Get Rid of Your Lawn, It’s a waste of land and terrible for the environment
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Re: Get Rid of Your Lawn, It’s a waste of land and terrible for the environment
#2> Lawnmowers suck up gas and pollute the air: Every year, U.S. homeowners spill about 17 million gallons of gas while filling up mowers.
I have a Fiskars "reel mower" that doesn't use any gas or oil, though it's not getting much use now after recently converting most of the property to xeriscape. I like it and there's no way I would get a gas powered mower, especially not a "riding mower."
> American lawns have so, so much potential—and right now, it’s going to waste. It’s time to culturally stigmatize the classic overwatered, overfertilized, overmowed American lawn—a symbol of excess that’s persisted for far too long.
I agree but instead of criticizing lawns, I'd rather promote the beauty and functionality of a xeriscape yard. With a backyard food forest you can be harvesting hundreds of kilograms of food per year with minimal upkeep (beyond initial mulching and perennial planting). You can have stunning flower blooms from peaches, plums, apples, and other fruit trees. You can have fruit of all colors everywhere you look, just a rainbow of form and function. You can investigate and plant cold hardy things like Chicago Hardy Figs and other things you wouldn't dream were possible. Chances are, most figs available to you are dried, in the store. Imagine having a fresh one right off the tree, from your own yard picked less than 5 seconds ago.
Apart from the initial creation, based on personal experience, I think maintaining a xeriscaped backyard food forest takes less work, less time, and less money than maintaining a yard. For me the only demanding part was putting down down all the (free!) wood chips, but we're supposed to exercise anyway -- and this kind has inherent value.
Re: Get Rid of Your Lawn, It’s a waste of land and terrible for the environment
#3Golf courses too.
Re: Get Rid of Your Lawn, It’s a waste of land and terrible for the environment
#4What an awful article. Not a single mention of required setback laws at play in virtually every major city? We're required to keep 25 feet of setback. That means 25 feet of dead grass, water-guzzling lawn, or some mixture of other things.
Imagine how much more square footage could be added around the bay area if that 25 feet was changed to just 5 feet? It's amazing to me that such "progressive" cities such as in the bay area maintain such awful laws regarding required setbacks. Haven't these cities learned the more they try and control things the worse it gets?
Re: Get Rid of Your Lawn, It’s a waste of land and terrible for the environment
#5What an awful article. It completely ignores the ground truth of most suburban and urban environments -- in many places you can be heavily fined for not upkeeping a lawn. Even if we ignore that, the "numbers" don't prove themselves out for having anything but a lawn. I would never make back the time invested in growing anything agriculture related.
Not only that, I would limit my kid's (already limited) space in which they could "run free" by having high grasses growing. I too have two small kids, I don't water, feed, or otherwise treat my lawn other then cutting it and still spend more then an hour per week with less than half and acre. Now the author wants me to invest time or money in agriculture that will never pay back and take more time out of my life?
This is coming from someone who studied the advent of lawns both in an academic and professional setting.