deathcomes4u:

So I see a lot of people on here getting super shitty about lawns and how they’re the biggest suburban evil and the mark of gentrification and blah blah blah.

But here’s the thing.

You need to calm the fuck down about lawns. House lawns are not your enemy.

‘They take up so much water that could be used elsewhe-’ Not if you get buffalo. Not if you have a rainwater tank to draw your garden water from. Buffalo doesn’t fucking care you don’t need to water that shit let the rain do it. Don’t fucking plant Kikuyu if you value your other plants though. It will strange EVERYTHING YOU LOVE AND NEVER GO AWAY. Buffallo behaves itself a little better, you can control buffalo.

‘They take up space that should be used for producti-’ Lemme stop you right there, how many of you have the energy and money and time to actually grow enough food that you can subsidise your daily meals with it? 

How many of you have experience with organic farming. How many of you have actually had to fight bugs off your plants without using insecticides?

There are so, so, SO many reasons your front and back gardens are not ever going to be useful as food growing areas to you. Do you know your soil type? Does it need enriching? Is it sandy? loamy? clay-bound?

Any amount of extra fertilizing you do is going to end up running off into storm water and that can fuck with the ecology of local streams and rivers and whatnot. Unless you are only using compost you’ve made yourself or very small amounts of fertilizer or you grow in containers with minimal water run-off, you’re going to be encountering this issue.

Don’t even get me started on how you can’t expect people with physical disabilities to be putting their garden areas to use by growing food. Gardening is hard fucking work. Farming on a small scale is still physically taxing, it’s also mentally taxing, you have to be able to discipline and schedule yourself so you know when you’ve planted things. You know when they need watering. You know when they need more liquid fertilizer and/or seasol. You know when to harvest and how to harvest and not all crops are the same. Etcetcetc.

Gardening is not the hardest thing in the world but it STILL requires a basic amount of motivation and energy and time and organisation skills. Not everyone has all of this. Not everyone should be expected to have all of this.

‘So just plant trees and stuff for bees and butterflies and stuff!’ Again. Not everyone can plant out a full cottage garden in their yard. Not everyone has the money or energy or all the other shit you need to keep a garden running.

You could argue that they should just plant hardy stuff, succulents and cacti or hardy natives (in Australia’s case, we have a shitonne of natives that are basically plant and neglect types, and they will grow regardless) But these are a very particular look, and people should not HAVE to live with plants they don’t like the look of just for the sake of avoiding having grass.

‘So just plant trees then-’ Listen there are SO MANY ISSUES when it comes to planting trees around your house. This is coming from someone who FUCKING LOVES TREES and would plant a forest around the house if I could.

Why can’t I? Lets see:

-Falling branch damage is a serious concern your house can get super fucked in a storm by nearby trees. And pruning trees? Hard work. Getting someone else to do it? That’s an expense many can’t afford.

-Tree roots in heavy clay soils will often go straight for your storm water and sewerage pipes and FUCK. THEM. UP. This is a current and real problem for us, we have to remove our decades old grafted  dwarf Golden Ash in our front yard because it’s fucking up our sewerage line. We do not WANT to. But we HAVE to. And replacing that tree is going to involve a lot of research and probably MONEY on a container big enough for a new tree and a tree that will be happy to live in a non-draining container. Only reason we can do this? My parents have money. I’m the one doing the actual work and tree care and research. They do the bankrolling. Without me, they would replace it with nothing because NONE OF THEM HAVE THE ENERGY OR MOTIVATION TO GARDEN. Without them, I wouldn’t even have a house with a yard I’d be homeless so y’know.

-Councils can get shitty at you and make you pay them money for no real reason other than it’s an excuse to get money out of you. Not necessarilly common, but still a concern in some places.

-Neighbours may also complain, that is how we lost our also decades old Tallow wood tree out the back. It’s roots cracked and ruined fresh paving done down the accessway at the side of our neighbour’s house.

