Murder Your Lawn
How many of you watered your lawn this week? Come on, raise your hands, don’t be shy. Good.
Bearing in mind that I’m writing from southern California, here’s your next question. If the average annual rainfall in Santa Barbara is between 18 and 21 inches, and we only received 6 this year, and a chicken gets on a train in Miami heading north at 60 mph into a 6 mph headwind, how long will it take to water your lawn when the reservoirs go dry?
O.K. I’m ready to rant. That’s not usually my style. I try to gently convince people of my views without putting any guilt trips on them. I’d hate to make anyone feel uncomfortable. I’ve never been a hardcore activist about much of anything—more of a quiet “you have your opinion and I’ll have the right one” manifesto.
But a recent LA Times article (Public Enemy No. 1, July 5) about the astounding impact of our obsession with lawns has got me cursing out loud about the gardens I see in this town and around the nation.
Would someone PLEASE tell me why there are lawns in front of houses? The kids are in their rooms playing computer games, chatting on AIM, or downloading pirated videos, so don’t tell me it’s about a place for them to play. Lawn in the backyard? Maybe. Into nude sunbathing? Get a chaise lounge and place it on your permeably paved patio. Something for the kids and dog to cavort on? O.K., there’s nothing to completely take the place of a patch of turf, but how many thousand square feet do you really need?
Let me go on record as stating that a lawn that is not used for recreational purposes is an act of environmental arrogance. (Geez, I can sense someone out there feeling uncomfortable—better pull back. NO! I’m going to overcome the “everyone has to like me” urge.) I’m talking about arrogance in the form of a blatant or ignorant disregard for the multiple environmental impacts of growing turf, at least the way the vast majority of people approach it.
Arrogance is the use of toxic pesticides to maintain that perfect suburban carpet. I screamed at my radio this spring when those lovely folks from Scott’s Lawn Care Products unleashed their campaign about protecting our kids from “nasty bugs.” They don’t really define “nasty.” I’m not sure if it’s a Donald Trump “you’re fired!” kinda nasty or “Mature Audience” nasty, but we’d better make sure we indiscriminately kill everything, just to make sure.
Arrogance is having an irrigation system that hasn’t been adjusted for the season, checked out for leaks or had the heads fine-tuned to keep them from soaking the sidewalks.
Arrogance is having your gardener run their inefficient mower that spews 10 times more emissions per minute than a car. Then, since no one is enforcing the local ban on gas-powered blowers, the clippings are blown into the gutter and then on to the creeks. Since most folks don’t really care if the gardener complies with the rules (the faster they mow, hoe and blow the less you have to pay), we have the insult of all that dust and exhaust going airborne with the grating noise as the sound track.
Ya get the idea? Do you really have to have it? Imagine life without a lawn. Imagine a diverse, low water-using palette of texture and color that attracts birds and other fun critters.
Consider taking the pledge. Join a support group for the forlawn (use a pun, go to jail). Be the pioneer on your block. Murder your lawn and set yourself free! Up next - murder without herbicides!
Tags: environment, gardens, Landscaping, lawns
- Uncategorized
November 5th, 2007 at 8:31 pm
Great post, Billy! I officially take the pledge not to have a lawn.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:20 am
I live in the south on slightly less than 2 acres. I never water my lawn and only occassionally use pesticides to control the ants. I even mow my own grass. And believe it or not, I play ball with my kids in the yard almost every day. It may be a culture shock for a Californian, but my “big” yard has nothing to do with arrogance albeit a lot to do with pleasure.
November 7th, 2007 at 9:55 am
David: Thanks for the kudos. If you can do without the lawn, you’re doing a world of good.
Bobby: It’s hard for one post to nuance the individual situations of every reader. I write to the majority of lawn owners I have observed both in Southern California and in my travels.
If you can manage your lawn without using precious resources like water (see what’s going on right now between Alabama, Florida and Georgia as the drought worsens), reduce or eliminate the use of toxic substances (that would include chemical fertilizers) and mow by hand, there’s nothing harmful about what you’re doing. Lawns migrated into our aesthetic along with settlement patterns from European settlers. We just haven’t learned that it isn’t uniformly sustainable everywhere.
However, the majority of folks buy into the “Scott’s” suburban lawn imperative and do a lot of environmental harm. I still consider that environmental arrogance.
