Most of us would be better off without lawns
washingtonpost.com
washingtonpost.com
Veblen specifically talks in detail about the practice of maintaining manicured lawns. I read it thirty years ago, but remember it as being hilarious. He's one of my favorite Norwegians (admittedly a short list).
[0] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Clas...
When I first encountered him I thought to myself, "He sounds like somebody improvised up by Douglas Adams in HHGG. 'An apple fell from a tree. This was widely regarded as a bad move. In fact the most popular selling series of books on economics, by one Thorstein Veblen, in his The Theory of the Leisure Class, has pretty much confirmed this, though it has taken nearly a millenia for his proof to fully saturate and be accepted to date within the furthest reaches of the Galactic Empire, despite many incentives for readers such as scratch-and-sniff insta-win prizes.'"
The front yard, however, sees much less use in most neighborhoods, at least until you're so far out in the country that you practically live on a farm -- it's rare that you'll see anybody on the front lawn unless they're mowing or landscaping it or on their way elsewhere, precisely due to its lack of privacy. The suburbs in general can, with some debate, be accused of being a result of the lack in imagination in adapting the estates of the British landed gentry to smaller lot sizes; the front yard is much less defensible against this accusation. The only practical functions of the front yard in relatively dense suburbs, such as those making up most of California, are these:
- Provide an appealing botanical decoration for the front of the house.
- Decrease noise from passing traffic.
- Prevent passersby from looking into your windows as easily.
But the puny size of front yards in these suburbs limits their effectiveness in satisfying these objectives, which would be much better served by a hedge or ivy-covered wall. These shouldn't be much more expensive than the front lawn, especially considering that you could either eliminate the front yard and expand the back yard or gain increased privacy in the front yard would make people more likely to use it.
Another thing that front yards help with is reducing the amount of rain runoff that makes its way into storm drains. This is actually becoming a big problem in SF, which has an antiquated combined storm and sewage system.
http://www.sfweekly.com/sanfrancisco/news-san-francisco-sewe...
That doesn't mean lawns are needed, of course, but unfortunately a lot of my neighbors (south of 280), as well as residents in the outer sunset and a few other neighborhoods, are paving over their front yards for extra parking. I find the whole thing pretty depressing, and it is causing infrastructure problems.
http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/Paved-over-S-F-yards-r...
http://www.surfrider.org/coastal-blog/entry/surfrider-un-pav...
It's actually illegal, but this is San Francisco, so you know.
Anyway, do you know of any good sources for this? I'm trying to research this now, and it seems one of the top results is this series of pages, which isn't that great, although it does list some of the causes of the decline of the front porch (automobiles and air conditioning in particular): http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am483_97/projects/cook/roo....
Instead of a front lawn our property had a dense growth of evergreen shrubs and all these excuses were used by my parents - easier to maintain, less water used etc.
Our backyard was nice enough but fenced in and not social at all. If I could have had one or the other as a kid it definitely would have been a front lawn.
To me this front lawn hate is all about changing demographics (families are getting rarer) and the tragic paranoia and hostility that now is so prevalent in American society--even though it is safer than ever.
- People don't have as many kids as in decades past
- The "stranger danger" mentality -- which the parent post aptly described as "tragic paranoia [1] and hostility even though it is safer than ever" -- means kids aren't as free to roam the neighborhood.
- Increased amounts of homework, organized activities and indoor entertainment means kids spend less time outside and have other ways to socialize
[1] Children's services can take kids away from parents with minimal due process. Whether this is, on the whole, good or bad is a debate I'm not going to get into here. But I will note that sometimes the system screws up and targets well-meaning parents who give their kids too much freedom. Which leads to a chilling effect where even parents who recognize that giving the children more freedom is the rational thing for us to do as a society, it's irrational for individual parents because some idiots think otherwise, and the system sometimes listens to them, and it's just not worth the risk of having the authorities break up your family.
"Instead of calling it Work, realize it is Play" -Alan Watts
I find articles like this somewhat offensive. Different people are motivated by different things; who is the author to make such far-reaching claims? I'm sympathetic to people who want to replace their lawns, but I also respect people who prefer to enjoy theirs. Why does this need to become a moral crusade?
It's a moral crusade because millions of people are sold on the idea of lawns and end up not benefitting from them, causing wasted resources and environmental damage along the way.
