
Give Your Yard Back to Nature - eplanit
https://www.popularmechanics.com/home/lawn-garden/a28197493/give-your-yard-back-to-nature/
======
andrewgioia
Really agree with the premise here. I came to a somewhat similar conclusion
(concession?) this year after spending tons of time and energy "perfecting" a
couple acre yard we moved into. The kicker this year was spotting a weed
growing through a crack in the concrete floor of my detached garage--no sun,
very little water, and this thing was still growing!

While not mowing is nonstarter in my and essentially every other neighborhood,
I've completely come to terms with the clover and random broadleaf weeds we
have, they're part of the yard. Trying to get that picturesque carpet led me
down a path of using questionable chemicals and spending tons of unnecessary
time killing native vegetation that _wanted_ to grow and has thrived here in
western PA.

I'm now consigning certain sections to wildflowers and just overseeding the
rest of the yard with native grasses in the fall to naturally work up the more
desirable stuff and thicken it. No more chemicals, and mowing slightly more
frequently has also helped keep the dandelions down. Slowly I'll mulch other
areas, especially around the trees, and try to put in some more low-
maintenance landscaping like this article suggests.

~~~
pavel_lishin
Why is clover seen as undesirable? It looks great, and feels fine. I'd love to
have a clover lawn.

~~~
noxToken
I cannot for the life of me remember where I read this, but I heard that
marketing is what labeled clover as bad. Clover was supposedly a fine plant to
have in your yard. Herbicides couldn't (or was too expensive to) be formulated
to kill clover without also killing other desirable grasses. The fix was to
market clover as an undesirable weed instead.

~~~
Infernal
You came very close to my understanding - herbicides that left clover and
desirable grass alone were not developed - the best performing weed killers
also killed clover, so clover was defined by marketing as a weed to fix that
particular bug of the herbicides.

------
magduf
Good luck with this in your typical HOA, where they forbid you to do any kind
of natural landscaping, and insist on things like green grass in the middle of
the desert.

(Of course, the answer here is to make sure you don't buy a house with an
HOA.)

~~~
rmah
Funny aside, a friend of mine lives in a neighborhood with a HOA. One of the
people in it kept making so much trouble (annoying others to do this or that)
that they voted to kick him out of the HOA. The guy actually threatened to sue
the HOA to be let back in! LOL, "wait, you _want_ to pay dues and be subject
to HOA rules?"

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction.

~~~
JoshTriplett
> they voted to kick him out of the HOA

I would _love_ to have this happen. Unfortunately, many HOAs have managed to
get embedded in home titles, and they have the ability to put a lien on your
house if they decide they're entitled to something.

~~~
jsgo
I can't speak for all HOAs but was on the board of mine (specifically to work
on getting out of a neighborhood media agreement). The only time we did the
lien process was after they had went above an arbitrary $1500 deficit in HOA
dues and there was no special circumstances in place that they had done so
(there was one couple whose daughter was in and out of the hospital for a
year, so we had the property manager work with them after the medical bills
settled down on a reduced rate until they could get caught back up).

The HOA dues at the time were about $115 (the previously mentioned media
agreement and neighborhood package was a major amount of it) so it wasn't
because a month was missed (no one enjoyed invoking the lien process anyway as
it incurs cost to the HOA as well). But as soon as the lien happens (after
three letters saying the next step is lien), those who became delinquent
started paying HOA dues (at least temporarily).

Now that we got out of the agreement and were able to get the HOA dues down to
$25 (common area maintenance and insurance), I got off the board. I will say
I've heard of some outright predatory HOAs that seemingly have it out for some
homeowners, but liens as far as I'm aware are (second to) last resorts when
you can't engage a homeowner to come into compliance. I hated paying for the
media package too (internet and TV was garbage with them the last couple of
years), but at the end of the day, the builder instituted that before any of
us came into the neighborhood and all of those agreements were known to us
before moving in so as trash as it is, we had to pay it.

~~~
JoshTriplett
My point was that there's typically no way to get _out_ of an HOA. Yes, I'm
sure that better-behaved HOAs take many steps to "engage a homeowner to come
into compliance" before escalating further, but that doesn't in any way change
the original point.

It's not uncommon for _all_ the available homes within a broad area (e.g. all
those within walking distance of an employer) to have an HOA, making "just
don't get a house with an HOA" not a viable option.

I'd love to have a "buyout" option.

