10 ms·

Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’

393 points by mayiplease 7y ago

3fe9a03ccd14ca5 7y ago
I’d love to see my “progressive” city end setback laws, which require me to keep 15 ft of either grass or dirt in front of my house.
- happytoexplain 7y ago
  Are you saying such laws are progressive or not progressive?
  - labster 7y ago
    They’re saying people don’t follow their political labels when it comes to building codes. Progressive environmentalists might advocate grass over density. There was a recent article about conservatives freaking out about a proposal to repeal a regulation prohibiting duplexes. It got framed as an attack on single family homes and our lifestyle. But, we’re all stuck with this until we unlock Intellectual Integrity off the SMAC tech tree.
- jws 7y ago
  Setback laws are usually about not building a structure too close to a lot line. On the front, a minimal setback keeps the street from becoming a canyon. Larger setbacks are more of a look and feel thing for a neighborhood. Front setbacks may also be governed by adjacent houses to encourage all the fronts to line up. It’s tidier that way.
  - 0xB31B1B 7y ago
    setbacks are about reducing FAR so people need to buy a lot more land than they need to build a home to live in. It helps keep property values high and land as a scarce resource.
    - lysium 7y ago
      That is a consequence, not the intention. I don’t see how you can avoid street canyons otherwise.
      - PeterSmit 7y ago
        What is wrong with that?
      - Thlom 7y ago
        Don't you have to seek municipality approval for structures? At least where I'm from we have to seek approval from the municipality to build anything bigger than a certain size on our own land. Anything that is close to a public street or neighbor also have to be approved.
        zip1234 7y ago
        When you say seek approval, in the US at least there is 'by right' zoning. Meaning that anything can be built by right as long as it follows certain rules. The approval is generally not an approval so much as a check to make sure it is following the rules. Anything not in the rules usually has to go through a special approval of a planning commission and neighbors may need to ok it.
      - zip1234 7y ago
        Is a street canyon a bad thing? I don't think so. Perhaps if the street is only for cars, but many of the most treasured streets are 'street canyons'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shambles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shambles for an example
  - mamon 7y ago
    Old towns in southern Europe (Spain, Italy) were deliberately built so that streets become "canyons" - they are very narrow, and buildings are tightly packed. It helps make 100+ degrees temperatures in summer bearable.
- Polylactic_acid 7y ago
  Is it really limited to just grass/dirt or is it simply that you can not place buildings on that space? Could you plant trees there?
- pkaye 7y ago
  Some bay area cities encourage replacing with native or drought tolerant plants. They give a small rebate if you convert from grass to any of the above. They also offer free courses to learn about this topic.
- smt88 7y ago
  Which city is this? I've only ever heard of rules like this coming from HOAs. Are you claiming that you're not allowed to plant trees or a native ground cover?
  - bandrami 7y ago
    Strongtowns did a rundown on it [1]. It's often a feature of midsize town zoning laws, not just HOA busybodyness. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/28/grassy-lawns-exist-to-prove-youre-not-a-peasant https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/28/grassy-lawns-e...
    - petecox 7y ago
      Here in Australia, the local council expects you to keep the nature strip, or verge, between the road and the pavement looking presentable but anything behind the front fence is your own creation. And so the 'front lawn' is my vegie patch. Potatoes are dead easy to grow from eyes and pumpkins (winter squash) self-germinate from compost. This summer I'm experimenting with Jerusalem artichokes, which sprouted from 70¢ worth of store-bought tubers. All you need is water and a spade - and no lawn police, I guess.
Waterluvian 7y ago
Are scientists often in a position to provide advice with holistic value? I'm usually quite skeptical of advice like this when it comes from someone who is laser focused on a specific domain.
- SubiculumCode 7y ago
  lawn care invites exorbitant water consumption, pesticide use, creates smog from lawn mowing, and induces a mono-culture ecosystem. I for one would like drought tolerant (in CA anyway) native plant species to fill our lawn spaces...especially the ones that get rarely used.
  - Waterluvian 7y ago
    Yeah. I'm not debating the specific case here. I generally think this is good advice. My back yard is 100 foot maples and artificial grass because normal ground cover will not grow under that canopy. But broadly speaking, I'm skeptical of taking advice from a domain expert rather than some form of generalist who synthesizes understanding across the board. I want to know what the civil engineer has to say. I want to hear from the urban planner, the child psychologist, the sports medicine expert, etc. My yard is used in a lot of ways.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      Well, you say you're skeptical of taking advice from a domain expert, but then you list a lot of, apparently, domain experts you want to hear from. I agree with the latter sentence - I want to hear from a lot of people with narrow expertise and different perspectives on anything important, but I probably don't care what a generalist thinks, because why should they be better at synthesizing the experts than me?
      - Waterluvian 7y ago
        If you want to take on the cognitive load of being the generalist for everything, all the power to you! For me I pick and choose. I pretty much leave my car and rooftop to the experts but I dabble in electrical, plumming, carpentry, landscaping, etc. Etc.
jws 7y ago
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. Also the sentence attributing Illinois prairie loss to global warming is hogwash. Global warming didn’t turn the prairies into giant farms. So, grumpy stuff said, I do keep lots of varied native plants too. Grass is just for the area that want to survive occasional foot traffic and be open to show something else.
- colechristensen 7y ago
  My family never put anything on the, eh, 3 acres of grass I regularly had to mow as a kid. It wasn't perfect, nobody cared. There were dandelions, there was some clover. If you can bear to tolerate the fact that your lawn isn't going to look like a putting green, you can do literally nothing but cut it and perhaps water it if your climate requires and be done with it. If there are plants you don't want in your lawn, take them out with your hands or a hoe. If you can't be bothered, then be happy with what you have. If your lawn really can't grow without intense chemical assistance, then maybe don't have a lawn.
  - ravenstine 7y ago
    What's sad is dandelions are neither ugly nor bad for your lawn. They feed bees and the tap roots draw nutrients from deep in the soil, which also benefits the grass.
    - freepor 7y ago
      As the parent of a toddler I love dandelions because he loves to pick them and blow their seeds into the air.
      - core-questions 7y ago
perl4ever 7y ago
Some people live where the lawn will take over given half a chance. Not everyone lives in Phoenix or whatever. Nor is pesticide use required to have a lawn.
mkoryak 7y ago
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??
- deckar01 7y ago
  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.
  - Accujack 7y ago
    > they are carriers of diseases that can spread to humans. However, this has nothing to do with why the city's ordinances require a properly maintained lawn.
    - deckar01 7y ago
      Title 24 Chapter 1 Section 101: Nuisances affecting health. Subsection B6 states that "The following are hereby declared to be health nuisances affecting public health ... rank growths of vegetation upon private property [which] ... harbors rodents or vermin". This is one of the first 3 reasons listed. https://library.municode.com/ok/tulsa/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TUCOOR_TIT24NU_CH1NUCL_S101NUAFHE https://library.municode.com/ok/tulsa/codes/code_of_ordinanc...
Pfhreak 7y ago
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 area and start replacing your lawn. 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.
- larnmar 7y ago
  Since having kids I’ve been realising that a lot of the things in life that other people do, that have never made sense to me, suddenly make a whole lot more sense in the context of kids. With a kid, I’m suddenly super grateful for my little lawn.
  - Pfhreak 7y ago
    Huh, interesting. I have a kid and I'm grateful we gave up our lawn. She plants in the spring, harvests, cooks, and preserves with us. She's excited to make pickles, jam, squash, pumpkins, corn, etc from things she's grown and tended to. She even got to pick out some of the flowers and make her own little square. Watching her step out to grab some blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries is one of the best feelings in the world. We read seed catalogs together in the winters and plan what we could grow (Ooh, what if we grew purple cauliflower? Or rhubarb for pie!)
    - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
      Where does she play ball games, set up a paddling pool, and wrestle? I'd agree if you have a house big enough to have a playroom, and have open space close by, it's probably easy enough. Our lawn is kinda a tiny, tiny, wildflower meadow, ie it's not cut much. The bees love the Clover.
      - adrianN 7y ago
shartshooter 7y ago
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 many Western States.[0] Households only make up a small percentage of the total water consumption worldwide[1]. Recommendations to cut foods that require an inordinate amount of water per calorie are probably better served(if you care about freshwater consumption) and it appears the simplest way to reduce this would be to cut out bovine meat.[2] [0] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/ir... [1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-in-water-out/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-in-water-ou... [2] - https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/ https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-...
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  What do you think the largest crop in the US is? Hint: Turf grass. Figure all the land used to grow lawns plus all the land used to grow grass seed plus all the land to grow sod... It's absolutely staggering amount of land, whole integer multiples of the land we use for corn or any other irrigated crop.
  - sixstringtheory 7y ago
    I couldn’t quite believe this so I looked it up: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d Link to the actual paper, from 2005, is in the article.
    - sokoloff 7y ago
      Paper cited suggests 164K km^2 (about 40 million acres) of total turfgrass. USDA estimate for corn crop in the US is almost 92 million acres. Note that the paper claims that turfgrass is 3x larger than the largest irrigated crop, not that it's larger than all crops. Only about 20% of US corn is irrigated (~80% is rain watered only). [1] - https://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVI/8-W27/milesi.pdf https://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVI/8-W27/milesi.pdf [2] - https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-largest-crop-2019 https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-lar...
peter_retief 7y ago
We have replaced large parts of our lawn with Carpobrotus edulis or sour fig which is drought resistant. It's great for insect life as well. Planting indigenous replacement lawns helps indigenous life
WalterBright 7y ago
The best "lawn" I ever had was where I just let the local flora have its way. Best looking lawn in the neighborhood. I mowed it once a year. I keep trying it in Seattle, but the invasive blackberry bushes and scotch broom keep throttling the native stuff.
- 01100011 7y ago
  Lots of native yards need protection from invasives. Preemergent herbicides are a great help. Initial clearing with something like Roundup is also not always discouraged because it keeps the soil from being disturbed and resowing invasive seeds. Having problematic invasives is actually more reason to have a native yard where you can take responsibility for supporting native wildlife.
bandrami 7y ago
Native-only plants people are somewhere between DIY garum makers and homebrewers in terms of the fierceness of their ideological warfare online, but in person they are a fun group to socialize with.
winrid 7y ago
When I was in China there were certain places where they made jokes about how Americans are so rich they use their lawns just to make their home look pretty (they were growing stuff).
- bluGill 7y ago
  That is in fact the purpose of lawns: to show you are rich enough to not surround your house with food gardens. The poor had to plant food anyplace they had legal rights to soil, the rich can plant non-food to show off.
  - logfromblammo 7y ago
    The original purpose of lawns was to provide sight lines for castle defense. The forest was cut down, and native ground cover dominated the cleared regions. It was kept short by grazing animals. It was our old pal Louis and his Versailles palace that introduced the close-cropped grass lawn. It was kept short by grazers and gardeners. The poor used their near-house property to grow vegetables and culinary herbs. The rich used it to feed cows or sheep. It wasn't until the mechanical lawnmower that the grass lawns became entirely useless. Grass is ruminant food, and ruminants are meat. But we don't keep herds of sheep and cows in the grass-friendly suburbs now, because we don't like stepping in or smelling ruminant poop. And all the pesticides and herbicides would be dangerous for the animals and anyone who ate them.
    - danans 7y ago
      > It wasn't until the mechanical lawnmower that the grass lawns became entirely useless. Grass is ruminant food, and ruminants are meat. But ruminants were never a part of the American suburban lawn the way they were in old world villages and wealthy estates. American lawns are almost completely post lawn-mower. The American suburban lawn is an explicitly visual copy by the post-war working class of the luxuries previously available only to the upper classes of both American and European societies, minus the undesirable aspects like manure. The new resistance to lawns is occurring in places where the post-war fantasy of pseudo aristocratic life for the working class is breaking down, for either economic or environmental reasons.
zzo38computer 7y ago
I don't use pesticides. I don't use bug zapper either
01100011 7y ago
Californians, please plant natives. See laspilitas.com or the Theodore Payne foundation for more info. You can have a beautiful yard that requires zero water(and watering it can often cause harm) in summer yet feeds insects and smells amazing.
- viburnum 7y ago
  Natives are also great because when you go out into the woods you can recognize plants from your garden! Sadly, garden souls are often in much worse shape than what natives need (usually very compacted and lacking in organic matter). Some native plants are native to moist soils and would require more water than a (non-invasive) plant from the Mediterranean, for example. But native plants are tremendous fun and there are ton of resources available to help you find the right plant for the right spot.
viburnum 7y ago
Over the years my lawn has shrunk to nothing as my flowerbeds and shrubs expanded. Now my garden is full of hummingbirds most of the year. It makes me so happy to see the little critters buzzing around. I also get a lot of other birds too, funny little migrating things that stay for a few days while passing through. Once they’re established, most perennials and shrubs require almost no attention, just some water if it hasn’t rained in over a week in the summer. When your plants are happy they crowd out the weeds. I weed once a year at the end of winter and a little here and there during the year. If you’re not sure what to plant, walk around your neighborhood and see what plants are thriving. If you see something growing well in a lot of gardens it will probably do well in yours too.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
delouvois 7y ago
Climate changes, get over it.
ThePhysicist 7y ago
In Germany we have "Kleingärten / Schrebergärten" in most cities that mostly belong to non-profit associations. They give people the chance to lease a small garden - 400 m² on average - and grow their own fruit and vegetables, and of course spend time there in the summer (most gardens have small houses where people can stay overnight as well). More than 5 million people use such gardens. The statutes of most associations require people to grow fruit or vegetables on a given percentage - usually 30 % - of the lot, and to have a certain number of trees on the lot as well.
- apexalpha 7y ago
  In NL we call them 'volkstuinen' or people gardens. For people in cities who don't have outside space, such as apartments. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstuin https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstuin
dandare 7y ago
>Also, don’t use bug zappers, which Berenbaum said do not work in killing mosquitoes but do kill hundreds of beneficial species. This summer I stopped at a petrol station located in some remote forest area. There were literally heaps of dead bugs inside and under the neon panels. Since then I have been wondering how much of the insects are killed simply by the lights that we keep on in the outdoors.
weinzierl 7y ago
> “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 mean that people replace their lawn with parking lots, I mean nice green front gardens turn into minimalist charcoal stone gardens. It has its appeal but not if it is overdone. Is it good for insects? I don't know, certainly not for the flying ones.
- michaelgrafl 7y ago
  I see similiar things in Austria. I'm pretty shure it's a mainstream trend that plays into people's urge to take control over nature and remove all rogue elements from their lawns and will be replaced by whatever trend the industry comes up when the market is saturated. 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.