For the same reason you would be offended if someone threw perfectly good food out while people go hungry. It's conspicuous consumption. Because you can do something does not mean others won't judge. If you don't care, don't care! But don't be shocked when people rally against such waste of resources (in California, of all places!), and pass laws to rectify the problem.
"Today, American lawns occupy some 30-40 million acres of land. Lawnmowers to maintain them account for some 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution – probably more in urban areas. Each year more than 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled during the refilling of lawn and garden equipment—more than the oil that the Exxon Valdez spilled.
Homeowners spend billions of dollars and typically use 10 times the amount of pesticide and fertilizers per acre on their lawns as farmers do on crops; the majority of these chemicals are wasted due to inappropriate timing and application. These chemicals then runoff and become a major source of water pollution.Last but not least, 30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used on lawns. Most of this water is also wasted due to poor timing and application."
I don't think your analogy is a good one. It's probably more similar to buying and eating expensive food, not throwing food out.
Many problems are distribution problems, not production or waste problems.
But 95% of water use isn't even residential...
Sheesh, some people just aren't happy unless they can control every aspect of everyone else's lives.
As for oil subsidies, between the commuting costs, care (lawn mower/herbicide/what have you) and heat costs energy to maintain most lawns is higher than people imagine.
I actually think you should own a yard if it provides you happiness & you pay for it. But its a trivial excercise to argue against them.
Your clear disdain for and anger toward suburban life is leaking over in to a discussion on lawn care. Must suck to tied up in how other people choose to pursue happiness rather than just enjoying your own life.
On the other hand, having a lawn at other times in my life did seem to just need to be mowed all the time and still looked bad.
My neighbor is retired and his only purpose in life seems to be keeping a fairway quality lawn which means he's cranking the social contract to 11.
I don't know how much he spends in weed killer and fertilizer. Maybe he doesn't want to lay on his deathbed and regret, "If only I'd mowed more..."
What's next? Putting up bird feeders? Ugh!!
Often in the evenings around the dinner table he would single out malingerers in the neighbourhood and proclaim them to be substandard human beings.
These proclamations weren't typically backed up by action until he was appointed an administrator on the condominium board. Newly backed with institutional authority, he took to logging lawn care infractions, and hand delivering customized warning notices to scofflaws with great zeal.
Guy who hates lawn looks down on guy who likes lawn, guy who likes lawn looks down on guy who hates lawn. It's all circular!
But there's no fence, so you could take a picture and use it in Refurb's Lawn Care brochure as the "before and after" spread. (Mine being the wah-wah-waaaaah side.)
The social contract to keep up is untenable.
You to will be old one day and some youngster might belittle you for doing something dumb like playing old, redundant Xbox games when you're so bored life is losing meaning.
To some I already am "old one day." My daughter used to pretend to be David Attenborough and narrate aloud whatever I was doing while drawing unkind pictures to document it.
"And this is the Dave in his natural habitat. See how he struggles to climb under the car to reach the oil pan."
TL;DR many of us maintain the Reaganian-perfect front lawn out of the first scene of a David Lynch movie under duress, even if it's the dumbest, most wasteful thing we ever heard of. Hey man, fiber's fiber.
It's full of weeds. Kids can run around on weeds. It only requires a handful of mowings every year, then it goes dormant unless there are unusual amounts of rain (like this year). By late July, the grass has stopped growing, and it's only weeds, which I can control with a manual "weed whip." For better or worse, the weeds are drought resistant.
So I doubt the contention that my lawn requires water, fertilizer, or even weekly mowing. As the kids have gotten older, the need for an extensive backyard has diminished, and I'm gradually turning more of it over to the vegetable garden every year.
Here's where you can report my parents if they slip up on their lawn game for a few weeks:
http://www.minneapolismn.gov/inspections/report/inspections_...
It's great when you don't have any kids that need space to run around, and it's very low maintenance, but I suspect that they're going to run into issues when selling the place, there's not a whole lot of demand for a 4 bedroom house with no lawn, and the place isn't really laid out such that you could just replace the deck with a lawn.
There's a law that says they have to have a patch of grass?
In some cities, it's actually the council's job to mow them as well.
I think it's a soul-crushing timesuck, and you obviously should think so too.
</s>
Tone it down. Anecdotes about pastime preferences aren't news.
Although fewer clicks I suppose.
Most states need a heavy tax on excess water consumption, especially California and the southwest.
