After the Lawn (2015)
kcet.org
kcet.org
> Once-treelined street losing its shade. The flaming red leaves of the liquidambar displayed fall colors before the rest of the street's once orderly progression because it went unwatered. The tree is now diseased and should be taken out. The upshot for the house and street it once shaded will be far higher summer heat and cooling bills
The Wikipedia entry for liquidambar:
> Liquidambar, commonly called sweetgum (star gum in the UK), gum,redgum, satin-walnut, or American storax, is the only genus in the flowering plant family Altingiaceae and has 15 species. They were formerly often treated in Hamamelidaceae. They are native to Southeast and east Asia, the eastern Mediterranean and eastern North America.
Well there's your problem. They planted trees which are totally off for the local environment.
Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't has a video where he shows that many of the trees planted after the LA earthquake are stunted and dying because they came from an eastern US plant catalog. The locally native trees and shrubs he planted himself are doing great. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vvtqKMxZ95s
Ideally there is a balance between native trees and plants that help cool the environment for one's lawn. One particularly amazing native California tree/shrub is the Manzanita which branches have an extremely cool-to-the-touch feel. They truly cool the air around it and the birds and small animals love it in the summer. Many California native plants have these amazing properties that promote a wonderfully diverse ecosystem.
That's also why most squirrels you see in the Seattle area are eastern grey squirrels.
A bit over a century go people decided that they wanted squirrels in the parks.
You'd think the easy way to do that would be to send some people out to head to the nearest forest and capture some western grey squirrels and release them in the parks. But western grey squirrels only like to live in native trees and eat native plants, and parks are mostly non-native trees so that wouldn't work.
The parks are mostly non-native because people like parks where the trees aren't too dense, aren't too tall, and have wide canopies. The native trees here are more toward the tall, dense, triangular canopy kind of tree.
They had eastern grey squirrels shipped in from the other side of the country. The kinds of trees in the parks matched the trees where the eastern grey squirrels were native so the hope was they'd be happy in those parks. They were, and they were also happy to live and native trees and eat native plants, so were also happy to spread from the parks.
... and add a tick check every couple of days to your routine :-(
This was the case growing up in PA too but it's much more troublesome disease-wise these days.
Not that there's anything really bad about that. It just requires a change to how you approach your outdoor spaces.
But the best thing for my friend is how much rats like it. Not mice, rats. Lots of rats.
Don't do this. It's not clever - it's just lazy. If you don't want a lawn that's fine. But just neglecting it will result in something awful and everyone will hate it. Just letting everything grow to seed so that it spreads everywhere is also kind of rude. Be a good neighbor. Don't attract mosquitoes or ticks, etc.
Be thoughtful about it and think about how you want your yard to look. If your idea results in no maintenance then it's not a good idea. Even a meadow look or something more natural will require time and energy to maintain. Probably more than cutting a lawn.
> it's dramatically less work as you only need touch the thing a maximum of once a year
No, it's not. What you have is something that looks awful. I'm glad my town will come and chop your lawn down once it hits 10".
If you live in a rural area then do as you please. But if you have neighbors, this is a really bad thing to do.
It is drought tolerant too, so we don't need to water the lawn. It's win-win-win.
You claim you don't have to do anything. The article immediately says you do. It takes work for it to not be awful. I have friends in the UK with a large property and part of it is a meadow and it still takes taking care of.
In this thread I even mention using clover if you really don't want to manage much and have a ground cover that prevents erosion and is attractive to bees that doesn't need fertilizer because it draws nitrogen from the air.
But yes, if you do nothing and let a lawn just overgrow I'm happy the town will cut it down and charge you.
> Even a meadow look or something more natural will require time and energy to maintain. Probably more than cutting a lawn.
How do you think the meadows you come across get taken care of? For the most part the farmer just comes by 2-3 times per year to mow, it's not that deep. What the best meadows have going for them are years and years of the same mowing schedule which has allowed a huge variety of native plants to spread.
Therefore, getting a meadow here starts with changing multiple layers of regulations. Much better for the environment, but a significant amount of work, arguing with people that just don't want anything to change.
This is a great idea.
> The simplest route is to just stop mowing and let whatever comes up after a few years stay there.
This is a horrible idea.
In most suburban environments there aren't a lot of native plants left around to be spreading seed, and most of the plants that have survived heavy artificial landscaping and will propagate on their own are weeds (often invasive) that are nothing like a nice native meadow. They will look ugly, have thorns, spread like wild fire into people's gardens if not kept under control, and make everyone hate you.
A native landscape will be less maintenance and use less water in the long run (if meadows aren't native in your area substitute whatever is), but it will take effort to get it into that state.
(I keep a fairly small lawn and the rest--other than the forest break between me and the road--gets cut by a tractor once a year.)
There are best practices for wildfire zones. Up to 5'/2m you don't want anything flammable, and up to 30'/10m you want to minimize vegetation (though some with appropriate spacing is okay):
* https://www.nfpa.org/Public-Education/Fire-causes-and-risks/...
Yeah, this exactly. There's a local horticulturist who specializes in replacing lawns with meadow-ish, native species setups. I had him come in and look at what I'd need to do to get there (no more mowing? Drought resistant? Fewer/no chemicals? I would like to subscribe to your newsletter...).
It's a lot of time/work: from getting rid of the grass, conditioning the soil, finding the right balance of species to thrive in your conditions, to keeping the invasive species out. Pretty much if you aren't regularly maintaining it, the same crud trying to take over your lawn will take over and smother your prairie. So...maybe it's 'less maintenance', but there's still good bit of maintenance.
Oof.. this must be regional. Around here if I stop mowing I would have a yard full of tumble weed, goat heads, and white top. All of which are invasive species. The best I can do with native plants that will live without much intervention is sage brush and compacted soil which is neither pleasant to look at or pleasant to live in. =/
I do feel back for folks that are forced to have a lawn that they don't use, but they do have options to live in housing without lawns, I suppose. Or they could figure out how to actually enjoy their lawn like I have. But to each their own.
Wouldn't a better solution be to change the laws / regulations forcing people into having lawns? The current status quo isn't benign - it requires people to spend time and/or money during summers doing many bad things: creating noise pollution, burning gasoline inefficiently in residential areas, etc - all to achieve an outcome that is arguably worse than what they would have done otherwise.
Personally, I love our (small, city lot) lawn. It’s great for kids, the dog, and to have a relaxing place to have friends over. If someone doesn’t want one, I don’t want to force them to have one, but they have to take some agency in not choosing a place that’s a poor fit for their desires.
What I was able to find:
> Most zoning codes require lawns, and many don’t allow much deviation from grass.
Are you against people changing laws? Why is moving from where you live the default option, rather than changing the rules?
I clearly hang around different people, since just about everyone I talk to thinks its bonkers that we mandate lawn-only, and fine people for doing otherwise.
Except maybe in cases where (as perhaps often happens in politics), one individual with free time gets to impose their preferences on others (by being the loudest and perhaps the only voice in local government meetings).
We need UBI (Universal Basic Income) and a 4DWW (Four Day Work Week) so that people would have more free time to contribute to the communities where they live (and not be burnt out from day-to-day work).
I realize this is a very narrow use case and many places require lawns for not necessarily great reasons and also a ton of chemicals and resources go into maintaining them. I try to do it as minimally as possible, and it’s not a very big area.
a and b) https://news.ucdenver.edu/hoas-go-green-colorado-bill-forces...
b in more detail) https://www.cohoalaw.com/covenant-enforcement/solar-panels-w...