- stinos 7y ago
  Trends like this are essentially like fashion, but applied to gardens (well, the area around your house, I guess at one point it stops being qualified as 'garden'). I.e. pushed by industry/magazines/..., copied by people seeing other people doing it etc. Usually goes in cycles so in a couple of years it might be different again. Hopefully not lawns again, but actually I don't see it impossible that just like in fashion, what is now sort of subculture becomes mainstream and gets adopted by the masses and we'll get a ton of wild gardens.
harimau777 7y ago
Are there environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional grass lawn if one uses their lawn for sports, BBQ, and play? Maybe just allowing grass to grow more naturally rather than using pesticides and removing weeds?
- toastal 7y ago
  Going to a park is a reasonable thing.
- sokoloff 7y ago
  For several years, I fed my lawn an organic diet (corn gluten meal in the spring, which serves as a mild pre-emergent, then mixes of cracked corn, alfalfa, soybean meal, often in the form of horse and rabbit feed). Healthy grass, cut somewhat higher than typical will outcompete most weeds. The only weed I wasn't able to control effectively enough this way were grassy weeds (poa trivialis and poa annua). Triv patches had to be mechanically removed and annua needed late summer chemical pre-emergent (CGM isn't effective enough there). Once those were dramatically reduced (from the "yard" I inherited when we bought the place), the organic system was effective in keeping a >95th percentile lawn. That lawn was more resilient and beautiful than any of the chemically fertilized lawns (whether high or low input) I've maintained. In addition, we had more wild rabbits than I've ever seen, providing additional entertainment for the kids. The big issue with the organic lawn feeding is that it's quite bulky. No more 15 pound bag of sulfur coated urea that would do two fertilizer applications on my small city lawn. Instead, it was 30-50# bags of organic material that had to bought at Agway or Tractor Supply (necessitating a car trip) and couldn't reasonably be stored for a long time due to bulk and being organic (subject to rotting and rodent infestation). It's also more expensive than the chemical feeding, but still not prohibitive.
  - scoot 7y ago
    PC asked for environmentally friendly alternatives to a grass lawn. Your suggestion is neither an alternative to a grass lawn, nor environmentally friendly. (An order of magnitude more pesticides, fertilizer and water are used to grow the animal feed that you are using as fertilizer than you need to would put on your lawn. At an industrial scale, the land used to grow that "fertilizer" could be put to better use growing actual food! (Quibble: unless the animal feed is itself certified organic, it is not an "organic diet" for your lawn in the recognised sense of the word.)
acvny 7y ago
Totally agree! Or at least don't use the pesticides! Pluck the weeds by hand. I am baffled when I see people use pesticides around their houses. Some of my neighbours would even spray a single dandelion growing in between pavement stones with pesticide spray.
EricE 7y ago
Get rid of HOA’s first :/
- digitalsushi 7y ago
  Or if you want to be a bit of a rebel, make seed bombs: seeds mixed in with spheres of fertilizer, dried, and then lobbed onto the sides of roads (safely, at a low speed, and not to be destructive to personal property); you can litter with native species to help bee populations.
  - frockington1 7y ago
    Please do not encourage to trespassing and littering. While the reasoning is in good faith, most people will just see a trespasser on their property and may take action against you.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    I have sued someone for ruining some very expensive landscaping in a similar manner for the costs to remediate. It was over 60k. Sucks for them. Disrespect property at your own peril.
- neurobashing 7y ago
  Came here to say this. The one thing I am getting from the bulk of the comments is, not a lot of people with an active HOA that is fully committed to not just yards, but a very specific "look and feel". If you're curious about it: we have a nicely sloped back yard but one small part is 1)shrouded by the fence and 2)a tad lower/steeper than the rest, and so it's a mudhole where nothing will grow. Our HOA is constantly angry about it, as our back yard now doesn't have the required square feet of grass coverage. Similarly, others have problems getting grass growing in front yards because of house position, slope, and other factors. Constant harassment from the HOA that amounts to "why aren't you spending hundreds of dollars a year constantly re-sodding your tiny patch of townhouse front yard". My experience is common around here, FWIW. I have friends in different nearby neighborhoods with the same kind of snooping, nitpicking "fix it or we'll put a lien on your house" stuff.
- 7y ago
jeltz 7y ago
Pestidicides? People where I live use little to no pesticides on their lawns.
ivanhoe 7y ago
And don't clean fallen leaves in the autumn...
- rtkwe 7y ago
  > Another tip: Leave leaf litter in place. The dead plant material is an important part of healthy soil and offers protection for insects during the winter, Berenbaum said. They say exactly that in the article.
  - ivanhoe 7y ago
    indeed, missed that sentence on first reading...
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
It feels like I picked the worst of both worlds. I don't use pesticides and remove weeds by hand. I will admit that I like quiet appeal of the lawn despite the amount of work I have to put into it. Personally, I think people don't appreciate how little manual labor can help you focus and keep things in perspective.
jonstewart 7y ago
I’m fortunate enough to have recently purchased a 38 acre property in the Midwest, a little hollow with small hills and a spring-fed creek. About 30 acres are woods and the remainder is open, most of it unmowed with lots of native wildflowers and grasses, part of it low and swampy and part high and dry. It was amazing spending the summer there and learning about other butterflies than Monarchs (though we had plenty of them) and birds. With a bit more TLC over the next few years, I think we’ll be in good shape as a little oasis nestled amongst the cornfields and pastures. We fortunately don’t have wild parsnip and the garlic mustard is almost gone. Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of. I thought the mosquitoes would be terrible, but, while present, they seem to have been kept in check by the wind and the birds.
- Alex3917 7y ago
  > Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of. Careful, it has more ticks than anything else, and the first time you get bitten you’re not going outside for 21 days.
  - jonstewart 7y ago
    Yeah, we're Lyme Disease Central. We're militant about DEET, footwear, and taking showers when we come inside. I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon, though.
    - eric_h 7y ago
      > I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon It would be nice for the vaccine to come back - I was able to get the vaccine (and a booster a couple years later) when the vaccine was available (quite some time ago). I've also actually gotten Lyme disease (which I was able to catch early thanks to the bullseye rash and treat successfully with antibiotics, so did not progress to the bad symptoms).
    - Jamwinner 7y ago
      DEET is no pancea, and has its own issues. Protective clothing is your first defense.
harshaw 7y ago
I need to have a lawn to separate the forest from the house. If you don't the forest encroaches and then you eventually have trees that fall on the house (think new england ice storms). I also need to cut back the trees to make sure there is enough light for the solar panels. I don't need a super green lawn but I need something that gets mowed.
- givinguflac 7y ago
  I think you’ve wholly missed the point
- rtkwe 7y ago
  You don't have to just let the entire forest in to follow the advice in the article. There are a lot of low ground cover type plants that would do wonders for the insect population and you could still cut back any actual trees.
foxhop 7y ago
I'm covering half my lawn with leaves, woodchips, and hugelkulture. I also have many editable perennials like strawberries and raspberries taking over a large portion of my old hillside lawn. I'm building systems which hold and sequester large amounts of both water and carbon. We should start a movement, I have an awesome domain name for the project, if anyone wants to join up, (unturf.com) I'm using less and less gas each year on the remaining sparse lawn. Next year I plan to use my battery powered weed whacker for the majority of my lawn work (Christmas gift). My long term goal is no use of gas to maintain my property, and I'm well on track. For free woodchips, checkout CHIPDROP, it's amazing and growing. On my 3/4 acre hillside plot I have a thriving baby orchard of 4 years with about 13 apple trees, 6 peach trees, 5 plum trees. My kids love it.
- alex_duf 7y ago
  I'd like to know more about how you're achieving that. Any pointers or plans to write up what you've done?
  - foxhop 7y ago
