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Comment by WalterBright | Hacker News Reader

On my own lawn, the shaded areas stay green all summer, the full sun areas turn brown and into dust. I gave up watering the lawn years ago due to endless problems with the sprinklers. (Everything from them simply getting smashed by foot traffic to freeze damage to getting chewed to bits by coyotes.)

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Are you sure it's a problem with water?

I've had similar problems with sunny areas and tried watering more. It helped a little. Then one year I tried fertilizing (manure + miracle grow) and my lawn turned completely green, even the full sun areas.

Good. "Kill your lawn", as they say.

The idea of using water via a sprinkler system to keep a lawn green is such an alien concept to most people. Maybe California have a water problem for a reason?

Its pretty common on the east coast too, from my experience.

Maybe the whole country needs a rethink then?

What's the specific importance of a green patch outside your home?

well, there's a lot of value in ground cover. Now, a conversation about moving to native plants instead of grass everywhere would probably be worth having.

I've heard radio announcements asking people to water their lawn to lower fire risk. Ottawa, Canada; no risk of running out of water here.

Yes because of agriculture and because it’s a desert!

I'm curious where you live. Are lawns not common?

Even in Ontario, not particularly hot or dry, people water to prevent their lawns from turning brown in August.

In Wisconsin we rarely need to water a mature lawn. If you're going for close cut and perfectly green you might need to, but on average it's not needed.

UK.

Using water during a water crisis so you can have a green patch next to your driveway is the most excessive American thing I've heard today (a worthy winner in such a competitive field)

There is no water crisis in Canada.

While the concept of using perfectly potable water to water a lawn is a little bass-ackwards, people do do it here. I personally don't, my lawn goes dormant in the heat of summer and that's ok too.

Its eye-opening to see how little understanding of American living conditions are overseas despite the pervasive distribution of American media.

My 'patch' of grass here in Texas is thousands of square feet. The lot my house site on is .33 of an acre, which in metric is 1335 square meters. The house itself is ~3200 sq. feet (306 sq. meters) over 2 stories so the foundation is roughly 1/2 that so you can extrapolate that is a crap-ton of area left for our patch of grass.

This is in no way unusual or extravagant for the suburb I live in and provides lots of enjoyment for our 2 dogs and 6 kids.

Because everyone else has it doesn't stop it from being excessive and wasting water. In California we are seeing more and more people switching to drought tolerant landscaping.

Our part of Texas has overfilling dams and our particular town has enough excess water that neighboring municipalities are buying our unused rights from us.

Our Texas adapted grass goes dormant half of the year as well so the actual consumption is relatively minimal.

Our water use is fractional of a traditional manicured English garden.

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