13 ms·

Replacing grass lawns with native plants

159 points by gennarro 5y ago

todd8 5y ago
I used to live in the oldest home in a subdivision; it was completely xeriscaped. Over the years as the city grew more and more people moved into this subdivision building much larger homes with traditional yards. I got a lot of grief from the new neighbors. The didn’t like my modest home—it was wooden not masonry, they didn’t like the fence, they didn’t like the garage, but most of all they didn’t like the native plants in front of my house. I eventually moved to a new neighborhood, but I did keep the unoccupied xeriscaped house for a few years, out of spite I suppose.
jhunter1016 5y ago
I grew up in Tucson, AZ. A grass yard was a foreign concept to me. Everyone had rock landscaping in their front yards and either dirt or rock in the backyard.
midhhhthrow 5y ago
I think a lot of HOA are not going to allow this in the front yard. And the number and size of HOA have been growing rapidly in the last 30 years
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
My grass is native. Its densely-matted roots stabilize against erosion and make walking on wet ground possible. I let it go to seed once. It grew several feet tall and fell over, which led to thinning out, which left the yard muddy and slippery. Do not recommend. Bare spots quickly fill with saplings or poison ivy that have to be removed, anyway. My electric mower and weed eater do just fine without direct pollution, and my fern flowerbed is still muddy.
- foobiter 5y ago
  some grass is indeed native, that’s not what this article is advising against… many many lawns have grass in places where it would otherwise not grow
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  We achieve a similar effect by benign neglect: I never mow more than once a week and often it happens in 2-week intervals or when I'm bored. 2+ acres gets to be a pain, even on a riding mower. When we moved in, the lawn was whatever grass the previous owner had maintained. Now it's grass, various forms of clover, daisies and black-eyed susans in the areas where I only mow every couple weeks or so and a bunch of plants I can't identify. I like it, but the dandelions are spreading more than I want them to, so I may have to do something about that.
  - ragingrobot 5y ago
    > and a bunch of plants I can't identify. Check out Planet.net as I mentioned above, it works pretty well. > but the dandelions are spreading more than I want them to, so I may have to do something about that. Like bitter greens, perhaps in a salad? Just pick the small leaves, and although I haven't noticed, supposedly they're no good too late in the season.
    - beej71 5y ago
      Also search for dandelion coffee. Delicious stuff, though time-consuming to prepare. Personally, I like the plant. Nice flowers, doesn't need watering.
  - foobiter 5y ago
    IMO dandelions look better when there are a lot of them, bees love them too! let them grow
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  To reply to foobiter's dead comment: >some grass is indeed native, that’s not what this article is advising against… many many lawns have grass in places where it would otherwise not grow No, they advising against suburban grass maintenance in general. This without considering downsides of clean flower beds without the dense root structure homeowners are used to, or snake-friendly hiding places near your front door. Thick, muddy, pest-filled brush is native, but I have enough of it without it around my house and walkways.
i_haz_rabies 5y ago
I am in the process of doing this. I would highly recommend starting with your backyard... because it's surprisingly difficult and it's better to make your mistakes out of view of the street. I've already noticed an increase in bees and other insects though! Another tip for helping out your local insect (and thus bird) population... leave your yard "waste" where it is! It's a whole ecosystem that most people pack into bags and take to the dump every year.
- cptskippy 5y ago
  > leave your yard "waste" where it is! It's a whole ecosystem that most people pack into bags and take to the dump every year. Every year? During peak summer in Georgia, my 1/4 acre lawn was producing 8-12 30 gallon yard waste bags of grass clippings.
  - Faaak 5y ago
    We used a mulching lawn mower. no "waste", and never the need to fertilize the lawn as nutriments never leave the area
    - bluGill 5y ago
      I use a regular blow out the side mower. Even when the grass is thick it decomposes fast. The windrows will make the grass turn brown if I let the grass grow tall (like 30cm tall), but two weeks latter it all decomposes and you can't tell.