    Follow me on Mastodon for real-time ideas, strategies, processes: https://social.unturf.com/@russell https://social.unturf.com/@russell I'll link to long form posts from there, planning a few soon. Here are a couple basic posts to show examples of whats to come: https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787710856378930 https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787710856378930 https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787713603718588 https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787713603718588 Here you can see me create both a garden path, and a new garden bed with nothing but a spade shovel and woodchips.
spodek 7y ago
Rob Greenfield's videos about living for a year in Orlando eating only food he grew himself or foraged from the wild are amazing stories of abundance https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHrhas5pE0W4rtw6yAsxiB8gP66EDe4IA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHrhas5pE0W4rtw6yAsxi.... He found a few people to let him grow plants in their yards and ended up with abundance, diversity, and joy.
- foxhop 7y ago
  I want to take on this journey at some point, I live in a very different climate to him so I decided not to watch his series because it really won't be beneficial to me and my progress (unless I move to Florida). I live in Connecticut, and I think at least for my first attempt, I will try a week, and then a month of eating and foraging only from my land and neighborhood.
somesortofsystm 7y ago
There are few greater joys than to be perched under ones favourite pear tree, across from the cherry, having just had salad from the beds for lunch, a food coma settling in, and in the sunshine the bees and bugs flitter and float, while the garden grows green and green. A lawn is a terrible waste of land. In most such plots, let food gardens grow. The work is worth it.
graeme 7y ago
My parents cut the lawn but otherwise do nothing to it. It abounds with many different insect species: ants, bees, grasshoppers, dragonflies, butterflies, moths Many different flowers and grasses grow, along with strawberries, clover, etc. This may depend on climate; they’re in eastern canada. And I’m sure there would be arrange things to create an even better bug environment. But the default lawn can be quite good for insects if you just let it grow. I always hated those sterile green lawns people made; the varied lawn we had was much prettier.
- alistairSH 7y ago
  It's common in the US to treat lawns so that only a single, or small number of, grass species exists. This is a relatively new thing - through the 1960s or so, lawns were as you describe - as long as it was mostly green, it was just mowed - clovers and some other "weeds" were allowed to grow alongside grass. The advent of targeted herbicides and advertising campaigns has led us to growing monoculture lawns.
  - falcolas 7y ago
    In my neighborhood, there’s maybe 1 person out of every 20 who does this. The rest of us mow it regularly and move on with the rest of our lives. The highly visible actions of a few who have the time to take those actions (or pay for those actions) is not representative of the rest of us.
    - alistairSH 7y ago
      That's not my experience (suburban DC). Overall, I'd guess closer to 1/5 or 1/10 do seasonal treatments. In wealthier subdivisions ($800k+ homes, which isn't unusual here), I'd guess half or more have regular lawn service including chemical treatments. In more middle-class areas, the number of professional treatments drops off considerably, but the residents still do a substantial amount of fertilizing on their own.
diviaki 7y ago
Spring to spring I had set off to grow edible stuff but it's been such a hassle with the need for irrigation and weeding and pesticides and then it failed to produce anything substantial. Until I met with deep mulch gardening. The method I follow requires years to build up a healthy, thick layer of soil, but that's fine. Hardly any weeding and no watering, no pesticides, just collect and spread leaf litter others dumped nearby, make it 60 cm thick in autumn, enjoy winter, plant during spring and it just works. I plan to convert more lawn.
Dowwie 7y ago
2017 Freakonomics podcast about the American obsession with lawns: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/ I've been replacing grass with mulched gardens consisting of perennials such as russian sage, black-eyed susans, catmint, various bushes..
ladyattis 7y ago
If you can't get rid of the lawn due to HOA regs or local laws try clover. Most folks won't notice the difference and bees love it. One my old elementary schools still has a huge clover field and the bees still come around for the flowers during Spring.
- ZeroFries 7y ago
  This is the viable alternative, having similar aesthetics to a traditional lawn. However there's still a fair amount of push-back. I just bought a house and am planning a clover lawn this spring, and discussing it with extended family over the holidays was met with a large amount of skepticism.
  - ladyattis 7y ago
    That's sad. Clover is easier to manage and it's actually softer on your feet. So if you have kids who want to play outside and forget their shoes they won't get scratched up like you would on some more durable grass species.
    - ZeroFries 7y ago
      I'm hoping it's less itch-provoking as well. I can't lie on grass without irritating my skin like crazy.
amyjess 7y ago
When I was giving serious thought to moving to Vegas, one thing I thought was super cool was that nobody had lawns, just patches of gravel, some scraggly desert underbrush, and maybe a palm tree or two. I love single-family houses but hate lawns, so that was one thing I was looking forward to about moving. Alas, it never happened. The main reason I was expecting to have to move evaporated, and I love my city enough that I don't want to move unless I have to, even despite lawns.
nsxwolf 7y ago
I can't get rid of my lawn. I would be sued by my HOA and fined and eventually evicted.
- KingMachiavelli 7y ago
  You could try finding like minded people in your HOA and then bring suggestions & alternatives (zero-spacing, clover, etc.) to the HOA meetings. Of course many HOAs are controlled & populated by retired boomers so YMMV.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
The Rifftrax short "Goodbye, Weeds" gives one perspective on how Americans thought about their lawns circa the 1950's: [0] [0] https://www.rifftrax.com/goodbye-weeds https://www.rifftrax.com/goodbye-weeds
duxup 7y ago
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.
- 300bps 7y ago
  Nature is just starting to tell us that our way of life isn't sustainable. There are more sustainable ways to live, we just have to be open to discussing them. You want a lawn - how often do your children play on it? An hour per day? That means your lawn is unused 96% of the time. How about we redesign our living spaces so we have one large common lawn that many residences can share. Kids will be more encouraged to play outside and play together. And we can put markets within walking distance of these residences, and movie theaters and other stores. Suddenly our children are more social, we're getting more exercise, driving less, not having insect-killing monospecies lawns that aren't used 96% of the time and many other benefits. There are solutions to this but if we put our fingers in our ears and say we want things how they've been for the last 60 years then we are no smarter than the cyanobacteria that converted so much carbon dioxide to oxygen that they suffocated themselves 2.5 billion years ago.
  - duxup 7y ago
    While I appreciate your general design point. My neighborhood probabbly isn't going to be reconfigured anytime soon... so that really didn't change anything.
    - 300bps 7y ago
      My neighborhood probabbly isn't going to be reconfigured anytime soon The problem is new neighborhoods are being put up literally every day across the country and we are cookie-cutting them out the same way we've done since the 1940s because everyone has the same attitude you've exhibited of "Don't care, want my lawn."
exabrial 7y ago
The best option would be to let the native grasses and vegetation grow.
tharne 7y ago
Where I live, getting rid of your lawn is a fantastic way to get Lyme disease. No thanks, been there, done that.
- AWildC182 7y ago
  Ticks don't live on gravel
PretzelFisch 7y ago
Well it's been 5 years of no grass, it is the worse. The weeds are everywhere I have to use roundup to kill them or they will take over the yard. There is just too many to uproot. If you live in an area where people live close by and use leaf blowers to clean, keep the grass and your sanity.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  You are missing the point. Grow other things or something will grow. Using roundup is just making the problem worse.
mekane8 7y ago
This is neat - I live in Champaign near the University where she works. Every year for the past decade or so I visit the annual native plant sale that a local preservation group puts on. I've been slowly building up a patch of native prairie plants in my back yard that I hope to expand more and more. We do maintain the lawn in our front just to keep it looking nice but we don't use any chemicals (bad for kids too!), but we kind of let the back yard do its own thing for the most part.

