby died, my neighbour mowed and hand-weeded my lawn for a year, and I kept asking him not to, and he insisted that he wanted to.

It's easy to read these interactions negatively and I certainly didn't appreciate the city fine, but I have to tell you every time that neighbour crossed the street with his equipment, I did feel cared for. I am thinking of him reading this thread, and how both on that street and this one, people out doing their gardening and mowing make connections that are pretty rich.

So with that local context, because I think how one approaches lawns is going to be really geographic in nature, I think the most important change in my area is to stop fining people for "overgrown" lawns (which may have happened already) and foster a change in attitude, offer native plant seeds and workshops on native plants, and let things switch over naturally. This is going on already, especially as my older neighbours sell up and younger people move in.
posted by warriorqueen at 7:14 AM on August 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


I think it really depends on local climate. I have never watered, weeded, or sprayed our lawn in the 13 years we've owned this house (well, almost never ... I did have to water some "eco lawn" seed I put down after some construction left bare soil). Our yard is not "perfect lawn", it is "green plants I can mow". A big mix of clover, whatever grass was growing there, and all the other low-growing green stuff that colonised the yard. I run an electric lawnmower over it every week or so, less when it doesn't rain, and use a set of long-handled hand grass sheers to trim the edges.

Our gardens take so, so much more work, even the completely native planting one on the shady side of the house. Weeding, almost daily watering through the summer, tending, yearly re-planting of plants that don't survive the winter. I'm way to lazy to deal with that for an entire yard.

There are beautiful wildflower and native plant front yards in our neighbourhood, but the owners are always outside tending the yards. There are also some really awful weedy "native planting" front yards, and those are people who rarely take care of them. Their yards quickly become nests of noxious weeds and thorny plants.

Mowing occasionally is much more my speed.
posted by fimbulvetr at 7:16 AM on August 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


We also need to be careful about what will replace them. It seems to be taken for granted that removed lawns will be replaced with a mix of appropriate local plants but then you are actually making two arguments:
1) We should get rid of lawns
2) We should specifically replace them with a mix of plants appropriate to the local climate


#3: We should not mandate lawns. If people want to replace their lawn with native plants, fine. If they want to replace it with another building, also fine. New buildings should be built with short setbacks from the street. There are plenty of existing homes with large lawns. More do not need to be built.

Also why I'm against dramatic increases in progressive water rates, since you are basically giving people no choice in the matter. You must have a single family home with a lawn space in the front you are required to water.
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:40 AM on August 26, 2020


Regarding ticks - They don't seem to favor the red clover that was abundant this year or the vinca that covers 1/2 the front yard, but, yes, keeping grasses clipped is wise. But you don't need to fertilize that lawn or use weed killer. I use tick tubes, too. Some pof the thyme seeds took, and I have a nice patch of thyme, may try to add some chamomile and other herbs bordering the driveway.

How are you alive? Signed, puzzled, Melismata. Outdoor-mounted outlets are GFCI. I have cut 2 cords, not felt a thing other than the mower dying. Batteries have their own environmental issues, so I just deal with cord management and headaches for the mower and snow-thrower.

Several great comments about appropriate planting, thanks. I'm in Maine, water is pretty plentiful, so I water the new apple tree, veg. garden, and some other landscaping in dry weather.
posted by theora55 at 8:22 AM on August 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Seattle has a weird thing where it is understood your lawn should be brown during the summer.
This actually started in the early 90's when we were in a drought in Seattle and there was a campaign that convinced most of us that summer lawns should be brown. I like that it's stuck.
posted by Margalo Epps at 8:29 AM on August 26, 2020


This actually started in the early 90's when we were in a drought in Seattle and there was a campaign that convinced most of us that summer lawns should be brown.

Winter lawns in the south are brown and dormant November to March. It generally rains enough, even through most of Texas, where lawns can be green in summer, but if they go dormant in late August and bounce back in September through November, that's probably more climatically appropriate.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:59 AM on August 26, 2020


Next to go: golf courses.
Golf must die. Or I guess it could change. It could work more like foxhunting where you use the existing terrain and ignore fences and property law and everyone else on Earth but you and other golfers and you gallop all over the landscape with your clubs strapped to your steed. Or to your Heli-Segway.
posted by Don Pepino at 9:01 AM on August 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


I would watch that.
posted by Huffy Puffy at 9:16 AM on August 26, 2020 [3 favorites]


Our house sits on .7 acres and while we have a small woods and many gardens there is still a ton of lawn. With my mower takes me almost two hours. Slowly removing and replacing with natives and gardens but it’s a multi-year process. Gardens are a lot of work. I put two new ones in this spring and sod removal even with a sod cutter is back breaking labor. I grow native plants and have almost 70 species and they are tricky and require constant work to not let things get over grown with invasive species. It’s easy to say just put in natives and veggies gardens but you have to realize both of those things require a lot of work, money and in many cases just having a lawn is a lot less trouble. That being said it’s worth it but never minimize the amount of work things can be.
posted by misterpatrick at 10:21 AM on August 26, 2020 [4 favorites]


Don Pepino, something like this?
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 12:00 PM on August 26, 2020


There's a sort of unspoken corollary to all of the admonishments about what people typically have to do to maintain a lawn. Typically, they have to use weed killers and chemical fertilizers, typically they use gas mowers, etc.

But the unspoken alternative is "Or I guess you could just work like a goddam mule."