      - cptskippy 5y ago
        > Even when the grass is thick it decomposes fast. I don't know what region you're in but that was not my experience in Georgia. During the summers there isn't enough rain and the grass clippings just dry into hay. It doesn't matter if you vary your cut pattern and go over the windrows of cut grass from the previous week to scatter them about. It builds up and quickly kills the grass. It's next to impossible to maintain a healthy looking lawn without picking up the clippings. You can try composting but, unless you're diligent about watering and turning your piles, it's too slow and you eventually run out of space due to the amount of grass clippings that amass.
js2 5y ago
HOA won’t let me, but I use electric lawn tools now and I don’t water it beyond what the rain gives it. That means it goes a bit brown and dormant during the heat of the summer but the HOA rules don’t say anything about that and it recovers just fine with rain.
yummypaint 5y ago
A useful search term for more info on this is "re wilding." You can just lay down cardboard over your Kentucky bluegrass for half a year to kill it off. It also makes a big difference in water consumption if you live somewhere where that's a concern.
jaywalk 5y ago
I like my grass. If I wanted to have more "natural" parts I'd move somewhere with more land where that would make sense.
- yummypaint 5y ago
  The key question is whether people like you will support changing HOA requirements, ordinances, etc to allow your neighbors to be good stewards of their land. It's a tragedy that so much residential land is effectively forced to be used exclusively for non-native grasses, often requiring herbicides, pesticides, and outsided water consumption to keep propped up. If people want to damage their land so be it, but they have a habit of forcing others to do the same.
  - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
    To "keep property values high." In today's market, at least, I seriously doubt the quality of a neighbour's lawn will have any significant impact on property values.
    - Jtsummers 5y ago
      Or even the home's lawn. Next door neighbor's home is being sold (they're renters) and the lawn is in awful shape (not just weeds but large dead sections). It's still being sold over asking and way over what the owner paid 10 years ago. The price is in line with better maintained homes on the street that have been sold. The yard doesn't seem to matter at all.
      - sumtechguy 5y ago
        A yard takes 1-2 years to fixup into shape. Less if you go with the quick and easy 'rye' way, but that is only good for 1 year. If you can afford it hire someone who does it for a living and it will be amazing. But if you want DIY just buy plants that fit the area. Aeration and proper grooming will be the top items on the list. I would go house shopping with friends and family. I would walk into houses that were basically amazing. But they would hate the backyard had not been mowed this week and nope out. When buying a house keep an eye on structural, shape, layout, and location. Everything else is mostly decorative. For example I had to kind of move recently fairly quickly. So the apt I ended up in is very 70s. There is no fixing that structural. The owners have tried with paint and colors. But it still has a very closed in 70s build to it. No amount of paint will fix the walls that are in the way.
ragingrobot 5y ago
This is something I read about years ago, and have slowly done. I've let native clover (and some transplanted from nearby) take over a bit of the lawn. In my back yard, I've been even less meticulous, letting whatever grow do so as long as it's not unsightly. Clover (and others), in addition to the different yet nice flowers, are also beneficial to the local environment. Bees love them. As such, I have to be careful to keep it back from walkways. Dandelion leaves picked right can be used in salads. I've started using the Plant.net app to identify some of the better looking "weeds", and this summer will make it a goal to learn how to get them to propagate more. Some of these are actually part of the rose family, yet considered "bad weeds." One thing the article doesn't mention, as maybe it's not an issue where the author lives: Unfortunately some municipalities, (like my town in New Jersey) can be a pain. If you don't have a good looking lawn, you'll have Code Enforcement knocking on your door. I've had the guy stop in front of my house while I was working and tell me my grass looked a little long (in fact the mower at top deck height couldn't cut it). Especially if you have what they consider excessive weeds (clover, goldenrod and others ,while native and nice looking IMO are considered "weeds"). So the native thing can only be taken but so far. The chosen ground cover may not cover as much as grass either, which may be a turn off. If this is an appealing idea, before you really get into it, check with your town/municipalty/homeowners association.
- hosh 5y ago
  There are some tricks with this too. If it looks cultivated, then neighbors generally think it is supposed to be there. If parts of it is set aside to let it grow out with borders, it's amazing how people think that it is somehow contained. I have seen people put signs out on the front declaring the space to be a wildlife habitat. I have no idea if there are anything official like a registry that protects that.
