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Comment by _qwfv | Hacker News Reader

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.

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> I have to do a lot less maintenance, and when I do it's more varied and interesting.

The irony is that people think a lawn is easier to maintain because it looks simpler

This. In what lawn-owners treat as mowing season, more than half of the year here, they spend several hours a month with motorized devices keeping the grass trimmed. Meaning they also pay for the device and the energy to keep it running. And the trimmings are usually wasted. So all in all: pretty expensive thing, that lawn. And to stay on topic: pretty much dead as far as nature is considered as well. Almost like a local farmer once put it: you might just as well have concrete and paint it green. Same looks but cheaper and no maintainance.

We on the other hand make hay. Meaning depending on the year, we spend several hours once or twice a year to cut the meadow (by scythe, but that's just because I like that). And then some more time to turn the hay and bale it to produce something which is then worth some money. And yields vivid fauna&flora (we also never cut everything every year, some random parts can stay till the next year). Still I get neighbours telling me 'wow that's a lot of work you put in there'. At first I thought they were joking but theye are not: I really have to do the math for them to make them realize several hours every month is way more work than what I do (and that's not even talking about the money spent). I'm not sure why that is. Maybe they perceive running behind a mower or sitting on one not as work. Or not as lost time. Or they see a scythe and think it's extremely hard work.

I agree it's probably better and more fun and maybe less "work" to have a garden or wild plants than a lawn, but:

> you might just as well have concrete and paint it green

No, you would miss out on the feel of soft grass under your bare feet, and your kids and dogs would be having a whole lot less fun playing in the yard.

> Maybe they perceive running behind a mower or sitting on one not as work. Or not as lost time.

A lot of people find lawn-mowing relaxing. It's light physical labor, it has an immediate payoff, it involves motors and/or engines and/or tools depending on your preference, and the smell of fresh-cut grass is amazing.

No, you would miss out on the feel of soft grass under your bare feet

Should have made this more clear perhaps, but I only put in that farmer's concrete quote (which I don't agree with for the reasons you mention) for the biodiversity aspect not everything else grass-related :)

A lot of people find lawn-mowing relaxing.

Yes but that is true for me as well so doesn't really explain why more than one neighbour made a similar comment about me spending more time mowing than they do while in reality it's the opposite, by far. Maybe it's just coincidence (N=3) and/or maybe they were just making conversation or so.

probably better

Considering the biological side, it's way beyond 'probably'. For example [1] gives a rather high-level overview and [2] goes into (one of) the more specific aspects. [3] also talks about the history/future bits.

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/nature19092 [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000632071... [3] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/362/6411/148.full

If you buy a robot lawn mower, it is.

Maintaining a lawn is more than just mowing it. There's aerating/seeding, watering, pulling-weeds/pest-spraying, etc.

The mowing is the easiest part, at least for my relatively small lawn.

> There's aerating/seeding, watering, pulling-weeds/pest-spraying, etc.

If you have a grass that matches where you live and don’t mind your lawn occasionally being brown, none of that is needed.

Agreed, apart from mowing it fairly regularly from April - October I've never done any of those things to the area of grass we have. Mind you we are in Scotland so water supply isn't really a problem.

It was interesting watching people complain about the grass not growing on The Walking Dead. Little do they know, that's normal. Especially when it never seems to rain on the show. It can jump after rain, but it stays short and brown for months in an especially dry year.

I've never done any of that nor do I know how. I've only mowed it, that's it.

Let's say we have a super well maintained lawn here in Denmark. You would have to do the following once every season:

  * Aerate/seed (realistically not necessary to do every year). 
  * Fertilize.
  * Pull weeds (mostly dandelions).

For a normal house that amounts to at most one weekends work.

Compared to a well established bed of flowers, which every season at the very least needs:

  * Fertilize
  * Trim plants that begin taking over.

For a garden with flower beds the size of the typical lawn I'd say there is at least the same amount of work required. And you need to have quite a bit more knowledge for it to be easy, compared to a lawn anyway.

For a vegetable garden there is significantly more work involved.

  * Germinate
  * Ready the soil
  * Work in manure
  * Plant / transplant
  * Keep weeds down.
  * Some plants need a trellis.
  * Mulch.
    * Keep weeds down where the mulch failed.
  * Continuously maintain the vegetables health to ensure good harvest.
  * Harvest
  * Clean up the beds
  * Plant green manure
  * Plan next year, rotate crops ect.

There is realistically something to do every single week.

If you live a place where it rains enough for the grass to make it on it's own, it's the path of least resistance only bested by a concrete slab, or perhaps tiled that you spray to kill weeds.

The traditional vegetable garden is slightly more human work than a lawn, but the perennial food garden is significantly less work than a lawn (for example apple trees with mulch, requires only harvest in the fall and pruning during winter)

A woodchip mulched strawberry patch uses requires zero human labor except from harvest and the occasional propagation of runner plants which 4x each year. All you have to do is cover with leaves, straw, or evergreen branches to help the crowns over winter and they will be back each year.

