
Renowned Entomologist Says ‘Get Rid of Your Lawn’ - mayiplease
https://news.wttw.com/2019/10/02/fearing-insect-apocalypse-renowned-entomologist-says-get-rid-your-lawn
======
Pfhreak
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
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.

~~~
elric
When I was a kid, our (huge) back yard was more orchard than yard. It had at
least 30 fruit trees, including cherry, apple, pear, peach and plum. There
were hazelnuts, brambles and raspberries. Next to that was a patch of land
with all kinds of produce.

I loved playing in that yard. It had great places to hide. Ample trees to
climb. Wildlife to look for and learn about. A variety of fun tasks to
perform, from picking fruit and berries to making jam and juice.

When my younger brother turned 10, our parents decided that he had to play
football. Almost all of the trees were felled. Everything I loved about that
place was destroyed, and replaced by one, big, boring, lifeless lawn.

Instead of fun tasks, I was thenceforth assigned the task of mowing the lawn.
Which I resented and continue to detest to this day.

~~~
thaumasiotes
It took me many years to realize that nearly everything in my grandmother's
back yard (except the lawn and porch) was food. There were orange trees, a
cherry tree, an avocado tree, garlic, and a raspberry bramble. I loved picking
raspberries. There was a pomegranate tree in the front.

A garden is always going to be better than a lawn. A garden of plants that
grow faster than trees may be higher-maintenance, though.

------
shartshooter
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/ir...](https://www.ers.usda.gov/topics/farm-practices-
management/irrigation-water-use/)

[1] - [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-in-water-
ou...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/water-in-water-out/)

[2] - [https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-
water-...](https://waterfootprint.org/en/water-footprint/product-water-
footprint/water-footprint-crop-and-animal-products/)

~~~
Jedd
> ... would be to cut out bovine meat.

The somewhat ludicrous figure provided at that link - of 15,415 litres of
water per kilogram of meat - is oft' cited by vegetarians and vegans, but
doesn't bear scrutiny.

CAFOs are undeniably bad for everyone (the land, the animals, and the
consumers) and while they doubtless skew the stats, those grossly artificial
environments are clearly not locking up 15 tonnes of water per kilogram of
meat.

Something closer to natural - say pastured raised cattle - are using much more
reasonable volumes of water, especially at low stocking rates. But the whole
'using water' claim is muddied. The water the animal drinks passes through it
and into the ground. Irrigation of the pasture, if performed, can't be thought
of as 'lost' water either, as some will go underground, some will be lost as
transpiration / evaporation, and some will be stored in the plant to then be
consumed by the animal (qv).

> Why do lawns even factor into the equation when the reality is ...

Because lawns are, for most people, for most of the time, pointless wastes of
land, water, pesticides, and energy. There are myriad (good) reasons to
surrender some lawn and instead grow some of your own food -- TFA just pointed
out one of the less obvious ones.

~~~
vosper
> But the whole 'using water' claim is muddied. The water the animal drinks
> passes through it and into the ground.

Yes, it's not like the water is destroyed. It may be diverted from directly
flowing into a river, sure, and perhaps goes straight back to the atmosphere
rather than into the sea via evaporation, exhalation, and transpiration... but
it's not _gone_.

~~~
DrRobinson
I don't really see the point of this argument, isn't this true for basically
_all_ water usage?

~~~
sp332
Not really. If you put water on plants, most of it evaporates. Example:
[https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/sustainable...](https://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-
business/sustainable-fashion-blog/2014/oct/01/cotton-production-linked-to-
images-of-the-dried-up-aral-sea-basin)

~~~
Jedd
That still very much fits the 'it's not gone' definition.

Evaporated water _will_ come down again as precipitation.

Your example (cotton) is a truly horrendous crop / textile, but that story
sounds like a combination of very poor crop choices for the environment and
spectacularly poor resource management.

Also, if you apply water at or beneath the ground/mulch layer, overnight, then
your loss to evaporation is very low. Similarly, even suspended drip
irrigation (think grapes or other trellis grown plants) versus mist or
sprinkler systems.

Lawns, coming back to TFA, are almost exclusively irrigated by sprinklers, and
because they're primarily residential (ie. no automated irrigation systems)
they're often watered by hand during the day -- so incur a high evaporation
loss.

------
jws
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
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
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.

~~~
core-questions
Dandelions are definitely ugly. The problem is that they're weeds: they will
grow with abandon and fill up every single possible spot on your lawn,
crowding each other out in their rabid attempts to get some delicious sun. Mow
them down and you're just acting as an evolutionary selection filter for
short, creeping dandelions instead. It only takes a month or two of mowing to
end up with a totally different, fully adapted short dandelion population.
Leave your lawn fallow for a few months and you'll instead get 6ft tall
monsters.

The infection needs to be removed and defended. Entire neighbourhoods need to
work together on this; one lazy house is enough to poison the block.

~~~
NeedMoreTea
This gets tricky. A weed is merely a plant in the wrong place.

We have a corner of garden that we left to nature to get a little wildlife
oasis. The nettles and brambles nature added need regular effort to keep
controlled, the dandelions are mostly benign in amongst the 6"-foot long
grass, they don't dominate like they do on a cricket pitch length lawn.

~~~
core-questions
> A weed is merely a plant in the wrong place.

Nah. A weed is an undesired plant, primarily, but also typically one that
grows and spreads aggressively and doesn't play nice with the sort of plants
one actually wants to cultivate in an area.