-Tree roots in general will fuck shit up if your placement isn’t just right, even with trees that have non-aggressive roots. You need to know where all the pipes run and then have enough area to plant away from them AND the house AND the road AND any other paving like sidewalks and driveways.

-Buying trees, even in sapling form, can be expensive. Not everyone can budget in plants.

-powerlines are a thing you need to watch out for in many places like this is a very serious thing.

ON TOP OF ALL OF THIS, you will have a more expensive water bill if you have more plants than grass. Unless you are willing to spend the time and money on tap-timers and the right irrigation systems, you’re going to be having to deal with watering schedules and using more than before.

Growing plants is not always cheap nor accessible to everyone. While I do encourage growing in containers for those unable to work on their gardens, or who don’t have much space, I absolutely acknowledge that not everyone can garden. 

So if you cannot fill a space with other plants, as many people can’t, lawns are THE BEST ANSWER. Why? Because lawns suck up a bunch of carbon. The right sort is not only drought tollerant and hardy, but it keeps the soil beneath in good condition.

Do you know what I did today in my clay heavy backyard? I reclaimed some lawn space for garden-bed expansion. Do you know how long ago we laid that lawn? DECADES. I think i was maybe 8 when we turfed the back lawn area. We laid down all the shit you need to lay down on heavy clay to let lawn establish. Gypsum, newspaper barrier, blood and bone, basic garden soil.

I was expecting depleted soil under that turf. Instead I found rich, friable soil that I could have stuck anything in immediately and not worried about fertilizing. After like 20 fucking years my dude, that soil has been kept lush by the turf. It has protected it from drought and flooding and mineral leach. There were a bunch of worms wriggling around in there. it is GOOD FUCKING SOIL because we had GRASS KEEPING IT GOOD.

Grass is probably the BEST alternative for people with no time, energy or money, to have in their yard. All it needs is occassional cutting in summer, in winter you barely have to do anything to it. You need to feed it maybe once a year if at all. I’ve never fed the lawns, and they go in regardless. They’re not the healthiest lawns, but they’re doing pretty damn well considering.

Listen, I support raging against lawns and fields when people want to make community gardens on empty plots and councils say no because they prefer to just hold onto useless grassy land. That’s a situation in which land IS wasted, because people have full intent to use it to better the community. The very least a council could do in an open field that they won’t let the public use is stick a bunch of trees on it to counter carbon emissions in the area. 

And I’m not overly fond of people using excessive mowing and cutting to keep ultra manicured lawns, because that’s excessive carbon production for an aesthetic you can probably achieve just by growing a different strain of grass.

But for the LOVE OF GOD do NOT be railing against people who just have grass all over their front and back lawn. Grass is not evil. Society has built infrastructure that is not friendly to tree growing, and this is something it would be nice to address in future planning (even though I doubt it will be for some time) but you need to look at the reality we are dealing with.

On top of all of this, some people just really fucking like to see a lawn at their house, often bordered by garden beds with other plants, MANAGEABLE amounts of plants. And it’s important to like the look of your house, it’s your comfort zone, it’s SUPPOSED to bring you pleasure, not stress.

You cannot be angry at people who do not use their land for growing food. You might as well just be angry that not every single person has chosen farming as a profession. It’s a ridiculous expectation. Lawns may not attract Bees or butterflies, but they DO have their own positive ecology. THEY SERVE A POSITIVE PURPOSE. LAWNS ARE NOT YOUR ENEMY. 

If you want to counter ‘lawn culture’ in a USEFUL way that ISN’T bitching and whining about people with lawns, GET INVOLVED IN LOCAL TREE-PLANTING ACTIVITIES. FIND OUT ABOUT YOUR LOCAL LANDCARE GROUPS OR GET INVOLVED IN COMMUNITY GARDEN PROJECTS AND NATIVE VEGETATION REHAB GROUPS. GO DO SOME POSITIVE PLANT WORK.