That said, I prefer maintaining shrubs and other decorative plants in the tiny garden I have --yes, it's a time suck _but_ that's the whole point of it. You get to connect and care and semi meditate, or in the least take your mind away from preoccupation (it's a kind of therapy through futility). So, really whether you enjoy them or not depends on how you use them in your life.
9 billion gallons per day sure sounds like a lot though!
I'm not sure where he got the 9 billion gallons per day from, but it's suspect. Total public utility water use is 42 billion gallons per day. So lawns take up 25% of all public water use?[1]
I could see that being true in some areas, but when I used to live in Michigan it rained often enough that rarely ever watered. Maybe once or twice a summer?
As far as I can tell in India lawns are a sign of wealth and position. I once visited a dusty air force base in Bikaner and the commander's house had a beaut lawn with 2 airmen dedicated to maintaining it.
(The blackberries kill everything.)
Note that this was before he became a famous author (not that that really matters).
I highly recommend it.
Multipurpose native ground covers:
Cornus canadensis. White Flowers in spring, Red berries in summer, Red leaves in fall. Attract birds. Miniature forest for children. 'Fairy tales' themed. Just a mat of stems or scorched leaves in winter. Low. Stands Shadow.
Tiarella cordifolia. Soft green leaves with a foam of White flowers. Shadow. Delicated. 'Feminine'. Spring. Spreading by rizomes, but not much invasive. Visited by insects and bees.
Asarum canadense. Good heart-shaped leaves. I don't know how it stands summer, but probably well. Reddish flowers rare but hidden. Interesting at short distance, but often missed. Poison.
Bearberry. Arctostaphylos uva ursi. Low mat of 7 inches high or so. Hard aspect. Ordinated. Solid. Leathery small leaves, pink-shell bells, Red fruit and good fall color, purple dark. Needs acid soil. Slowly growing to up to 15 feet diameter, but can be pruned to keep it in shape.
Antennaria plantaginifolia. I don't know about if is too vigorous or not. White small flowers. Separated sexes. 'Dusty'. Useful for drier places, but not outstanding.
Fillers:
Native violets (Viola). Visually soft and fragile with nice blue flowers in spring. Reseed itselves on gravel and crevices, but never a nuissance.
Mitchella repens share some points with Cornus (white flowers, red berries), but is a native short creeper with small 'hard' leaves. More fragile and fragant. 'Feminine'.
Aquilegia, bulbs, ferns etc...
Grasses and taller shrubs for accent and out of season interest:
Yes, you need some grasses, they are wonderful and your winter is too long. Some candidates.
A clump of Switchgrass Panicum virgatum 'North-Wind' 3-6x3 feet. The winter spectacle in orange-rust tones deserves well the nuissance of a single cut to the soil level each year at february. Linear, vertical, upright standing even strong winds. Opaque, but could fit your needs if you want privacity in summer and a wild touch. Panicum virgatum 'heavy metal' is a slightly smaller version that provides a good canary yellow in fall (instead orange), and a strange tone of blue-green leaves in summer. Both get dormant and wake up very late when soil warms, so there is nothing to see between its annual cut at the end of the winter and June or so.
If you want a more delicate option, you could use some Molinia caerulea "transparent" (non-native) or the native Wavy Hairgrass, Deschampsia flexuosa. 12-30 inches hight, Effect transparent and delicate. Both catching light wonderfully in a non obtrusive way. Not so much to see in winter in this case, but good in summer and fall.
Black Chokeberry. Aronia melanoarpa. A very hard plant when established standing some pollution and unfavourable conditions. Middle height, 3-5 foot or so. Could be pruned eventually if needed. A little dark green in summer, but a wonderful scarlet fall color and shiny black berries that attract birds and are sour but edible. Whitish flowers with pink anthers. Aronia arbutifolia is taller and provides a luminous orange fall colour for a few weeks and many scarlet berries over green foliage in summer and fall.
Cornus sericea. Excelent dark red lasting for all winter, very nice mixed with snow. Makes a dense mat. Worth it even if you'll need to prune it once each year to keep it dense and at 5 foot or so. If you prefer greenish-yellow stems look for C. sericea flaviramea instead.
To avoid:
Aegopodium. Easy. But a monster spreading over large areas and growing fast from rizomes and discarded cuttings. Aggresive invader in NE USA.
Vinca, nice flowers, but too aggressive also and non native. You will need to keep it on place, and is not an easy task; they run around like rabbits.
Hedera. Will cross the path and you will need to prune it.