393 points by mayiplease 7y ago

I’d love to see my “progressive” city end setback laws, which require me to keep 15 ft of either grass or dirt in front of my house.

happytoexplain 7y ago
Are you saying such laws are progressive or not progressive?
- labster 7y ago
  They’re saying people don’t follow their political labels when it comes to building codes. Progressive environmentalists might advocate grass over density. There was a recent article about conservatives freaking out about a proposal to repeal a regulation prohibiting duplexes. It got framed as an attack on single family homes and our lifestyle. But, we’re all stuck with this until we unlock Intellectual Integrity off the SMAC tech tree.
jws 7y ago
Setback laws are usually about not building a structure too close to a lot line. On the front, a minimal setback keeps the street from becoming a canyon. Larger setbacks are more of a look and feel thing for a neighborhood. Front setbacks may also be governed by adjacent houses to encourage all the fronts to line up. It’s tidier that way.
- 0xB31B1B 7y ago
  setbacks are about reducing FAR so people need to buy a lot more land than they need to build a home to live in. It helps keep property values high and land as a scarce resource.
  - lysium 7y ago
    That is a consequence, not the intention. I don’t see how you can avoid street canyons otherwise.
    - PeterSmit 7y ago
      What is wrong with that?
    - Thlom 7y ago
      Don't you have to seek municipality approval for structures? At least where I'm from we have to seek approval from the municipality to build anything bigger than a certain size on our own land. Anything that is close to a public street or neighbor also have to be approved.
      - zip1234 7y ago
        When you say seek approval, in the US at least there is 'by right' zoning. Meaning that anything can be built by right as long as it follows certain rules. The approval is generally not an approval so much as a check to make sure it is following the rules. Anything not in the rules usually has to go through a special approval of a planning commission and neighbors may need to ok it.
    - zip1234 7y ago
      Is a street canyon a bad thing? I don't think so. Perhaps if the street is only for cars, but many of the most treasured streets are 'street canyons'. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shambles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shambles for an example
- mamon 7y ago
  Old towns in southern Europe (Spain, Italy) were deliberately built so that streets become "canyons" - they are very narrow, and buildings are tightly packed. It helps make 100+ degrees temperatures in summer bearable.
Polylactic_acid 7y ago
Is it really limited to just grass/dirt or is it simply that you can not place buildings on that space? Could you plant trees there?
pkaye 7y ago
Some bay area cities encourage replacing with native or drought tolerant plants. They give a small rebate if you convert from grass to any of the above. They also offer free courses to learn about this topic.
smt88 7y ago
Which city is this? I've only ever heard of rules like this coming from HOAs. Are you claiming that you're not allowed to plant trees or a native ground cover?
- bandrami 7y ago
  Strongtowns did a rundown on it [1]. It's often a feature of midsize town zoning laws, not just HOA busybodyness. [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/28/grassy-lawns-exist-to-prove-youre-not-a-peasant https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2017/7/28/grassy-lawns-e...
  - petecox 7y ago
    Here in Australia, the local council expects you to keep the nature strip, or verge, between the road and the pavement looking presentable but anything behind the front fence is your own creation. And so the 'front lawn' is my vegie patch. Potatoes are dead easy to grow from eyes and pumpkins (winter squash) self-germinate from compost. This summer I'm experimenting with Jerusalem artichokes, which sprouted from 70¢ worth of store-bought tubers. All you need is water and a spade - and no lawn police, I guess.

Waterluvian 7y ago

Are scientists often in a position to provide advice with holistic value? I'm usually quite skeptical of advice like this when it comes from someone who is laser focused on a specific domain.

SubiculumCode 7y ago
lawn care invites exorbitant water consumption, pesticide use, creates smog from lawn mowing, and induces a mono-culture ecosystem. I for one would like drought tolerant (in CA anyway) native plant species to fill our lawn spaces...especially the ones that get rarely used.
- Waterluvian 7y ago
  Yeah. I'm not debating the specific case here. I generally think this is good advice. My back yard is 100 foot maples and artificial grass because normal ground cover will not grow under that canopy. But broadly speaking, I'm skeptical of taking advice from a domain expert rather than some form of generalist who synthesizes understanding across the board. I want to know what the civil engineer has to say. I want to hear from the urban planner, the child psychologist, the sports medicine expert, etc. My yard is used in a lot of ways.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    Well, you say you're skeptical of taking advice from a domain expert, but then you list a lot of, apparently, domain experts you want to hear from. I agree with the latter sentence - I want to hear from a lot of people with narrow expertise and different perspectives on anything important, but I probably don't care what a generalist thinks, because why should they be better at synthesizing the experts than me?
    - Waterluvian 7y ago
      If you want to take on the cognitive load of being the generalist for everything, all the power to you! For me I pick and choose. I pretty much leave my car and rooftop to the experts but I dabble in electrical, plumming, carpentry, landscaping, etc. Etc.

jws 7y ago

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. Also the sentence attributing Illinois prairie loss to global warming is hogwash. Global warming didn’t turn the prairies into giant farms. So, grumpy stuff said, I do keep lots of varied native plants too. Grass is just for the area that want to survive occasional foot traffic and be open to show something else.

colechristensen 7y ago
My family never put anything on the, eh, 3 acres of grass I regularly had to mow as a kid. It wasn't perfect, nobody cared. There were dandelions, there was some clover. If you can bear to tolerate the fact that your lawn isn't going to look like a putting green, you can do literally nothing but cut it and perhaps water it if your climate requires and be done with it. If there are plants you don't want in your lawn, take them out with your hands or a hoe. If you can't be bothered, then be happy with what you have. If your lawn really can't grow without intense chemical assistance, then maybe don't have a lawn.
- ravenstine 7y ago
  What's sad is dandelions are neither ugly nor bad for your lawn. They feed bees and the tap roots draw nutrients from deep in the soil, which also benefits the grass.
  - freepor 7y ago
    As the parent of a toddler I love dandelions because he loves to pick them and blow their seeds into the air.
    - core-questions 7y ago

perl4ever 7y ago

Some people live where the lawn will take over given half a chance. Not everyone lives in Phoenix or whatever. Nor is pesticide use required to have a lawn.

mkoryak 7y ago

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??

deckar01 7y ago
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.
- Accujack 7y ago
  > they are carriers of diseases that can spread to humans. However, this has nothing to do with why the city's ordinances require a properly maintained lawn.
  - deckar01 7y ago
    Title 24 Chapter 1 Section 101: Nuisances affecting health. Subsection B6 states that "The following are hereby declared to be health nuisances affecting public health ... rank growths of vegetation upon private property [which] ... harbors rodents or vermin". This is one of the first 3 reasons listed. https://library.municode.com/ok/tulsa/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TUCOOR_TIT24NU_CH1NUCL_S101NUAFHE https://library.municode.com/ok/tulsa/codes/code_of_ordinanc...

Pfhreak 7y ago

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 area and start replacing your lawn. 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.

larnmar 7y ago
Since having kids I’ve been realising that a lot of the things in life that other people do, that have never made sense to me, suddenly make a whole lot more sense in the context of kids. With a kid, I’m suddenly super grateful for my little lawn.
- Pfhreak 7y ago
  Huh, interesting. I have a kid and I'm grateful we gave up our lawn. She plants in the spring, harvests, cooks, and preserves with us. She's excited to make pickles, jam, squash, pumpkins, corn, etc from things she's grown and tended to. She even got to pick out some of the flowers and make her own little square. Watching her step out to grab some blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries is one of the best feelings in the world. We read seed catalogs together in the winters and plan what we could grow (Ooh, what if we grew purple cauliflower? Or rhubarb for pie!)
  - pbhjpbhj 7y ago
    Where does she play ball games, set up a paddling pool, and wrestle? I'd agree if you have a house big enough to have a playroom, and have open space close by, it's probably easy enough. Our lawn is kinda a tiny, tiny, wildflower meadow, ie it's not cut much. The bees love the Clover.
    - adrianN 7y ago

shartshooter 7y ago

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 many Western States.[0] Households only make up a small percentage of the total water consumption worldwide[1]. Recommendations to cut foods that require an inordinate amount of water per calorie are probably better served(if you care about freshwater consumption) and it appears the simplest way to reduce this would be to cut out bovine meat.[2] [0] - https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/irrigation-water-use/ https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-management/ir... [1] - https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-in-water-out/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-in-water-ou... [2] - https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/ https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-...