Raspberry canes will literally walk all over your property and only need to be mulched (with leaves, grass clippings, or woodchips) to keep them looking tidy)

The gas used to power mowers is a huge subsidy. A vegetable garden bed uses a lot less energy and time. Remember to cover vegetable garden beds in fall and winter.

All of the bullets on your list are optional in a veg garden and perennial garden. I don't rotate my crops unless I have a compelling reason to do so (like a pest eating all my potatoes)

Having greenhouses, vegetable garden, perennial food, and a lawn - the lawn is what requires the least amount of work for me, and I don't even have a robotic lawn mower.

For perennial crops, you still need to do more work. Manure (and you have to source it too), mulch and pruning is a bare minimum. If you care about the harvest, you have to continuously keep an eye on it and treat various problems. For apples in particular it's imperative to remove monilia infected fruit continuously, and especially after harvest. You also have to prune the crop to ensure a larger harvest.

A garden is as much or as little work as you make it, but a lawn is probably the lowest bar of minimum work if you get enough rain to water it. It didn't become popular because it's more useful that everything else, but because you really don't have to do much work to keep it.

You don't really have to do any of that if you just want to support the environment. Plants have managed just fine so far without human intervention.

I am amazed I've only seen one of these ever. First saw it maybe 15 years ago, and would pass it on my way to school.

When Roomba came out everyone flipped like it was an amazing invention that nobody had thought of. All I could think of was that little yellow lawn mower diligently mowing its grass. Cute little guy is still running today.

Why don't more people have these? I'm gonna buy one when I have a yard.

edit: I see they are decently expensive. If they work still totally worth it.

It is simpler in the sense that there is not really any thought required. I have to mow my small lawn every three weeks or so, true, but I know how to do that, because it's the same thing everybody does and you grow up watching your parents mow the lawn. It requires no judgement skills, and no gardening skills -- just run the mower over all the grass, and you're done. I would actually potentially be interested in having something less dull than just a lawn, but I wouldn't know where to start (what would work in my climate/levels of sun/shade/etc, what do I need to do, when does it need planting, does it need watering, all that). Keeping grass is simpler than that.

Keeping grass is simpler than that.

Just mowing less isn't perhaps simpler by the definition of it but is way better for biodiversity. You could try it in just a small piece of your current lawn and see what happens. Mow once near the end of spring and again once 3 to 4 months later. Shouldn't take long before native flowering plants will pop up.

I guess maybe that's a regional thing. In the southeast US, lawn care is a year round battle against weeds and invasive species. Without weeding and chemicals, grass can easily be choked out in one growing season. Mowing the actual lawn is a very small part of the regiment.

It's particularly difficult with the mild Winters we have had of late because it's almost as if spring goes from December to May now. Sods like Bermuda or St Augustine still go dormant in fall but the weeds don't stop growing.

Might have to do with the grass type? One thing that shocked me when I went to Florida was how coarse (larger strands and way stiffer) the grass was compared to where I live (Canada). I eventually learned it's simply a different type to deal with climate differences. I'm admittedly not very knowledgeable with everything plant, but it wouldn't sound odd to me if I learned that it could also mean different care. Up here it's mostly weeding, adding soil where needed and reseeding every spring, mowing it every couple of weeks, and watering once in a while. Maybe 2-3 rounds of chemicals a year if you want that healthy deep green lawn look.

> Might have to do with the grass type? One thing that shocked me when I went to Florida was how coarse (larger strands and way stiffer) the grass was compared to where I live (Canada).

Grass types are a reflection of the climate and vary dramatically due to factors such as sun, growing season, and soil composition. In Florida the soil composition is mostly sand, and they receive a lot of year round sun so the predominant grass is St. Augustine because it thrives and produces thick turf that chokes out weeds.

St. Augustine is also very similar to Crab Grass, which is considered a weed in many places, like Georgia. And it is easily killed by all but a few herbicides (e.g. MSM). So while St. Augustine is great in Florida, doesn't work well in Georgia where the soil composition promotes more aggressive weeds, and the tree canopy inhibits St. Augustine's growth.

In other words, Florida grass is Georgia weeds.

> Up here it's mostly weeding, adding soil where needed and reseeding every spring, mowing it every couple of weeks, and watering once in a while. Maybe 2-3 rounds of chemicals a year if you want that healthy deep green lawn look.

In the south your yard can grow 4-6 inches a week and during the growing season you sometimes have to mow as frequently as every 5 days. The mowing season in Georgia is from March to November for grasses that go dormant, it's year round for those that don't.

Weeding is a year-round chore and many people opt for year round weed services that spray for weeds on a monthly basis if not more frequently. Pre-emergent weed control is put down in February or March, and other herbicides are used through out the spring and summer.

Fertilizer is only done a couple times a year and varies depending on the type of grass.

Installing a native lawn does require a startup cost, but it's not too bad. You kill your grass, lay down mulch, and plant the native species. After a few months of watering, your lawn is self sufficient and you don't have to do anything to it ever again. Picking out the native species might seem daunting, but there are many resources online these days to help you pick out a handful of native species that will work for your lawn.