~~~
jsgo
Oh man, the media agreement had us looking at every napalm earth option with
things like "if we disbanded the HOA, then what?" (because the language says
"Community Name and successors," it'd have been a net loss to disband as
anything we did to attempt to get out was as a group vs as individuals
including the liability protections that a LLC can provide vs various
individuals). It's kind of crazy how ingrained it has become as a concept.

In our town, supposedly (second hand info so grain of salt), one of the
neighborhoods that sprung up without a HOA was pretty bad from the onset with
poor maintenance on various houses (to the point of cardboard over broken
glass windows) and the town somehow passed a requirement that all new
developments belong to a HOA. Not sure the veracity of that (though I can
confirm the spottiness of the neighborhood in question because they're
adjacent from ours), but unfortunately it seems things are going more towards
everything HOA route (outside of maybe buy a bunch of land on the outskirts of
town and build a house. Which good luck with high speed internet and the like
unless you're willing to pay to get them to install in your area).

I see pros and cons to HOAs, though even while the one I'm in isn't bad, I
still am not a fan of them generally.

------
ericras
They use illustrations to sell the point because perhaps photographs wouldn't
be so convincing.

~~~
romaaeterna
Many natural locations near me are not pleasant for humans. Too many bugs
(including ticks) and the underbrush is impassable.

The areas that are more pleasant might be hard to replicate in a small space.
You can't create a forest microclimate in a 1/4 acre yard.

In fact, an isolated 1/4 acre yard is an unnatural habitat in a lot of ways.
The easiest thing to manage there other than a lawn is usually a crop of 8ft
high weeds.

~~~
khrbrt
> The areas that are more pleasant might be hard to replicate in a small
> space. You can't create a forest microclimate in a 1/4 acre yard

Yes you can! [https://youtu.be/ng-VskDFPpM](https://youtu.be/ng-VskDFPpM)

It takes some work upfront to convert a lawn to a miniforest but it can be
done.

Just imagine how wonderful suburbia could be if this was the norm and not the
exception.

Edit: here's that same yard in early spring, where the fact that it's a normal
suburban yard is more visible:
[https://youtu.be/CdthuPbn2uo](https://youtu.be/CdthuPbn2uo) . It's incredible
how lush it is in the summer, you'd think it was miles away from civilization.

~~~
romaaeterna
That is a good number of trees in a backyard. But it's hardly a microclimate.
I imagine that I get more cooling from the (considerably larger) trees in my
backyard. And it's nothing like the several degrees of cooling you get in a
forest.

Further, I don't see what those trees have to do with the article's advice
about native plants.

Surburbia might well be wonderful if that sort of backyard were the norm -- if
we ditched the whole 19th and 20th century flight from urban agriculture -- I
wouldn't mind being able to have a pig or a goat in the backyard, myself. But
this article doesn't seem to have anything to do with that topic.

------
adzm
I avoid those full lawn chemical treatments and my lawn has stabilized with a
nice mix of grass, several types of clover, violet, ground ivy, and
dandelions, among patches of other wildflowers and sedges. The colors when
they bloom is beautiful. The pests I don't like seem to be minimized, and I
get an amazing light show with thousands of fireflies every evening. I have to
spot treat the dandelions to make sure they don't take over but for the most
part it's a rewarding and aesthetically pleasing situation with little effort
and reduces the amount I have to mow, and I never have to water the lawn
either!

~~~
enraged_camel
> _The pests I don 't like seem to be minimized_

Really? I've had the opposite experience. Two pests I can't stand are
mosquitos and cockroaches, and they both seem to thrive in lush, natural
lawns. Whenever I mow, I notice an immediate and significant reduction in
their numbers.

~~~
jwr
Mosquitoes breed in standing water, so the height of your grass should have
little to do with their population.

