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Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

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Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What the cow returns trashes streams as it’s high in nitrates. It’s incredibly damaging. New Zealand is a great example of this and the huge expansion of our dairy industry has done huge harm.

Only when the cow is allowed to go in the stream. Have the cow go even a few meters away from the stream and it is great fertilizer for the grass the cow eats.

Runoff still exists. That fertilizer (and honestly most commercial fertilizers) will still enter the stream and other water via rain.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#242
post #240
post #25

Getting rid of our lawn and growing other stuff has been amazingly fulfilling. I have fresh produce most of the year, I've got honeybees and bumblebees and mason bees coming around. I have to do a lot less maintenance, and when I do it's more varied and interesting. Everything from fruit trees to berries, flowers to vegetables, herbs to herbal teas like chamomile. Strongly recommend looking at what will grow in your…

> Chunk out a four by four foot section and grow some sugar peas and tell me it wasn't a thousand times more rewarding than a lawn. If you have an HOA - there might be a bit of problem...

Yeah that's the big issue there - HOAs are oppressive organizations run by OCD types who want conformity at any cost. I'll never live under the thumb of an HOA is I can possibly avoid it.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're telling people that they "need" to change their subjective appreciation of what constitutes beauty and aesthetic pleasure? I mean this as sincere constructive criticism, you will not win support for sustainability with such a demand. People don't enjoy being told how they "need" to feel about something as personal as aesthetic experience. Focus on how sustainability is good for people and how it will improve t…

We tell serial killers with an appreciation for the grotesque to cut it out all the time.

The jokes write themselves, don't they?

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

those people who want a community of only people who think the same way as they do should move out far enough that they don't have neighbors.

Do you think it is unreasonable to want to surround oneself with like-minded individuals? I am not trying to imply the opposite isn't _also_ reasonable.

Yes. It is particularly unreasonable to want to surround yourself with individuals who think grass lawns, kept cut to a uniform length between 4" and 8", are a good idea, and a worthy goal for landscaping.

That's a 1946 ideal. In the same way that it was a 1946 ideal to build a residential-only neighborhood away from the big city, with racist covenants and redlines to keep the black people out. It was designed to evoke the manicured lawns of English and French castles, especially the "green carpet" at Versailles. Mount Vernon and Monticello and the White House featured grass lawns. And the mechanical lawnmower opened that aristocratic status symbol up to those without herds of grazing animals or scything slaves to keep it close-cropped. That, and lawn bowling and golf courses, made everyone crazy for grass lawns.

Abraham Levitt (of Levittown) and Frederick Law Olmstead then installed a whole complex of unreasonability into generations of Americans.

It is reasonable to surround yourself with people, each of whom arranges their affairs such that they need not have similar opinions on the disposition and upkeep of each other's properties. It is reasonable to mind your own business when someone else rips out their useless bermudagrass and replaces it with edible flowering herbs. It is very unreasonable to march up to their door to wave HOA covenants and city landscaping ordinances in their face in an effort to make them replant the grass. Yet that is what neighborhood busybodies do on a regular basis. We can't get rid of them, because they have the 1946 racists on their side, and they got there first, and they built entrenchments--legally, of course, as actual entrenchments would ruin the neighborhood aesthetic.

If you want a lawn, buy yourself a nice, square mile of property in the country, build a castle on it, and cut down everything that could hide approaching infantry. Rotate your herds around so that the grazing fodder is kept short. Then you can also have the formal gardens in the back, and maybe also a hedge maze. If you want a lawn in the suburbs, fine, but keep it on your own property and don't try to grow it over your neighbors' properties with some sick legal scheme.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#245
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh- so you're that neighbor. It's not just a change in your aesthetics that's needed. If you live in a community then it's prudent to get community buy-in. Especially if you have kids. Community reputation means a lot more than some people realize. Source: I've been on both sides of this one.

Ah so you're that neighbor that's concerned about what everybody else is doing rather than minding your own business. There's nothing wrong with a yard full of native plants. You should stop trying to keep up with the neighbors and start letting people live their lives without your input.

I don't disagree with the sentiment of your post, but I don't think that is the point the previous poster was making. It's naive to think other people won't make judgments about your choices. Even more so if you think that those judgments can't affect you. I assume you maintain decent personal hygiene/comb your hair/wear appropriate clothing? Why?

The reality is that the community around you can and _does_ produce effects material to your life, even if you aren't aware of them. Maybe you weren't invited to that BBQ? Maybe you then missed the opportunity to connect with someone in your field of work? Who knows...

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#246
post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In New England letting grasses flourish would also provide a home for ticks and Lyme disease. I try to be friendly to pollinators but unfriendly to ticks.

Get a couple chickens? I'm only partially joking, they do eat a ton of ticks.

And possums!

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#247
A fairly large chunk of the border areas around my lawn are left wild with trees and tall grasses and etc.

But otherwise I have kids and such a while they love to climb through the wild areas, they also love playing on the open lawn too.... I'm not ready to take that from them even if it was feasible.

If I were in the southwest where lawns were more or less optional then yeah, but not where I am now.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#248
post #18

I grew up in Siberia. When I came here as a kid in the early 90s I was dumbfounded by lawns. Why was everyone cutting all this normal grass all the time??

City ordinances require it. My local ordinances specify that it is to minimize health hazards adjacent to public property. Tall grass allows insect and rodent populations to grow, but they are carriers of diseases that can spread to humans.

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#249
post #25

Getting rid of our lawn and growing other stuff has been amazingly fulfilling. I have fresh produce most of the year, I've got honeybees and bumblebees and mason bees coming around. I have to do a lot less maintenance, and when I do it's more varied and interesting. Everything from fruit trees to berries, flowers to vegetables, herbs to herbal teas like chamomile. Strongly recommend looking at what will grow in your…

We get a lot of rabbits.. How do you keep them out of your produce?

Re: Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

#250
post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're going for a perfectly maintained look to wild plantings, then yeah, that's a a lot of work. We've replaced our lawn with wild savanna, and it's zero work. We just let it go. It looks totally wild, and I'm happy with that. (Getting it in place - removing the invasives, improving the soil, planting trees, and spreading native wildflower and grass seeds was a lot of work - but since its established its very li…

Oh- so you're that neighbor. It's not just a change in your aesthetics that's needed. If you live in a community then it's prudent to get community buy-in. Especially if you have kids. Community reputation means a lot more than some people realize. Source: I've been on both sides of this one.

Assuming you can, you should live around the type of community you want. You sound like you want to live in the HOA controlled landscaping suburb, which is great! OP clearly chose to live somewhere where they wouldn't have neighbors saying these sorts of things. They have put thought into a cool experiment that has apparently paid off for them.

Personally, I've never experienced a neighborhood with a strict HOA that I could stand to stick around in. There always seems to be a minority with too much time on their hands playing neighborhood CIA operative and acting like they've just received power for the first time in their lives. I know that might be a little harsh but there always seems to be some variant of this around.

I live in a condo now where those people still exist, but it is so much better. They have much less power and visibility.

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