Source: friends and I installed native lawns.

Do native lawns attracts more ticks in areas with high tick populations? Seems like a possibly significant health risk considering that Lyme disease seems to be increasingly common.

I'm personally a huge fan of native lawns, but this is always in the back of my mind and I haven't seen it addressed.

Depending on where you live, you could start with introducing clover into your yard. It grows well in most of the US, tends to be more drought tolerant than many grasses, is easier on the soil (requires less soil treatment), and flowers nicely part of the season, which is great for bees and other pollinators. It will co-exist with grasses, so you don't need to do anything beyond tossing seed in the early spring and letting it germinate, just as you would do with grass seed.

Weekly maintenance is similar - just mow it (though let it grow long when it's flowering - cut off the flowers and you lose the pollinators).

I'm in the UK. My lawn is about 1/3 clover already, as it happens, just by natural process of it being stuff that grows better in the conditions on that part of the lawn. I don't consider that to be not-a-lawn, it's fairly normal I think, and the management is no different to the grass. (My 'lawn' overall is about 1/3 grass, 1/3 mostly-clover, 1/3 mostly-moss: the grass grows well on the sunny side, the moss beats out everything else on the side that's almost perpetually in shade by the south-side fence, and the clover wins in the middle-zone between them.)

I only half-joke about cultivating crab grass; it's green, grows flat so never needs mowing and is drought-resistent. I never walk on the lawn in our front yard and could really care less about what the neighbours think. Resists inconsiderate dog-walkers as well...

The bane of my existence!

Not really, but I hate the stuff. I finally managed to get most of it plucked out of my front yard. Hopefully the additional clover will displace it fully next season.

People way overcomplicate this.

It's OK to kill plants so just get a small variety and see which ones take over. They sort themselves out or they don't and you try again next year.

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.

Huh, interesting.

I have a kid and I'm grateful we gave up our lawn. She plants in the spring, harvests, cooks, and preserves with us. She's excited to make pickles, jam, squash, pumpkins, corn, etc from things she's grown and tended to. She even got to pick out some of the flowers and make her own little square.

Watching her step out to grab some blueberries, raspberries, or strawberries is one of the best feelings in the world.

We read seed catalogs together in the winters and plan what we could grow (Ooh, what if we grew purple cauliflower? Or rhubarb for pie!)

Where does she play ball games, set up a paddling pool, and wrestle?

I'd agree if you have a house big enough to have a playroom, and have open space close by, it's probably easy enough.

Our lawn is kinda a tiny, tiny, wildflower meadow, ie it's not cut much. The bees love the Clover.

When I was young we did those things in public parks. Except for the pool, we went to a public pool instead.

In what decadent universe is a pool expected or even necessary?

I suggest you google “paddling pool”. They are under $30 and for little kids. Not something decadent...

One where everyone has at least a fiver: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bestway-BW51009-Ocean-Paddling-Mult...

The park? That's where I did those activities as a kid.

Paddling pools and wrestling don't take a 1/5 acre lawn (not atypical suburban plot size). In my previous house, the back yard was heavily landscaped/hardscaped - patio, retaining wall, rocks and shrubs on the hill, etc. The front was lawn. Still plenty of room for my son to run around. And if he wanted more space, he went to the park around the corner.

There's also a substantial difference between a "natural" lawn, where clover and other plants are allowed vs the stereotypical "perfect" lawn (in the US) with a single grass species (and heavy application of herbicides and fertilizers).

Ball games are at the park. It's a short bike ride or moderate walk away. We have a small gravel area we set up the paddling pool in, and no reason one can't wrestle in between beds (or indoors on the carpet).

Great for you, our house is small (for the UK), there's a shoulder width of space around the beds; a park with grass is too far for the little ones to walk and there's been a couple of stabbings locally which makes us a little reluctant to let them out.

It's almost like sweeping statements such as "no one should have a lawn" need modifiers. ;o)

I'd guess grass is still better environmentally than gravel; so long as you don't over tend it (and our mower was rescued from the dump).

Have fun.

I know this may sound callous; but if they're too young to go to the park unsupervised, are they actually in your yard unsupervised; especially if you're concerned about local crime? I'm not pushing one way or another honestly, it just seems like an odd qualifier unless your yard is extremely private and maintained in a way that there are 0 hazards as well.

Our youngest lamented the lack of a front lawn to lay on. But I honestly don't believe that between the damp and the dog walkers she would have actually done the activities she had in her head.

You have to mow it. You have to mow it every week. You have to mow it every week even if you're tired, or sick, or it's hot, or it's cold, or it's rainy, or your friends are playing a game, or you had a sleepover. No excuses, no exceptions. You can't mow it too early in the morning, or too late in the evening. You can't stop halfway through and do the rest later (back yard/front yard perhaps, but not half of the front yard). The grass does not care what your reasons are. It just cares that you didn't mow it. If you don't, it punishes you. Sometimes the neighbors do, too.

In theory they understand this, in practice there are plenty of other activities that result in a litany of renegotiations. Grass. Doesn't. Care.

Could you elaborate why that is?