Pfhreak 7y ago
What do you think the largest crop in the US is? Hint: Turf grass. Figure all the land used to grow lawns plus all the land used to grow grass seed plus all the land to grow sod... It's absolutely staggering amount of land, whole integer multiples of the land we use for corn or any other irrigated crop.
- sixstringtheory 7y ago
  I couldn’t quite believe this so I looked it up: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_55d0dc06e4b07addcb43435d Link to the actual paper, from 2005, is in the article.
  - sokoloff 7y ago
    Paper cited suggests 164K km^2 (about 40 million acres) of total turfgrass. USDA estimate for corn crop in the US is almost 92 million acres. Note that the paper claims that turfgrass is 3x larger than the largest irrigated crop, not that it's larger than all crops. Only about 20% of US corn is irrigated (~80% is rain watered only). [1] - https://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVI/8-W27/milesi.pdf https://www.isprs.org/proceedings/XXXVI/8-W27/milesi.pdf [2] - https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-largest-crop-2019 https://www.usda.gov/media/blog/2019/07/29/corn-americas-lar...

peter_retief 7y ago

We have replaced large parts of our lawn with Carpobrotus edulis or sour fig which is drought resistant. It's great for insect life as well. Planting indigenous replacement lawns helps indigenous life

WalterBright 7y ago

The best "lawn" I ever had was where I just let the local flora have its way. Best looking lawn in the neighborhood. I mowed it once a year. I keep trying it in Seattle, but the invasive blackberry bushes and scotch broom keep throttling the native stuff.

01100011 7y ago
Lots of native yards need protection from invasives. Preemergent herbicides are a great help. Initial clearing with something like Roundup is also not always discouraged because it keeps the soil from being disturbed and resowing invasive seeds. Having problematic invasives is actually more reason to have a native yard where you can take responsibility for supporting native wildlife.

bandrami 7y ago

Native-only plants people are somewhere between DIY garum makers and homebrewers in terms of the fierceness of their ideological warfare online, but in person they are a fun group to socialize with.

winrid 7y ago

When I was in China there were certain places where they made jokes about how Americans are so rich they use their lawns just to make their home look pretty (they were growing stuff).

bluGill 7y ago
That is in fact the purpose of lawns: to show you are rich enough to not surround your house with food gardens. The poor had to plant food anyplace they had legal rights to soil, the rich can plant non-food to show off.
- logfromblammo 7y ago
  The original purpose of lawns was to provide sight lines for castle defense. The forest was cut down, and native ground cover dominated the cleared regions. It was kept short by grazing animals. It was our old pal Louis and his Versailles palace that introduced the close-cropped grass lawn. It was kept short by grazers and gardeners. The poor used their near-house property to grow vegetables and culinary herbs. The rich used it to feed cows or sheep. It wasn't until the mechanical lawnmower that the grass lawns became entirely useless. Grass is ruminant food, and ruminants are meat. But we don't keep herds of sheep and cows in the grass-friendly suburbs now, because we don't like stepping in or smelling ruminant poop. And all the pesticides and herbicides would be dangerous for the animals and anyone who ate them.
  - danans 7y ago
    > It wasn't until the mechanical lawnmower that the grass lawns became entirely useless. Grass is ruminant food, and ruminants are meat. But ruminants were never a part of the American suburban lawn the way they were in old world villages and wealthy estates. American lawns are almost completely post lawn-mower. The American suburban lawn is an explicitly visual copy by the post-war working class of the luxuries previously available only to the upper classes of both American and European societies, minus the undesirable aspects like manure. The new resistance to lawns is occurring in places where the post-war fantasy of pseudo aristocratic life for the working class is breaking down, for either economic or environmental reasons.

zzo38computer 7y ago

I don't use pesticides. I don't use bug zapper either

01100011 7y ago

Californians, please plant natives. See laspilitas.com or the Theodore Payne foundation for more info. You can have a beautiful yard that requires zero water(and watering it can often cause harm) in summer yet feeds insects and smells amazing.

viburnum 7y ago
Natives are also great because when you go out into the woods you can recognize plants from your garden! Sadly, garden souls are often in much worse shape than what natives need (usually very compacted and lacking in organic matter). Some native plants are native to moist soils and would require more water than a (non-invasive) plant from the Mediterranean, for example. But native plants are tremendous fun and there are ton of resources available to help you find the right plant for the right spot.

viburnum 7y ago

Over the years my lawn has shrunk to nothing as my flowerbeds and shrubs expanded. Now my garden is full of hummingbirds most of the year. It makes me so happy to see the little critters buzzing around. I also get a lot of other birds too, funny little migrating things that stay for a few days while passing through. Once they’re established, most perennials and shrubs require almost no attention, just some water if it hasn’t rained in over a week in the summer. When your plants are happy they crowd out the weeds. I weed once a year at the end of winter and a little here and there during the year. If you’re not sure what to plant, walk around your neighborhood and see what plants are thriving. If you see something growing well in a lot of gardens it will probably do well in yours too.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

delouvois 7y ago

Climate changes, get over it.

ThePhysicist 7y ago

In Germany we have "Kleingärten / Schrebergärten" in most cities that mostly belong to non-profit associations. They give people the chance to lease a small garden - 400 m² on average - and grow their own fruit and vegetables, and of course spend time there in the summer (most gardens have small houses where people can stay overnight as well). More than 5 million people use such gardens. The statutes of most associations require people to grow fruit or vegetables on a given percentage - usually 30 % - of the lot, and to have a certain number of trees on the lot as well.

apexalpha 7y ago
In NL we call them 'volkstuinen' or people gardens. For people in cities who don't have outside space, such as apartments. https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstuin https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkstuin

dandare 7y ago

>Also, don’t use bug zappers, which Berenbaum said do not work in killing mosquitoes but do kill hundreds of beneficial species. This summer I stopped at a petrol station located in some remote forest area. There were literally heaps of dead bugs inside and under the neon panels. Since then I have been wondering how much of the insects are killed simply by the lights that we keep on in the outdoors.

weinzierl 7y ago

> “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 mean that people replace their lawn with parking lots, I mean nice green front gardens turn into minimalist charcoal stone gardens. It has its appeal but not if it is overdone. Is it good for insects? I don't know, certainly not for the flying ones.

michaelgrafl 7y ago
I see similiar things in Austria. I'm pretty shure it's a mainstream trend that plays into people's urge to take control over nature and remove all rogue elements from their lawns and will be replaced by whatever trend the industry comes up when the market is saturated. 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.
stinos 7y ago
Trends like this are essentially like fashion, but applied to gardens (well, the area around your house, I guess at one point it stops being qualified as 'garden'). I.e. pushed by industry/magazines/..., copied by people seeing other people doing it etc. Usually goes in cycles so in a couple of years it might be different again. Hopefully not lawns again, but actually I don't see it impossible that just like in fashion, what is now sort of subculture becomes mainstream and gets adopted by the masses and we'll get a ton of wild gardens.