------
weinzierl
> “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
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.

------
viburnum
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.

------
foxhop
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
I'd like to know more about how you're achieving that. Any pointers or plans
to write up what you've done?

~~~
foxhop
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.

------
mkoryak
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
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
> 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
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_ordinanc...](https://library.municode.com/ok/tulsa/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=TUCOOR_TIT24NU_CH1NUCL_S101NUAFHE)

------
01100011
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
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.

------
Dowwie
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..

------
winrid
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
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
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
> 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.

~~~
logfromblammo
The mechanical lawn mower was invented in 1830-something, if I'm not mistaken.
It would have taken a generation or so to become cheaper, at about 1850-ish
for the earliest widely-available, manure-free, close-cropped grass lawns. So
I'd put that as the advent of tennis and dedicated golf courses, among other
lawn games.

Checking Internet... mechanical lawnmower 1830 exactly, tennis invented
between 1859 and 1865, and Oakhurst Links is the oldest 9-hole golf course in
America since 1884. Croquet apparently became popular in the 1860s. So that
all checks out.

The lawnmower made the lawn. The lawn games and status-associations made them
desirable to have.

So the lawn is essentially a long-enduring symbol of upper-class lifestyle.
Resistance to grass lawn mono-culture is a symbolic rejection of aspirational
wealth. People who live in personal fantasy-lands love their symbology;
undermining their symbols can reveal the lies behind them. Those folks that
reject the lawn are essentially admitting that they will never get rich. Maybe
America will finally stop being a land of temporarily embarrassed
millionaires, and start being one that eats home-grown dandelion salads when
not eating the rich.

~~~
danans
> So the lawn is essentially a long-enduring symbol of upper-class lifestyle.

Of course, when everyone has a perfect lawn is it doesn't serve that symbolic
purpose nearly as well (other things take it's place, like exotic travel
photos), and it increasingly just becomes a maintenance hassle.

------
jonstewart
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.

~~~
digitalsushi
Matthias Wandel on youtube has a video of a DIY woodworking project for
building a wild parsnip harvester that doesn't require touching the plant, for
the purposes of manually eradicating it.

~~~
jonstewart
Neat! I never knew about poison parsnip until a few years ago when I developed
a burn on my arm a few days after flyfishing on a small stream on the 4th of
July. It was pretty small all things considered, but very painful and took
weeks to heal.

------
dandare
>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.

------
acvny
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.

------
bandrami
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.

------
graeme
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
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
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
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.

------
3fe9a03ccd14ca5
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.

~~~
jws
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
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
That is a consequence, not the intention.

I don’t see how you can avoid street canyons otherwise.

~~~
Thlom
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
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.

------
EricE
Get rid of HOA’s first :/

~~~
digitalsushi
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.

~~~
Jamwinner
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.

------
perl4ever
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.

------
ladyattis
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
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
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
I'm hoping it's less itch-provoking as well. I can't lie on grass without
irritating my skin like crazy.

------
somesortofsystm
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.

------
A4ET8a8uTh0
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.

------
PretzelFisch
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
You are missing the point. Grow other things or something will grow. Using
roundup is just making the problem worse.

------
WalterBright
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
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.

------
ThePhysicist
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
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)

------
mekane8
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.

------
diviaki
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.

------
peter_retief
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

------
Waterluvian
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
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.

~~~
labster
Every drought-tolerant landscape I’ve seen looks passable for about two months
and becomes an overgrown mess after that. I know we need to change, but if we
can’t come up with a yard people will maintain, lawns and giant driveways with
a soul patch will keep winning.

~~~
asdf333
i've seen some really good ones in my neighborhood.

it does require maintenance but choosing the right plants can do wonders

------
amyjess
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.

------
spodek
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=PLHrhas5pE0W4rtw6yAsxi...](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHrhas5pE0W4rtw6yAsxiB8gP66EDe4IA).

He found a few people to let him grow plants in their yards and ended up with
abundance, diversity, and joy.

~~~
foxhop
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.

------
duxup
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
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
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
_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."

~~~
duxup
>everyone has the same attitude you've exhibited of "Don't care, want my
lawn."

I mean here I am reading the article and obviously interested, I talk about
the practical impact of what it would mean to change existing lawns, the fact
that I leave a bunch of my lawn wild, and you basically ignore that and boil
down my point of view into something it isn't.

It's not surprising we have such a divides about such issues.

~~~
jf22
Saying "I don't want to take away the lawn from my kids" is saying "Don't
care, want my lawn."

~~~
duxup
Call me crazy but I think those are very different statements. And that's just
leaving out everything else I wrote about how much I care.

~~~
jf22
They are different statements that convey the same message.

It strikes me as curious to say your children running around your lawn is a
reason to keep it, but you must realize your children will experience a vastly
different quality of life from climate change and/or the loss of pollinators.

~~~
duxup
Not everything about humanity is so absolute.

I like giving my kids a place to play in the yard. I can express that desire
and still be concerned about climate change / do things about that.

------
DoofusOfDeath
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)

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

~~~
KingMachiavelli
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.

------
harimau777
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?

~~~
sokoloff
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
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.)

------
harshaw
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.

~~~
rtkwe
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.

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

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

------
zzo38computer
I don't use pesticides. I don't use bug zapper either

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

~~~
AWildC182
Ticks don't live on gravel

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

~~~
rtkwe
> 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
indeed, missed that sentence on first reading...

------
delouvois
Climate changes, get over it.