They can run around on it, play ball games with their mates, you can put down a slip 'n slide in the summer, there's room for a trampoline etc. etc.

Also (I'm guessing) room for barbecue parties and such - generally facilitating socialization with other families with children.

Many of our raised beds have a piece of flat wood on one side that serves as a bench. In the summer we'll host garden parties and people will socialize among the flowers and veggies. The delight people have picking tomatoes, peas, berries, beans, corn, and other things for their meal is real.

Those are all choices, plus you don’t need to turn the entire backyard into a forest.

I'd guess you could do all of this on a meadow as well.

What's the difference between a meadow and a lawn? In relation to the article that is, obviously I could tell the difference between a meadow and a lawn.

Edit: To add a bit of context here a lot of people are talking about pesticides and fertilizer and stuff like that but we don't do anything like that, we just mow it when it gets a bit long. Does that mean our lawn is technically a meadow?

I'm not aware of specific definitions, but in the context of the US, a lawn often has regular applications of fertilizer and herbicides to promote the growth of a small number (often a single) species of grass. This also requires more regular watering, as the grasses tend to be less drought resistant.

A meadow, or natural lawn, or whatever you want to call it would be a mix of grass, clover, and other "weeds". It wouldn't require anywhere near as much chemical treatment (if any) and could be mowed and watered far less often. To me, it would also be allowed to grow long enough to flower, to promote pollinating insects.

Huh, no way am I fertilising or spraying weeds out on my lawn, as far as I can tell it's your basic tall fescue grass with some clover and self seeded violets thrown in the mix, and its main function is being trampled by kids. It's lucky if I put a sprinkler on it.

I tend not to let the clover or dandelions flower though, as it attracts bees to the lawn, and barefoot children (very common in my country, and not looked down on like in the US) and bees on a lawn aren't a happy mix.

My garden is filled with heaps of flowering annuals and perennials though.

A friend once explained that boys are like dogs. They need exercising twice a day. A back yard and a ball are sufficient for that. A paved area is more likely than lawn to provide yet more trips to ER.

Isn’t that true of kids in general?

It might be, but that's not the anecdote they were sharing?

In my limited experience (ex cub leader [mixed sex groups], church kids helper, worked with children for 15 years; kids and nieces/nephews of my own) most boys behaviour declines rapidly if you don't "run them", but most girls aren't affected in the same way.

On our scout camps (mixed sex, mixed age, for the last 20 years at least) in free time the girls _tend_ to retreat to their tents and chat and the boys _tend_ to hit the field and run around like idiots. There's obviously a lot of selection bias in these groups too, they do outdoor pursuits, rough camping, etc. -- these girls are fit and hardy and as capable at kayaking/hiking/climbing/backwoodsmanship as the boys (indeed at the top end, 14yo, the girls are often fitter and stronger as they tend to grow a little earlier than the boys do). There's probably some observer bias too, of course, and this is anecdotal (but longitudinal).

My observations of toddlers at "mums & toddlers" groups suggests the ones who run around with a pram are usually boys (though that's far from exclusive; and the mothers [it's about 1:30 men] have very strong gender bias, which might be the origin of that effect).

YMMV.

Interested in other observations, FWIW I'm in the UK.

Just wanted to highlight that I like it a lot whenever people provide context and limitations to their comments. Very measured and thus easy to take at face value. Thanks a lot!

Ehhhhh. I disagree. That's too much of a generalisation. Different people, different interests. Many kids do like to exercise. Many prefer staying indoor.

But all kids need exercise every day:

https://www.nhs.uk/live-well/exercise/physical-activity-guid...

Reading this, the 2 hours of physical exercise per week in school make a lot more sense now from an physiological point of view.

I always just took them as fun time and some kids took them as annoying burden that should be avoided. I not once thought about that they are necessary to develop my body and motor skills.

I always took Judo training as a near perfect way to improve my movement skills though.

What kids prefer and what they need are not one and the same. A lot of parenting is about teaching kids to go outside their immediate preferences for long-term gain, and to learn new preferences.

I wish I could get my son to exercise twice a day. He hates going outside. He prefers his exercise running around in Minecraft, and if he does get it in real life, it's jumping around the living room.

Get him a VR headset. Beat Saber can be quite the exercise routine.

Be a parent. Set rules and consequences. Outside time or no Minecraft seems like a no brainer. Interact and get him to join you in things you like doing outside. He’ll probably hate it for 1 month or 1 year, but it’s your responsibility.

If you're involved as a parent, sure. Just for the love of god do not just throw your kid outside saying "play outside", because that sucks. I'm speaking from experience.

It sucks for sure, but it can also give you plenty of fuel for creativity & imagination. I would at least throw them outside with some tools & toys.

Things I like doing outside? I'm afraid that's a very short list. I totally understand where he's coming from.

We do set rules, it's just that we don't always maintain them very strictly, and he loves to bend them. And when he does play outside to get more Minecraft time, he thinks 15 minutes outside it enough.