~~~
athenot
In climates that get rain every day, it doesn't take a lot to have a suitable
pool of standing water for mosquitoes. A dead leaf curled up that holds 1 mL
of water (and shaded by the taller vegetation) is sufficient as a breeding
ground.

------
ggpsv
I highly recommend the book "Redesigning the American Lawn" from Yale
University Press [0] for people interested in this subject matter. It offers a
deep dive into economic, cultural and environmental aspects of the standard
manicured lawn, which they refer to as "industry lawn". They propose the
concept of a "freedom lawn" as an alternative and solution to the problems
presented by the infamous lawn.

[0] [https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300086942/redesigning-
am...](https://yalebooks.yale.edu/book/9780300086942/redesigning-american-
lawn)

------
mceoin
Michael Pollan has a great essay on this: Why mow? The case against lawns.

[https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/why-mow-the-
case-...](https://michaelpollan.com/articles-archive/why-mow-the-case-against-
lawns/)

------
kiliantics
There are some great youtube channels[0] on rewilding the land where you live
and developing a permaculture garden. I have always found the obsession with
lawns to be so strange.

[0] e.g.
[https://www.youtube.com/user/BealtaineCottage](https://www.youtube.com/user/BealtaineCottage)

~~~
ageofwant
Here is another good one
[https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3CBOpT2-NRvoc2ecFMDCsA)

------
fillskills
Hi all, this is very timely. We are working on building a platform that
encourages lush gardening. We have expert garderns who have been studying and
working with lush native gardens for years. I am actually meeting two of them
today. If anyone ever needs help building a garden like the one mentioned, we
are more than happy to give free guidance and also guide you on where to find
cheap resources and tricks we learnt over the years. The article is very much
on point and give some handy tips already.

Also if someone is interested in what we are building: we are making a pass to
access lush private backyard gardens for therapy, yoga, meditation etc. Some
of our most interesting customers are VAs, elderly folks, stressed out
engineers etc. The underlying goal is to help gardeners earn money that they
put into building more lush gardens thus storing carbon into top soil.

~~~
foxhop
I want to do this as my career. Could you please provide a link or more info?

~~~
fillskills
We are following the lean methodology so right now we are on excel files
mostly. Can you shoot me an email at abhi.2004@gmail.com so we can connect and
also I will send over the draft website and other info?

------
TomK32
A horrible trend over here in Germany and Austria are stone gardens. Not the
artisan Japanese style, but the supposedly-no-maintenance-dead-as-can-be-heat-
traps. It's so horrible that a few towns have started to outlaw them for new-
builds.

Here's an instagram of someone who collects photos of that type of garden
[https://www.instagram.com/gaerten_des_grauens/](https://www.instagram.com/gaerten_des_grauens/)

~~~
MandieD
OMG, the caged rocks that have shown up all over this place the last few
years! There is no reason not to have a plant yard in Germany and Austria -
even if you never water, there will be plants, and at most, running a
lawnmower over them twice a month will keep the neighbors from getting too mad
at you.

We have a sorry-looking conventional “Rasen” (grass lawn), but I’m looking
into how to turn it over to clover for happier bees and less ongoing work.

~~~
TomK32
Plants will beat stone gardens every time.

Simply make the Rasen smaller: when you do add some bushes, berries or
largeish plants on the borders, make the borders two meters deep and not just
half a meter. You want to use many different sized plants to get achieve
visual depth and colours. If you can squeeze in a little bench or chair hidden
behind waist-high plants it's even better.

------
skybrian
The problem with this sort of article is that it's generic advice. Local
advice will be more useful, but harder to find.

~~~
mooreds
Look for a local permaculturist. They will have plenty of locale specific
advice. And may even be willing to help you do it!

