How? Tear up your lawn. No, seriously.
I hate lawns. I hate green grass, sitting there, doing nothing but waiting to be cut. And then cut again. We have a huge lawn at our new house. So much in fact that the house came with a lawn tractor. And it’s not even nice, golf course style lawn. It’s ugly, cabbagey lawn. So, as part of my urban homestead plan, I have been bidding as much lawn as I possible can “goodbye.”
What’s the point of a lawn? No one knows. I can’t find anyone who can tell me why having lawn is a good thing. In fact, a History of Lawns in America, published by American-Lawns.com tells us that it wasn’t until the American Garden Club “decided” that Americans should have nice, neat little lawns – to go along with their nice, neat “little boxes on the hillside made of ticky-tacky,” that most Americans started to grow them: “Through contests and other forms of publicity, they convinced home owners that it was their civic duty to maintain a beautiful and healthy lawn. So effective was the club’s campaign that lawns were soon the accepted form of landscaping. The garden club further stipulated that the appropriate type of lawn was “a plot with a single type of grass with no intruding weeds, kept mown at a height of an inch and a half, uniformly green, and neatly edged.” America thus entered the age of lawn care.”
ICK! Before that, people had dirt in their yards – or gardens of flowers and veggies – shocker!
I ask again – what is the point of grass? To make us look like we have sweeping manses? To make us look like we have golf courses? We mow and we fertilize and we apply pesticides and we waste water and we spend over $17 billion a year on making our lawns more perfect looking. And I still can’t figure out why.
Be different. Plant a garden. Throw wildflower seeds in your front yard. Plant perennials. Join me in ditching your grass and composting it. Kill your lawnmower. Get your Saturdays back. You’ll save money, water and time.
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