It seems he just has no idea what to do outside. As a kid, I regularly played outside, probably because I had to, and so did the other kids in the neighbourhood, so we played outside. But none of his friends plays outside, so there's nothing to do for him outside.

What doesn't help is that we live in a city: no backyard, no fields or forests behind the house, and watch when you cross the street. Plenty of playgrounds fortunately, but the youngest, who loves to play outside, is just 5, which is a bit young to be outside on his own, so he's learning to adapt to indoor play. Maybe playing outside is getting trained out of kids because of the environment we live in.

Ah yes, your city environment will make it more difficult. That said, if he's old enough to bike (and the city you live in has some bike safe areas) then that's a great hobby to push. Taking 30 minute walks around the neighborhood is another. Regularly going outdoors (taking a walk together, visiting parks, any local state parks) as a family helps. But yea, if you're not doing it it's not going to transfer well to your kids.

Regarding setting rules: Kids are very bright when it comes to getting their way. If there's any loopholes they'll exploit them. If they detect weakness in resolve then they'll push and push using negotiation, guilt, deception, etc... The question they're trying to figure out is, is my parent in charge or can I be? The hardest but best thing you can do as a parent to instill disciple is to be clear, consistent, and follow-through. It's really hard. I'm in the midst of it too!

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.

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.

Wow, crazy. I grew up with a modest lawn (with two trees, one smack in the middle of each side of the lawn) and my best friend had a really big yard on a slope with a bunch of apple trees.

Playing in his yard was way more fun.

You made me think back over my childhood which was pretty idyllic in terms of outside time and non-supervision.

You know, lawns were simply not a major factor in that, outside of perhaps once-in-a-year water gun fights with some neighbor kids, the wilderness held far more appeal. Back-lot tracks, untilled fields, marginal scrubland running along stream beds. That was where the majority of my 'green time' took place.

I do remember a few families around the village that had completely unkept, wilderness yards. They provided far more entertainment than any with manicured lawns.

We had a front lawn, a back lawn, and a dog. The back lawn may as well have been a concrete slab for playing purposes due to the statistical likelihood of dog. The front lawn was exposed to all the neighbors and thus similarly unusable for a social anxiety kid. Would have given up that lawn in a heartbeat for wilderness, which I spent years hiking and exploring.

> 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.

If you have an HOA - there might be a bit of problem...

Yeah that's the big issue there - HOAs are oppressive organizations run by OCD types who want conformity at any cost. I'll never live under the thumb of an HOA is I can possibly avoid it.

Maybe, but not necessarily. I live in a neighborhood with an HOA, have a four-by-four with no complaints, and have neighbors who've replaced their entire lawns with complicated gardens and maintained them for years. The HOA even hosted a seminar on butterfly-friendly gardens.

Step 1, petition the HOA to change the rules...

I have both a lawn, and a perimeter where I grow flowers, edibles, and trees. I am happy that you find your conversion satisfying, but there is no conceivable way I am going to believe the careful weeding, deadheading, variable watering, pruning, shading, trellising, etc. is less maintenance than simply running the mower and edger once a week at MOST, and relying on an automated sprinkler system. (Maybe a 2x/year weed and feed application too.)

Depends on how nice you want your yard to look (and how productive you want or need it to be). I am a big fan of the set and forget with a sprinkler system. Some stuff lives, some dies. I have had waves of different plants across the yard over the years. It's not tidy, but it's easy.

If you're going for a perfectly maintained look to wild plantings, then yeah, that's a a lot of work.

We've replaced our lawn with wild savanna, and it's zero work. We just let it go. It looks totally wild, and I'm happy with that. (Getting it in place - removing the invasives, improving the soil, planting trees, and spreading native wildflower and grass seeds was a lot of work - but since its established its very little work. Just occasionally walking through it and pulling out the invasives that are trying to move back in.)

Part of the change that needs to happen is a change in our aesthetics.

Oh- so you're that neighbor. It's not just a change in your aesthetics that's needed. If you live in a community then it's prudent to get community buy-in. Especially if you have kids.

Community reputation means a lot more than some people realize. Source: I've been on both sides of this one.

People are way too uptight about lawns

Yeah, at the root of this all is a cultural issue more than anything else. Funny enough my mom has let her garden grow wild for years and neighbors have been telling her they love how lush it is from the start, yet somehow don't quite dare to let their own garden free (and before anyone asks, I'm pretty sure it's not a backhanded compliment).

those people who want a community of only people who think the same way as they do should move out far enough that they don't have neighbors.

Do you think it is unreasonable to want to surround oneself with like-minded individuals? I am not trying to imply the opposite isn't _also_ reasonable.

Yes. It is particularly unreasonable to want to surround yourself with individuals who think grass lawns, kept cut to a uniform length between 4" and 8", are a good idea, and a worthy goal for landscaping.

That's a 1946 ideal. In the same way that it was a 1946 ideal to build a residential-only neighborhood away from the big city, with racist covenants and redlines to keep the black people out. It was designed to evoke the manicured lawns of English and French castles, especially the "green carpet" at Versailles. Mount Vernon and Monticello and the White House featured grass lawns. And the mechanical lawnmower opened that aristocratic status symbol up to those without herds of grazing animals or scything slaves to keep it close-cropped. That, and lawn bowling and golf courses, made everyone crazy for grass lawns.

