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It doesn’t sound like the suggestion was made on the basis of water usage. Full quote FTA: > “Get rid of your lawns,” she said. “Lawns are total biological deserts. It’s just grass with pesticides. The way it’s grown does not support a lot of biodiversity.”
It is not obvious to me why I'd want my front yard to be teeming with insects.
> “Get rid of your lawns,” she said. “Lawns are total biological deserts. It’s just grass with pesticides. The way it’s grown does not support a lot of biodiversity.” > Instead, plant native flowers that provide nectar and pollen for pollinators, Berenbaum said. I see this a lot recently where I live in Germany, but at the same time I see the opposite as well. Lawn replaced by gravel, often pitch black one. I don't m…
My wife and I feel like we are being looked down on by some of our neighbors because we only maw our lawn twice a year and don't use store bought fertilizer or any pesticides. Before our neighbors gave up on us they would tell us a lot about having to get rid of all stinging nettles (especially after getting children!) and the need for yearly scarifying the grass area (which we are actually trying to turn into a rough pasture) and cutting every bush down to a single twig every year so it wouldn't get out of control.
The good news is, if you talk to those people about your own rationale, they sometimes tend to soften their position or even change it completely and relax themselves a bit. Personally I can't wait the day I can sit outside during spring or summer and not be surrounded by the constant buzz of lawnmowers.
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Because your world depends on them.
Get back to me when you can actually show that my world depends on a variety of insects contained within a single square mile.
But if doing that was as pervasive as owning a lawn? You’d bet[1].
Why do lawns even factor into the equation when the reality is that industry, farms, etc. own the majority of all water usage? I live in a desert area and hate seeing lawns watered in the middle of the summer but its impact seems trivial. Agriculture is a major user of ground and surface water in the United States, accounting for approximately 80 percent of the Nation's consumptive water use and over 90 percent in ma…
When you get people to make small changes like this, they’re more likely to support big changes in polls and at the ballot box. That’s the lever by which one moves government and industry.
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> ... would be to cut out bovine meat. The somewhat ludicrous figure provided at that link - of 15,415 litres of water per kilogram of meat - is oft' cited by vegetarians and vegans, but doesn't bear scrutiny. CAFOs are undeniably bad for everyone (the land, the animals, and the consumers) and while they doubtless skew the stats, those grossly artificial environments are clearly not locking up 15 tonnes of water per…
> But the whole 'using water' claim is muddied. The water the animal drinks passes through it and into the ground. Yes, it's not like the water is destroyed. It may be diverted from directly flowing into a river, sure, and perhaps goes straight back to the atmosphere rather than into the sea via evaporation, exhalation, and transpiration... but it's not gone .
The article seems sloppy. It’s just grass with pesticides. I take care of about two acres of lawns across a few properties for a few decades. I’ve never put pesticides on the lawns. Herbicides, sure, sometimes lots of herbicides, but all very much plant specific. I suppose some places must use pesticides, but here in the middle of the US grass just sort of uses sun, water, nitrogen, and some other stuff and grows. Al…
> I’ve never put pesticides on the lawns. Herbicides, sure, sometimes lots of herbicides, but all very much plant specific. Herbicides—like insecticides, fungicides, and rodenticides—are a subset of pesticides. So it is impossible for you to never have put pesticides on the lawns if you have put herbicides on them.
Also, glyphosate (RoundUp) is debated as far as safety... and unfortunately for Monsanto, they got too cozy with the EPA and trying to ghostwrite positive scientific studies that no matter the scientific evidence one way or another, a jury found them responsible for causing cancer in civil trials. [2]
[1] http://www.npic.orst.edu/factsheets/triclogen.pdf [2] https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/05/30/727914874/sa...
> “Get rid of your lawns,” she said. “Lawns are total biological deserts. It’s just grass with pesticides. The way it’s grown does not support a lot of biodiversity.” > Instead, plant native flowers that provide nectar and pollen for pollinators, Berenbaum said. I see this a lot recently where I live in Germany, but at the same time I see the opposite as well. Lawn replaced by gravel, often pitch black one. I don't m…
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> I have to do a lot less maintenance, and when I do it's more varied and interesting. The irony is that people think a lawn is easier to maintain because it looks simpler
It is simpler in the sense that there is not really any thought required. I have to mow my small lawn every three weeks or so, true, but I know how to do that, because it's the same thing everybody does and you grow up watching your parents mow the lawn. It requires no judgement skills, and no gardening skills -- just run the mower over all the grass, and you're done. I would actually potentially be interested in hav…
Just mowing less isn't perhaps simpler by the definition of it but is way better for biodiversity. You could try it in just a small piece of your current lawn and see what happens. Mow once near the end of spring and again once 3 to 4 months later. Shouldn't take long before native flowering plants will pop up.