Couldn't find an authoritative list, but googling for "permaculture [state or
city name]" will probably get you what you need.

~~~
mceoin
\--> This will get you close.
[https://permacultureglobal.org/users](https://permacultureglobal.org/users)

------
mazelife
Along with other commenters here, I've given up on trying to have a perfect
lawn. As long as it's green, it's fine with me. I'm also trying to gradually
reduce the amount of property given over to lawn by a little bit each year as
I expand beds of native plants. In my experience here in the Mid-Atlantic
region the upkeep in terms of time between a lawn and garden bed is pretty
much a 1:1 tradeoff. Occasional weeding and a one-time day spent planting
annuals in the Spring is about the same as having to mow every 1.5 weeks.

~~~
fhbdukfrh
My advice? Cultivate crabgrass. It's green, grows without any care, drought
resistant and lays low so no mowing.

Bonafides: 20 year homeowner with neighbors who have come to accept I'm not
going to waste every weekend on yard care

~~~
mazelife
My lawn definitely has it's share of crabgrass which I don't mind. But
Kentucky blue grass and clover (both native) seem to do better. Which
unfortunately means mowing.

------
akeck
Our lawn was sickly, but chemicals are out due to both ethics and our rescue
doggo. So we just cut it at max height to keep it happy. We also inherited
lots of plantings from the previous homeowners. We keep those neat with a 1 ft
house buffer, but not severely cut back. We now have fireflies. :-D

------
ianbicking
It occurred to me that flowers are like the virtue signaling of plants. If it
flowers people are apt to think it's deliberate. If it's merely green, who
knows... is it the product of deliberate effort or just laziness? (Is a
natural forest the product of laziness?) The orange daylily
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemerocallis_fulva](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemerocallis_fulva))
is a way to cheat this system, you can be incredibly lazy but they do
technically flower.

I read a survey somewhere that modern expectations now are that if you have
25% (some places 15%) of your yard as turf your neighbors will be happy. 0%
indicates you aren't "doing" something, just letting things grow.

One option not really mentioned in the article is to just let things grow, and
only weed out annoying things (small trees poorly placed, things with thorns
or bristles, etc). Not mentioned of course because you'll get in trouble even
outside of a HOA.

I'll admit, as much as I want to be (and I think I am) tolerant, I do have a
dislike of weedy tree overgrowth. A neighbor is dedicated to doing no lawn
maintenance, and the result is not particularly lush or interesting, just a
ground layer that's relatively bare beneath small trees and bushes that are
all competing. If they avoided that, and had primarily vascular plants, I
think the result would be more lush, representing a better natural landscape.

There's a kind of design challenge here that I don't know quite how to solve.
Lawns are genuinely usable in a way that I appreciate. A more trendy approach
is to add a bunch of hardscape or deck and then plant the rest... is that
really better? Or, for instance, composting yard waste on-site helps support
all the organisms that make use of that organic matter. People complain that
it's also a great place for mice to nest. Which it is... and is that bad? I
tend to change my mind when they try to come into the house in the fall.
Overgrowth can be a hiding place and a safety concern. Of course lots of
wildlife would like to hide, and so that very problem is also a feature.
There's a challenge between having control and letting nature take its
course... and neither is really right, and I believe good design goes beyond
simple compromise.

I don't know... something I'd love to work on in my retirement.

~~~
rdiddly
A place that sustained itself and produced useful materials/medicines etc.
without anybody's "doing anything" would have been the ideal about 500 years
ago in what is now the US. And it's a permaculture ideal more recently. There
seems to be a streak of the Protestant work ethic running through this.
Otherwise how could doing _more_ work be a virtue?

Well actually I thought of an answer: Lots of things that take a lot of effort
are done for not much more reason than to show how much effort they take.
Which in turn reflects positively (supposedly) on the person who did it,
testifying to their possession of ample extra resources to do the difficult
thing. But I would think that would only be truly relevant for mating
purposes. Like "This guy plays guitar, whose mastery takes an intellect, skill
and devotion of time and resources that would potentially be available to you
and your offspring if you were to mate with him" type logic. But what does it
mean in the suburban lawn belonging to a complete family?

~~~
daniel-cussen
The green lawn comes from trying to pretend you're still in England. Literally
you can play golf on a random piece of land provided you mow it--the rainfall
is just right for covering everything with grass.

------
anbop
Sorry, my yard is like a 4th bedroom for my 3 bedroom house that I paid $2
million for. It’s too expensive for me to give back to nature.