Abraham Levitt (of Levittown) and Frederick Law Olmstead then installed a whole complex of unreasonability into generations of Americans.

It is reasonable to surround yourself with people, each of whom arranges their affairs such that they need not have similar opinions on the disposition and upkeep of each other's properties. It is reasonable to mind your own business when someone else rips out their useless bermudagrass and replaces it with edible flowering herbs. It is very unreasonable to march up to their door to wave HOA covenants and city landscaping ordinances in their face in an effort to make them replant the grass. Yet that is what neighborhood busybodies do on a regular basis. We can't get rid of them, because they have the 1946 racists on their side, and they got there first, and they built entrenchments--legally, of course, as actual entrenchments would ruin the neighborhood aesthetic.

If you want a lawn, buy yourself a nice, square mile of property in the country, build a castle on it, and cut down everything that could hide approaching infantry. Rotate your herds around so that the grazing fodder is kept short. Then you can also have the formal gardens in the back, and maybe also a hedge maze. If you want a lawn in the suburbs, fine, but keep it on your own property and don't try to grow it over your neighbors' properties with some sick legal scheme.

Nobody is being forced to purchase property governed by an HOA. If you want the freedom to choose how you maintain your property, just... live somewhere else. To be clear, I'm not advocating for these schemes (and would personally never live in such a place), but the idea that it's _unreasonable_ to have a preference is silly. People are allowed to have opinions.

The irony here is that your response violates the very same principals for which you seem to be advocating. "If you want _____, follow my instructions exactly". Hmmm....

- I am fully aware that the kinds of rules, in particular, that spurned this conversation have been (and likely continue to be) abused as a facade to hide bigoted motivations. I absolutely DO NOT condone the tactic of using "personal freedom" as a means to promote these kinds of views. That IS NOT the point I was trying to make, rather, that people often _do want_ to surround themselves with like-minded people. The social science on this is crystal clear.

I am strongly against land covenants, and support the Jeffersonian maxim that the Earth should belong in usufruct to the living. If you want to control how a property is used in perpetuity, the proper way (in my opinion) to do so is to never sell it, not to carve away slices of ownership rights at every sale.

The fact that land covenants were overwhelmingly used for racist purposes is just the largest strike against them, not the only one.

Nobody is forced to purchase HOA property, but everybody has to live somewhere, and pay for that out of their income. If you pin a map wherever some member of the household has to be at some time every weekday, and draw 30-minute isochronic lines for the commute time from each pin, and then sum all the household incomes and multiply by 25%, you can find the intersection of the isochronics, filter out housing that exceeds the rent/mortgage budget, and possibly find that everything that remains is HOA controlled, or that there is nothing left. You can draw new isochronics for longer commute times, or you can choose a property that is not perfect, by virtue of being encumbered by covenants. That "live somewhere else" mantra favors the rich over the poor, simply by virtue of having options available that are more expensive than some people can afford.

I don't believe that community standards should be codified and given the force of law. The standards should be voluntarily upheld by the community. And that requires actually building a community first. Of real people. And that is not a profitable activity for suburban cookie-cutter subdivision home-builders. So the HOA is set up beforehand by the developer, to resemble the sort of community that they imagine people with plenty of house-buying cash might like. Oh la, this vision somehow always includes grass monoculture lawns. And a few of those people can move in during phase I and set themselves up as the HOA overlords. The developer continues to advertise and sell, and then automatically bails when the lots sold cross the percentage threshold, leaving everyone to the mercy of the busybodies, whom they have invested with contractual authority.

Some of us just want to live at a location, and generally be left to our own devices, without being subjected to intrusive assholes all the time.

It's easy to say "just live somewhere else". It's not so easy to live anywhere that isn't spoiled in some way by a negative externality in one form or another. Don't like coal plant exhaust? Live somewhere else! Don't like noise pollution? Live somewhere else! Don't like the smell of rancid livestock manure? Live somewhere else! Don't like a jerk threatening you with foreclosure because you didn't pay the HOA tax and your grass is 10" high? Live somewhere else! Don't like it when people erect TV or radio antennas and paint their front doors purple against the standards of the architectural committee? Live somewhere else!

It is better (in my opinion) to prevent those negative externalities from spoiling people's enjoyment of their own property. Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile.

What a diatribe! Unfortunately (and I mentioned this irony in my previous comment), your last paragraph undermines all of the previous.

> Barring some legislated community standard that does so, the only truly effective way to keep your neighbors from screwing up your lifestyle is by effectively not having any. Move to the center of your own square mile.

Can you not see that the above is essentially saying, "Either create community standards where you live, or (wait for it...) live somewhere else!"? Your argument boils down to "YOU live somewhere else!"

I thought it was more of a screed....

Living on the square mile is the hyperbole non-option. Most people can't live on their own square mile with effectively no neighbors, so they have to find some way to get along with the neighbors they will always have. They either can't afford it in money, or they can't afford it in travel time.