harimau777 7y ago

Are there environmentally friendly alternatives to the traditional grass lawn if one uses their lawn for sports, BBQ, and play? Maybe just allowing grass to grow more naturally rather than using pesticides and removing weeds?

toastal 7y ago
Going to a park is a reasonable thing.
sokoloff 7y ago
For several years, I fed my lawn an organic diet (corn gluten meal in the spring, which serves as a mild pre-emergent, then mixes of cracked corn, alfalfa, soybean meal, often in the form of horse and rabbit feed). Healthy grass, cut somewhat higher than typical will outcompete most weeds. The only weed I wasn't able to control effectively enough this way were grassy weeds (poa trivialis and poa annua). Triv patches had to be mechanically removed and annua needed late summer chemical pre-emergent (CGM isn't effective enough there). Once those were dramatically reduced (from the "yard" I inherited when we bought the place), the organic system was effective in keeping a >95th percentile lawn. That lawn was more resilient and beautiful than any of the chemically fertilized lawns (whether high or low input) I've maintained. In addition, we had more wild rabbits than I've ever seen, providing additional entertainment for the kids. The big issue with the organic lawn feeding is that it's quite bulky. No more 15 pound bag of sulfur coated urea that would do two fertilizer applications on my small city lawn. Instead, it was 30-50# bags of organic material that had to bought at Agway or Tractor Supply (necessitating a car trip) and couldn't reasonably be stored for a long time due to bulk and being organic (subject to rotting and rodent infestation). It's also more expensive than the chemical feeding, but still not prohibitive.
- scoot 7y ago
  PC asked for environmentally friendly alternatives to a grass lawn. Your suggestion is neither an alternative to a grass lawn, nor environmentally friendly. (An order of magnitude more pesticides, fertilizer and water are used to grow the animal feed that you are using as fertilizer than you need to would put on your lawn. At an industrial scale, the land used to grow that "fertilizer" could be put to better use growing actual food! (Quibble: unless the animal feed is itself certified organic, it is not an "organic diet" for your lawn in the recognised sense of the word.)

acvny 7y ago

Totally agree! Or at least don't use the pesticides! Pluck the weeds by hand. I am baffled when I see people use pesticides around their houses. Some of my neighbours would even spray a single dandelion growing in between pavement stones with pesticide spray.

EricE 7y ago

Get rid of HOA’s first :/

digitalsushi 7y ago
Or if you want to be a bit of a rebel, make seed bombs: seeds mixed in with spheres of fertilizer, dried, and then lobbed onto the sides of roads (safely, at a low speed, and not to be destructive to personal property); you can litter with native species to help bee populations.
- frockington1 7y ago
  Please do not encourage to trespassing and littering. While the reasoning is in good faith, most people will just see a trespasser on their property and may take action against you.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  I have sued someone for ruining some very expensive landscaping in a similar manner for the costs to remediate. It was over 60k. Sucks for them. Disrespect property at your own peril.
neurobashing 7y ago
Came here to say this. The one thing I am getting from the bulk of the comments is, not a lot of people with an active HOA that is fully committed to not just yards, but a very specific "look and feel". If you're curious about it: we have a nicely sloped back yard but one small part is 1)shrouded by the fence and 2)a tad lower/steeper than the rest, and so it's a mudhole where nothing will grow. Our HOA is constantly angry about it, as our back yard now doesn't have the required square feet of grass coverage. Similarly, others have problems getting grass growing in front yards because of house position, slope, and other factors. Constant harassment from the HOA that amounts to "why aren't you spending hundreds of dollars a year constantly re-sodding your tiny patch of townhouse front yard". My experience is common around here, FWIW. I have friends in different nearby neighborhoods with the same kind of snooping, nitpicking "fix it or we'll put a lien on your house" stuff.
7y ago

jeltz 7y ago

Pestidicides? People where I live use little to no pesticides on their lawns.

ivanhoe 7y ago

And don't clean fallen leaves in the autumn...

rtkwe 7y ago
> Another tip: Leave leaf litter in place. The dead plant material is an important part of healthy soil and offers protection for insects during the winter, Berenbaum said. They say exactly that in the article.
- ivanhoe 7y ago
  indeed, missed that sentence on first reading...

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

It feels like I picked the worst of both worlds. I don't use pesticides and remove weeds by hand. I will admit that I like quiet appeal of the lawn despite the amount of work I have to put into it. Personally, I think people don't appreciate how little manual labor can help you focus and keep things in perspective.

jonstewart 7y ago

I’m fortunate enough to have recently purchased a 38 acre property in the Midwest, a little hollow with small hills and a spring-fed creek. About 30 acres are woods and the remainder is open, most of it unmowed with lots of native wildflowers and grasses, part of it low and swampy and part high and dry. It was amazing spending the summer there and learning about other butterflies than Monarchs (though we had plenty of them) and birds. With a bit more TLC over the next few years, I think we’ll be in good shape as a little oasis nestled amongst the cornfields and pastures. We fortunately don’t have wild parsnip and the garlic mustard is almost gone. Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of. I thought the mosquitoes would be terrible, but, while present, they seem to have been kept in check by the wind and the birds.

Alex3917 7y ago
> Japanese barberry runs rampant in the woods, though. That will take some effort to get rid of. Careful, it has more ticks than anything else, and the first time you get bitten you’re not going outside for 21 days.
- jonstewart 7y ago
  Yeah, we're Lyme Disease Central. We're militant about DEET, footwear, and taking showers when we come inside. I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon, though.
  - eric_h 7y ago
    > I really hope some kind of vaccine comes out soon It would be nice for the vaccine to come back - I was able to get the vaccine (and a booster a couple years later) when the vaccine was available (quite some time ago). I've also actually gotten Lyme disease (which I was able to catch early thanks to the bullseye rash and treat successfully with antibiotics, so did not progress to the bad symptoms).
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    DEET is no pancea, and has its own issues. Protective clothing is your first defense.

harshaw 7y ago

I need to have a lawn to separate the forest from the house. If you don't the forest encroaches and then you eventually have trees that fall on the house (think new england ice storms). I also need to cut back the trees to make sure there is enough light for the solar panels. I don't need a super green lawn but I need something that gets mowed.

givinguflac 7y ago
I think you’ve wholly missed the point
rtkwe 7y ago
You don't have to just let the entire forest in to follow the advice in the article. There are a lot of low ground cover type plants that would do wonders for the insect population and you could still cut back any actual trees.

foxhop 7y ago

I'm covering half my lawn with leaves, woodchips, and hugelkulture. I also have many editable perennials like strawberries and raspberries taking over a large portion of my old hillside lawn. I'm building systems which hold and sequester large amounts of both water and carbon. We should start a movement, I have an awesome domain name for the project, if anyone wants to join up, (unturf.com) I'm using less and less gas each year on the remaining sparse lawn. Next year I plan to use my battery powered weed whacker for the majority of my lawn work (Christmas gift). My long term goal is no use of gas to maintain my property, and I'm well on track. For free woodchips, checkout CHIPDROP, it's amazing and growing. On my 3/4 acre hillside plot I have a thriving baby orchard of 4 years with about 13 apple trees, 6 peach trees, 5 plum trees. My kids love it.

alex_duf 7y ago
I'd like to know more about how you're achieving that. Any pointers or plans to write up what you've done?
- foxhop 7y ago
  Follow me on Mastodon for real-time ideas, strategies, processes: https://social.unturf.com/@russell https://social.unturf.com/@russell I'll link to long form posts from there, planning a few soon. Here are a couple basic posts to show examples of whats to come: https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787710856378930 https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787710856378930 https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787713603718588 https://social.unturf.com/@russell/102787713603718588 Here you can see me create both a garden path, and a new garden bed with nothing but a spade shovel and woodchips.