My spouse (Comrade Doll when she shows up here) was laid off in March and that is what she has done. She has pulled every weed by hand, dethatched every square foot of soil with an old fashioned thatching rake, seeded by hand, refilled holes in the lawn by hand, and watered during off hours, often with reclaimed water. It's become what she does as a full time job while she has been out of work.

We have the best looking lawn on the block, but I wouldn't recommend it if you're not a compulsively active person who suddenly has an extra fifty hours a week of free time.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 1:34 PM on August 26, 2020 [5 favorites]


I pursue a third option, which is to have kind of a shitty lawn. I realize that many not be possible if you have judgmental neighbors, an HOA, or what have you.
posted by ArbitraryAndCapricious at 1:52 PM on August 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


I don’t know what it says about my life, but getting rid of my grass is my favorite hobby. I’ve killed my grass in a variety of ways: smothered via cardboard + mulch (slow, easy, but expensive to buy the mulch), killed by growing a pumpkin patch on top of it (easy, cheap, delicious, but spotty grass killing end result), cut by hand via manual sod cutter (quick-ish, cheap, SO PHYSICALLY TAXING), and scraped off by machine during a patio project (quickest and easiest but $$$). My new hope is that my new native plant meadow areas will just gradually expand and take over the surrounding lawn, but this might be pure fantasy. But here’s part of my wildflower meadow and clover lawn - it’s been pretty spectacular to watch grow this summer.

My neighbors have watched me work on my yard for years, and I can’t say that my physical labor has inspired them to do the same. Government anti-lawn incentives would have to be really large to cover the cost of outsourcing the labor for my neighbors to sign on to this type of project.
posted by Maarika at 2:39 PM on August 26, 2020 [2 favorites]


Most parts of the US have native grasses that will survive without fertilization or extra water and make perfectly nice lawns.

This isn't really true west of the Mississippi, as a quick fly-through on Google Earth will attest. In southern CO, for instance, my grandpa painstakingly maintained a front lawn for about 40 years. It reverted to dirt within about a month of him moving into the nursing home. Still dirt a decade later, with maybe a couple chamisa bushes.

Here in DC, we ended up in a house with quite a bit of lawn. I have literally never watered it once.
posted by aspersioncast at 5:36 PM on August 26, 2020 [1 favorite]


Spent a lot of time early in the lockdown tending my yard. Finally gave up. Seattle here, so we all give up pretty early. Been putting all my efforts into my veggies. Got some snow peas, some snap peas. Tons of blueberries. Got some cucumbers that are going to make great pickles...
posted by Windopaene at 6:13 PM on August 26, 2020


+1 for clover.

I went to this seminar about low-input lawn care. Fresh water is plentiful here in MN but I just don't like working on it so being eco-friendlier by being lazy is a win-win. Clover grows very well with grass. It fixed nitrogen in the soil which fertilizes the grass and it's shade both slows evaporation (so you there is less need to water) and shades out weeds. The flowers look nice in the spring and their good for bees.
posted by VTX at 6:55 PM on August 26, 2020


Countdown hell. I'm leftist not liberal and i 100% want to take your lawn.

If you live in an area where rain isn't enough to water your lawn you shouldn't have one. Replace it with whatever will survive in the rainfall in your area. If that's gravel then gravel is what you get.

I live in San Antonio now, and used to live in Amarillo. Using even one liter of water to maintain a crop of grass here in our dessert climates needs to be completely forbidden.
posted by sotonohito at 7:21 AM on August 27, 2020 [5 favorites]


Things are changing so much these years I feel it's hard to know exactly what is right and what is wrong. Our family farm was surrounded by sand dunes on all sides when I was a child. The fields were often blown over with sand. One year there was a long draught, and our well dried out and we had to drive to the nearest village to get water in big milk jugs. Today it is a completely different situation. In our case it is hard to know what is because of land-management and what is because of climate change.
Earlier than I can remember my grandmother decided to sow grass in the farmyard. Here, farmyards are traditionally covered with gravel. I don't know why she did this, but it was a project she put years and years of effort into. It is quite pretty. She would gather manure and rake it out over the yard, and then water it when it was legal during summer. During winter, the whole yard would sometimes become a pond, often from snow melting and refreezing. Yes, we could skate there.
When I took over the management (not the ownership), 18 years ago, I stopped raking manure all over and I stopped watering, but I began sowing clover when there were sandy spots (often created by moles). This means it is more self-sustaining today. I don't mind native plants taking over some areas, and the "lawn" is cut max. 6 times a year. There is only a very thin layer of sandy soil over the original gravel, but it works just fine. The gated yard is a nice tick-free space for children to play and a lot of our family life, like barbecues, happens there rather than in the garden. And somehow, it handles excess water far better than before, when it was more pure lawn grass and more elegantly maintained. BTW, I've tried the thyme thing, but I can't make it work.
Back in the day, I also had a huge herb and flower border, because the deer rarely enter the farmyard, whereas they eat everything in the garden, but my uncle cut that down and Round-Upped it, and it has been really hard to re-establish. The poison is difficult to remove. But back then it was a low-effort natural garden. I'm working on re-establishing it one day at a time..
posted by mumimor at 12:34 PM on August 27, 2020 [1 favorite]


When I was a child, we were in drought for several years and it actually was illegal to water your lawn some years. It was illegal to water anything in the garden except by hand with a bucket - exceptions made for being elderly/disabled/other good reasons. At other times it was illegal to water during the day, or illegal to water with an automatic system, depending on how heavy the drought was.
posted by bashing rocks together at 7:59 PM on August 27, 2020


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