Should I have said "go live on the Moon", or "go live on a libertarian seastead", instead? It's supposed to be an unreasonable alternative to being reasonable to all your diverse neighbors.

Conversely, if you don’t want to adhere to agreed community standards then don’t move into an area with a home owner’s association who meet, agree and try to enforce those standards.

Go grow your wildflowers on your nice, square mile of property in the country instead.

There’s nothing admirable about petty rebels who’ll cry “racism” at the first sign of something they disagree with.

Ah so you're that neighbor that's concerned about what everybody else is doing rather than minding your own business.

There's nothing wrong with a yard full of native plants. You should stop trying to keep up with the neighbors and start letting people live their lives without your input.

I don't disagree with the sentiment of your post, but I don't think that is the point the previous poster was making. It's naive to think other people won't make judgments about your choices. Even more so if you think that those judgments can't affect you. I assume you maintain decent personal hygiene/comb your hair/wear appropriate clothing? Why?

The reality is that the community around you can and _does_ produce effects material to your life, even if you aren't aware of them. Maybe you weren't invited to that BBQ? Maybe you then missed the opportunity to connect with someone in your field of work? Who knows...

Assuming you can, you should live around the type of community you want. You sound like you want to live in the HOA controlled landscaping suburb, which is great! OP clearly chose to live somewhere where they wouldn't have neighbors saying these sorts of things. They have put thought into a cool experiment that has apparently paid off for them.

Personally, I've never experienced a neighborhood with a strict HOA that I could stand to stick around in. There always seems to be a minority with too much time on their hands playing neighborhood CIA operative and acting like they've just received power for the first time in their lives. I know that might be a little harsh but there always seems to be some variant of this around.

I live in a condo now where those people still exist, but it is so much better. They have much less power and visibility.

That horrible neighbour growing native plants and attracting pollinators? The horror of it.

As it happens, my neighbors are of varying opinions on the matter. The ones I hear from, love it. I'm sure there are those who hate it, but I don't hear from them. But this is how you make change. You need the pathfinders to show how it can be done and start the discussion.

You're telling people that they "need" to change their subjective appreciation of what constitutes beauty and aesthetic pleasure? I mean this as sincere constructive criticism, you will not win support for sustainability with such a demand. People don't enjoy being told how they "need" to feel about something as personal as aesthetic experience.

Focus on how sustainability is good for people and how it will improve their lives. If they prefer orderly, manicured lawns, don't look down at them saying they need to change their aesthetics.

Except they need to change their aesthetics

We tell serial killers with an appreciation for the grotesque to cut it out all the time.

The jokes write themselves, don't they?

They also need to recognize that asthetics is not the only factor. You can't kick a soccer ball on a lawn covered with shrubbery. While a natural landscape can be fun for kids to play in, it's not very versatile when you just want space to roll around and have fun with kids. But sure, if you never go outside and never set foot on your lawn, then a maintenance free lawn is fine. All the rednecks in trailer homes where I come from think so too. You could even store your older vehicles that no longer run on the lawn in case you need parts later.

In New England letting grasses flourish would also provide a home for ticks and Lyme disease. I try to be friendly to pollinators but unfriendly to ticks.

Get a couple chickens? I'm only partially joking, they do eat a ton of ticks.

And possums!

But then you need coyotes to control the chicken population in your yard.

Chickens actually don't. They kind of eat indescriminately. But guineas supposedly will hunt the ticks. But be prepared for some weird, loud sounds.

Yup. Prior to spraying our yard, the majority of my family contracted Lyme disease.

Encourage possums to move in. Indiana has its share of ticks, but we also have plenty of possums.

Chickens are another option.

This is about learning how to fit ourselves comfortably in to nature - because pretending we can be above, outside, or removed from it is sending us careening towards disaster.

I think about the generation that first started having lawns and how they came from farm country and knew all about having native/weed "lawns". The hay fever, the bugs and parasites, the snakes, all this drove them to appreciate a nice fresh lawn your kids could roll around on and enjoy.

It's gonna be a hard sell to get people to enjoy something their grandparents overwhelmingly knew to be inferior.

I agree with this to an extent because I love yards, but you're talking about the generation that smoked indoors and drove without seat belts. Moving forward a bit, my mother grew up thinking margarine and canned goods were better than fresh food (convenient, cheap, and doesn't go bad!).

We have the benefit of better science and a bit of hindsight and can see how the move to lawns has caused pollution on a massive scale and reduced native insect populations. I think at the very least stopping the use of fertilizers and adding wildflower gardens at the borders of your yard is a good plan.

Very good point. I have a friend who start putting some of his fields into native grass rather than Bermuda and has seen much more efficient production. Plus the fields are prettier for most of the year.

We do have bugs and snakes. And we love that. The big old black rat snake that shows up every spring has become a marker of time for us. She's pretty docile and friendly, she ignores us and we ignore her. The possums, groundhogs, and racoon are much the same. My niece and nephew love watching the frogs and gold fish in our pond, and exploring the many bugs that have taken up residence in our wild savannah.