Keep doin’ what you’re doin’. I’m hoping it’s not a gas powered mower. Personally, I get a lot more pleasure looking at a diverse landscape of regionally adapted plants than a monoculture of green, but we’re all different. Hope this helps. BG
November 7th, 2007 at 11:02 am
I don’t know if Scotts’ suburban lawn imperative is really to blame. Besides, the advertisements with John Smoltz are great. Scotts and other such companies sell products in response to the market’s wants and needs. Many folks’ subdivisions have restrictions and directives regarding lawn maintenance. If Scott’s can help working folks adhere to such guidelines in a more efficient manner, I personally don’t see the problem.
I do use a gasoline powered riding lawn mower, but it is probably the smallest one on my street (if that counts for anything). Honestly, I would not sentence anyone to the Beaver Clever mower for more than a few hundred square feet. If those imprisoned at Gitmo were forced to mow the grass with one of those, the left would be calling it torture beyond water boarding. Unless you really love to cut grass acreage requires gasoline, or if you can afford it maybe some of those solar-powered robot mowers like they have a Disney.
And just so you know, the diversity of my landscape (and almost everyone else along the Gulf Coast) became more mono-off-green as a result of nature’s fury during the 2005 hurricane season. The number of trees that were toppled was staggering. The salt water damage to all things green unbelievable. And the fish kills almost unimaginable. You may be somewhat justified in your worrying about the effects of man-made fertilizers and pesticides, but Mother Nature can be a real bitch and do a lot of long-term damage in a short amount of time.
November 13th, 2007 at 5:21 am
I have received warnings from the local code enforcement officers because:
- The lawn was not mowed
- “Overgrowth” was within 150 feet of the house (trees do not count as overgrowth)
- The driveway was not blown to leaf-free perfection
Sweeping, raking, and mowing the property using only human-powered tools is very time consuming but can be done. I just have to run a set of lights outside so that I can do all the maintenance in the middle of the night (when I’m awake); at least I use CFLs for light.
November 13th, 2007 at 8:22 am
Bill: Well, you’ve pointed to another lawn-induced dilemma. Some communities set “good grooming” standards that fly in the face of sustainable principles. If you have a lawn and are required to keep it maintained to certain agreen upon standards you pretty much have to play by the unsustainable rules. Perhaps there are others in the community who see that aesthetic standards sometimes fly in the face of good environmental practices and could start a (here it comes - not intentionally) grass-roots effort to gradually modify the standards.
Perhaps the biggest environmental impact is the use of gas-powered blowers. Aside from very inefficient and highly polluting two-cycle engines, the dust and dried dung they kick into the air is just plain unhealthy. Perhaps your local Air Pollution Control District can bring some rational discussion to the table.
Here in Santa Barbara we have a ban on gas blowers (though not very well enforced - that’s always the kicker) so most of the gardeners hose down driveways in our drought-prone Southern California climate.
I wish I had a simple answer but everything we touch seems to be connected to another multi-headed monster.
November 13th, 2007 at 11:08 am
With a bit of edible landscaping, you can still have something green in front of the house, and never have to mow it. Cranberries make a great groundcover and no, they don’t have to be grown in a bog.
November 18th, 2007 at 12:38 am
[...] at 12:38 am · Filed under Suburbanism, Urban Design An abridged version of an interesting post from the Garden Wise Guy blog on [...]
December 8th, 2007 at 10:39 am
Grass is great the more the better. Grass absorbs co2 a greenhouse gas. Grass absorbs light and heat allowing the surface to be cool. Pavement ans cement lead to compound flash flooding because the water has nowhere to go. The key is to use turf that is drought tolerant and doesn’t need a lot of attention.
December 8th, 2007 at 11:08 am
Enviro one: Thanks for your comments. Though grass does absorb CO2, it doesn’t lock it up for very long, since the root system is limted, short lived compared to trees, and the cut grass decomposes and releases the carbon again. Add in the fact that most lawn care uses chemical fertilizers, fossil fuels for mowing and transporting supplies and I don’t know that you could offset those impacts with the small amount of carbon absorbed.
Also, it’s not as if there are only two choices - lawn or concrete. Any permeable paving solves that dilemma and planting a non-lawn landscape of native plants or others that don’t require much fertilizer or water is a good solution (a lot more interesting too).
I’m still convinced that unless your lawn is the only “floor” for recreational activities, lawns are too high an environmental cost.