spodek 7y ago

Rob Greenfield's videos about living for a year in Orlando eating only food he grew himself or foraged from the wild are amazing stories of abundance https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHrhas5pE0W4rtw6yAsxiB8gP66EDe4IA https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHrhas5pE0W4rtw6yAsxi.... He found a few people to let him grow plants in their yards and ended up with abundance, diversity, and joy.

foxhop 7y ago
I want to take on this journey at some point, I live in a very different climate to him so I decided not to watch his series because it really won't be beneficial to me and my progress (unless I move to Florida). I live in Connecticut, and I think at least for my first attempt, I will try a week, and then a month of eating and foraging only from my land and neighborhood.

somesortofsystm 7y ago

There are few greater joys than to be perched under ones favourite pear tree, across from the cherry, having just had salad from the beds for lunch, a food coma settling in, and in the sunshine the bees and bugs flitter and float, while the garden grows green and green. A lawn is a terrible waste of land. In most such plots, let food gardens grow. The work is worth it.

graeme 7y ago

My parents cut the lawn but otherwise do nothing to it. It abounds with many different insect species: ants, bees, grasshoppers, dragonflies, butterflies, moths Many different flowers and grasses grow, along with strawberries, clover, etc. This may depend on climate; they’re in eastern canada. And I’m sure there would be arrange things to create an even better bug environment. But the default lawn can be quite good for insects if you just let it grow. I always hated those sterile green lawns people made; the varied lawn we had was much prettier.

alistairSH 7y ago
It's common in the US to treat lawns so that only a single, or small number of, grass species exists. This is a relatively new thing - through the 1960s or so, lawns were as you describe - as long as it was mostly green, it was just mowed - clovers and some other "weeds" were allowed to grow alongside grass. The advent of targeted herbicides and advertising campaigns has led us to growing monoculture lawns.
- falcolas 7y ago
  In my neighborhood, there’s maybe 1 person out of every 20 who does this. The rest of us mow it regularly and move on with the rest of our lives. The highly visible actions of a few who have the time to take those actions (or pay for those actions) is not representative of the rest of us.
  - alistairSH 7y ago
    That's not my experience (suburban DC). Overall, I'd guess closer to 1/5 or 1/10 do seasonal treatments. In wealthier subdivisions ($800k+ homes, which isn't unusual here), I'd guess half or more have regular lawn service including chemical treatments. In more middle-class areas, the number of professional treatments drops off considerably, but the residents still do a substantial amount of fertilizing on their own.

diviaki 7y ago

Spring to spring I had set off to grow edible stuff but it's been such a hassle with the need for irrigation and weeding and pesticides and then it failed to produce anything substantial. Until I met with deep mulch gardening. The method I follow requires years to build up a healthy, thick layer of soil, but that's fine. Hardly any weeding and no watering, no pesticides, just collect and spread leaf litter others dumped nearby, make it 60 cm thick in autumn, enjoy winter, plant during spring and it just works. I plan to convert more lawn.

Dowwie 7y ago

2017 Freakonomics podcast about the American obsession with lawns: http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/ http://freakonomics.com/podcast/how-stupid-obsession-lawns/ I've been replacing grass with mulched gardens consisting of perennials such as russian sage, black-eyed susans, catmint, various bushes..

ladyattis 7y ago

If you can't get rid of the lawn due to HOA regs or local laws try clover. Most folks won't notice the difference and bees love it. One my old elementary schools still has a huge clover field and the bees still come around for the flowers during Spring.

ZeroFries 7y ago
This is the viable alternative, having similar aesthetics to a traditional lawn. However there's still a fair amount of push-back. I just bought a house and am planning a clover lawn this spring, and discussing it with extended family over the holidays was met with a large amount of skepticism.
- ladyattis 7y ago
  That's sad. Clover is easier to manage and it's actually softer on your feet. So if you have kids who want to play outside and forget their shoes they won't get scratched up like you would on some more durable grass species.
  - ZeroFries 7y ago
    I'm hoping it's less itch-provoking as well. I can't lie on grass without irritating my skin like crazy.

amyjess 7y ago

When I was giving serious thought to moving to Vegas, one thing I thought was super cool was that nobody had lawns, just patches of gravel, some scraggly desert underbrush, and maybe a palm tree or two. I love single-family houses but hate lawns, so that was one thing I was looking forward to about moving. Alas, it never happened. The main reason I was expecting to have to move evaporated, and I love my city enough that I don't want to move unless I have to, even despite lawns.

nsxwolf 7y ago

I can't get rid of my lawn. I would be sued by my HOA and fined and eventually evicted.

KingMachiavelli 7y ago
You could try finding like minded people in your HOA and then bring suggestions & alternatives (zero-spacing, clover, etc.) to the HOA meetings. Of course many HOAs are controlled & populated by retired boomers so YMMV.

DoofusOfDeath 7y ago

The Rifftrax short "Goodbye, Weeds" gives one perspective on how Americans thought about their lawns circa the 1950's: [0] [0] https://www.rifftrax.com/goodbye-weeds https://www.rifftrax.com/goodbye-weeds

duxup 7y ago

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.

300bps 7y ago
Nature is just starting to tell us that our way of life isn't sustainable. There are more sustainable ways to live, we just have to be open to discussing them. You want a lawn - how often do your children play on it? An hour per day? That means your lawn is unused 96% of the time. How about we redesign our living spaces so we have one large common lawn that many residences can share. Kids will be more encouraged to play outside and play together. And we can put markets within walking distance of these residences, and movie theaters and other stores. Suddenly our children are more social, we're getting more exercise, driving less, not having insect-killing monospecies lawns that aren't used 96% of the time and many other benefits. There are solutions to this but if we put our fingers in our ears and say we want things how they've been for the last 60 years then we are no smarter than the cyanobacteria that converted so much carbon dioxide to oxygen that they suffocated themselves 2.5 billion years ago.
- duxup 7y ago
  While I appreciate your general design point. My neighborhood probabbly isn't going to be reconfigured anytime soon... so that really didn't change anything.
  - 300bps 7y ago
    My neighborhood probabbly isn't going to be reconfigured anytime soon The problem is new neighborhoods are being put up literally every day across the country and we are cookie-cutting them out the same way we've done since the 1940s because everyone has the same attitude you've exhibited of "Don't care, want my lawn."

exabrial 7y ago

The best option would be to let the native grasses and vegetation grow.

tharne 7y ago

Where I live, getting rid of your lawn is a fantastic way to get Lyme disease. No thanks, been there, done that.

AWildC182 7y ago
Ticks don't live on gravel

PretzelFisch 7y ago

Well it's been 5 years of no grass, it is the worse. The weeds are everywhere I have to use roundup to kill them or they will take over the yard. There is just too many to uproot. If you live in an area where people live close by and use leaf blowers to clean, keep the grass and your sanity.

Jamwinner 7y ago
You are missing the point. Grow other things or something will grow. Using roundup is just making the problem worse.

mekane8 7y ago

This is neat - I live in Champaign near the University where she works. Every year for the past decade or so I visit the annual native plant sale that a local preservation group puts on. I've been slowly building up a patch of native prairie plants in my back yard that I hope to expand more and more. We do maintain the lawn in our front just to keep it looking nice but we don't use any chemicals (bad for kids too!), but we kind of let the back yard do its own thing for the most part.