The mosquites were here before the transformation - they come from the scrapyard up the road - and the changes we've made have actually reduced them in the local area. We've increased the number of frogs, bats, and dragonflies to keep them under control. We don't have ticks to speak of, the possums take care of them.

As for hay fever, you get that in suburbia just as bad or worse. You realize that the Yew bushes that everyone loves planting are among the worst producers of allergenic pollen, right?

Again, this is part of the aesthetic change we need to make. Realizing that we are a part of and depend upon the natural environment. And figuring out how to fit ourselves into it comfortably, instead of trying to remove ourselves from it or pretend we are somehow above it or separate from it.

We have over 2000 sq ft of perennial gardens on our property. I don't think it's more work than mowing our lawn. Outside of mulching every few years, and getting the garden ready in spring and deadheading in the fall, there isn't much to do the rest of the summer. Yes there's some maintenance, but it's much less than the hour and a half every week I spend mowing my lawn.

We have HOAs, if you grow fruits etc you're dead. Anything visible must be conformed to HOA rules.

Our apartment building has a butterfly garden with a small-ish stone patio in the middle. It was a major reason why we picked the place. Friends' buildings have standard-issue grassy lawns. Our backyard is the preferred place to congregate in the summer.

I'm sure the landlord went with it because it drops their groundskeeping costs to something approaching zero. But it's been great for everyone else involved, too.

We get a lot of rabbits.. How do you keep them out of your produce?

People have ways and you can google that. It won't be perfect. We don't have a lot of rabbits but we have groundhogs, chipmunks, squirrels, deer, and lots of birds. Our strategy is basically:

1) grow things like wildflowers that don't get eaten (but do get pollinated) 2) grow things that produce more than you need (tomatoes in our case, but summer squash is another good example) 3) grow things that produce more than can be eaten by the critters (pumpkins) 4) grow things that most critters don't want (chili peppers, basil) 5) enjoy the fact that some critters got something to eat, instead of treating it like a problem. We don't try to keep anybody out of anything.

#5 is easier for us than it is for a lot of people, I'm sure, but it's easier if you get #1-4 right. If I were growing things that took lots of effort I might be annoyed but where we live (southeastern Pennsylvania), most things just grow.

One bio-ethical route (at least for many of us in the Mid/Mountain-West US) is to use a deer or pigs blood dilute. It isn't harmful for edible plants (you should be at least rinsing your produce anyway) and it keeps most foragers off the goods - minus birds, but netting part of the trees or shrubs is a good way to deal with birds over foraging produce.

If there's a local butcher they're a ready supply of the stuff, and it helps your local markets so win-win. Or if you already hunt for meat (or have friends that do), it's just making sure you're using even more of the animal, so again, win-win. If you don't think that locally sourced meats are ethically/environmentally sustainable then... ummm... /shrug; there's other methods, but none that have been as effective for our plot size.

We are lucky in that we have a five foot rat snake that lives in the rocks in front of our house. I think I've seen it twice in 10 years. We have no rodents on our property.

I live on the edge of the woods. Tons of deer, rabbits, etc. The only thing that 1) works reliably for me and 2) is safe and ethical (so not poison or the like) has been an enclosed wire mesh fence. I resisted this solution for a long time even though my neighbors warned me that a fence was the only workable solution, but it's the only thing I've found that really works in my situation and I wish I had done it sooner.

Other things I tried that did not work:

Repellents, both natural and synthetic including but not limited to deer blood, other animal blood, predator urines (tried multiple types and brands), soaps and bitter and/or spicy repent sprays and gels.

Fake snakes, fake predator models and even real predators (not uncommon for foxes and coyotes are to be seen in our neighborhood).

Noisemakers and motion activated lights.

Lots more.

I wasted a ton of time and money trying the above, not to mention all the time spent gardening only to have it eaten by our woodland friends. A fence just works and does not harm animals. It can look very attractive too and can be relatively inexpensive if you keep an open mind w/r/t materials and look out for good deals/craigslist.

I've seen at least one person claim to solve the deer problem by building a covered chicken run around the outside of the property. Deer get discouraged by the depth of the fence moreso than the height. Presumably the cover saves them from raptors.

Probably works better in a square lot than a rectangular one.

In the PNW, mowing your lawn is a serious logistics problem because mowing wet grass is a titanic pain in the ass, and the grass is pretty much wet for half of the year. I'm kinda surprised there's as much grass as we have.

Most other yardwork activities can be done in the damp, or even in the rain (hello REI/Patagonia). Gardeners will tell you never to dig in wet soil, but the clay content in coastal soils is so low in many areas that it's a non-issue.

I haven't gone as far as you in my homesteading, but I do follow one of the suggestions Dr. Berenbaum made in the article: I don't rake the leaves in my yard in the fall, I let them naturally decompose. I've found this makes the grass grow much more naturally and results in a diverse insect and spider population.

I love vegetable gardening however I have it constrained to a plot in the back yard. When your entire yard (front and back) is productive is it visually appealing?

I would love to see what your yard is like if you're willing to share a picture.

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