~~~
Faaak
You still can with a grass roof for example. Added benefit: cooler house in
the summer.

------
fullstop
I've considered replacing parts of my lawn with creeping or wooly thyme. I'm
not certain how it will do over the winter in Eastern Pennsylvania, so it
might be something I test along paths or in flower beds first.

I've decided to avoid killing the clover and broadleaf "weeds" and want to
plant as much as I can to encourage honeybees to live near me.

------
zadkey
Planting native eh?

Thistle, mesquite, dandelion, and cactus don't really sit well with home-
owners associations.

~~~
Syzygies
We flirted with unquestionably native California grasses. There's a
significant fire risk. Humans are all about overcoming natural cycles, which
include burning us out of here periodically, killing any of us who can't run
fast enough.

Our front yard is now weed cloth and chips. Inert, it looks great, and the
town no longer cites us.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
I tried no mow grass. Died too. Then I seeded with California poppy, red
poppies, corn flowers, honey wort and Shasta daisies. They are reseeders and
bloom in sequence in my Ca 8a/8b zone. Also mint. It will take over.

~~~
ajtaylor
Be careful with the mint, but you already know that. I have a bunch of CA
poppies in my yard, which I only discovered by letting everything grow after
we bought the house. Imagine my surprise and delight when the "wild carrots"
turned out to be beautiful poppies! They continue to spread and make the yard
a wonderful place in the spring.

~~~
jelliclesfarm
Shasta daisy is competing with the pineapple mint in my front yard. It’s a
riot. And they will never leave!

------
viburnum
I took out my lawn and planted a ton of perennials and ornamental grasses.
It’s way less work than a lawn (I weed it twice a year, in the spring and in
the late fall). It’s full of hummingbirds all the time. And it’s pretty.

------
ageofwant
'Crime Pays but Botany doesn't' has a good working example
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M)

------
qwerty456127
In many countries and neighborhoods you are legally obliged to mow your lawn
etc and will be penalized if you just live it to the nature.

------
davidw
Article should definitely have at least made passing mention of fire risk,
which is an important concern in many places.

------
m23khan
i dont spray chemicals on my lawn nor do i seed/fertilize it - i just mow it
really short every 1-2 weeks so it is pleasant enough for kids to play on and
not get pricked by prickly weeds.

And yes, I water just enough so not to kill off the grass during dry spell.

------
jordache
agree with movement, but this is a terrible article. No actual photos of a
yard following these ideas?

Done poorly and it will look like a ghetto trash pile. Done well (it's non-
trivial), it could look great!

Show us some actual examples of these yards!

------
blancheneige
no lawn mowing? what else are boomers going to do with their lives every other
morning?

~~~
brodsky
^ does not contribute

------
yeahitslikethat
Just stop mowing and planting stuff. Your dog will thank you.

------
fasterdom
Good luck doing that in the land of the free, where you can get arrested for
not mowing your lawn.

[https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/single-
mothe...](https://www.usnews.com/news/articles/2016-07-11/single-mother-
arrested-for-grass-after-not-mowing)

Contrast with Europe, where even in capitals you can have lawns so over-grown
that you can't see the house behind them anymore. Nobody gives a fuck.

~~~
mceoin
I’m surprised by the negativity of this comment. For every case of conflict
there are others that can be cited of cultural change.

Lawns have some legitimate uses, entertainment and play space come to mind,
but for the most part are a cultural statement.

I recommend keeping an open mind that “changing aesthetics” is the right way
to go. More local biodiversity, less water use, more bee forage, insect
habitat, birds, etc.

Often (but not always), just “doing nothing” is a great step forwards.