  - rascul 5y ago
    > I have seen people put signs out on the front declaring the space to be a wildlife habitat. I have no idea if there are anything official like a registry that protects that. The National Wildlife Federation [0][1] will certify a space to be a wildlife habitat [2] in the United States. [0] https://www.nwf.org/ https://www.nwf.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wildlife_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wildlife_Federation [2] https://www.nwf.org/CertifiedWildlifeHabitat https://www.nwf.org/CertifiedWildlifeHabitat
josefresco 5y ago
We built a simple WordPress website for a local environmental organization to help people find native plants. I hope it's replicated!
- mrweasel 5y ago
  That’s a great idea, because I have no idea what’s actually native to my area.
  - josefresco 5y ago
    Not ours, but this website was our inspiration: https://mainenativeplants.org/ https://mainenativeplants.org/
sokoloff 5y ago
> Americans also spend way more water and fertilizer on their lawns than farmers use to grow corn, soybeans and other crops, according to the study. I have no idea where that study's data came from. Corn needs about 250 pounds of nitrogen per acre per year. Soybeans are higher at 300-325 pounds/acre/crop. Grass needs (on the high side) around 45# of nitrogen per acre per month only while actively growing. For a 6 month growing season (longer than mine is), that's only equal to corn, not "way more". Any homeowner who is using "way more" than that is going to get terrible (and self-correcting) results.
- kickout 5y ago
  This is highly misinformed. Corn doesn't 'need' any supplemental fertilizer (and was grown without much for centuries), we choose to do it because it's more profitable. Soybeans, being a legume, make their own nitrogen. So you comment is wildly misleading making people believe people are putting 300 pounds of nitrogen per acre
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    "Needs" might be slightly too strong a word in terms of supplemental nitrogen for corn, but note that the corn is going to take nitrogen either way, whether naturally provided or supplemented. (Corn is a grass with very tasty seeds.) However, when the article makes comparisons to what farmers are actually doing, I think it's fair game to bring in data around what farmers are actually doing.
    - kickout 5y ago
      No farmer is applying nitrogen to soybeans. They fix their own nitrogen, and generally add nitrogen to the system. Any plant is going to take nutrients (native or otherwise) from the system. Just because ornamental species don't have a commercial value doesn't mean they aren't extracting nutrients I am very familiar with corn being a grass. Although its seed are very much not tasty unless they happen to have a well known sucrose mutation.
      - 5y ago
hn8788 5y ago
I don't think it's as simple as feeling peer pressure to have a yard look the same. My backyard got out of control one year, and it quickly became a haven for mice, rabbits, snakes, turtles, crickets, mosquitoes, etc. All of that affects your neighbors as well. Since I've gotten better about keeping the grass cut, I haven't had to deal with any of those pests. I still don't fertilize or bother to keep weeds out, but keeping it short enough that it doesn't become a vermin sanctuary is part of being a good neighbor, IMO.
- fnimick 5y ago
  Your "vermin" is someone else's healthy native ecosystem. I am letting my yard overgrow right now because it is providing homes for wild rabbits. Is that being a bad neighbor?
  - krupan 5y ago
    If we wanted native ecosystems we wouldn't live in tightly sealed homes in engineered neighborhoods, we'd have lean-tos in the woods.
    - AlexandrB 5y ago
      Yes, it has to be one or the other. No other types of housing exist.
  - hn8788 5y ago
    If the rabbits aren't just staying in your yard, then I'd say you're being a bad neighbor. In my experience, the rabbits dig a bunch of holes, and leave piles of poop everywhere, even on porches and sidewalks. If you want to have a wild animals living in your yard, you should move to a rural area.
    - ceph_ 5y ago
      If you want to live in an area devoid of nature you should move to a city. But holy shit, rabbits are so benign in their impact. They're not creating tons of burrows like moles. And oh no, you have to deal with tiny poop that's 90% grass and doesn't even smell? People like you are the problem.
xivzgrev 5y ago
One aspect I didn’t see mentioned was that a lawn can be practical for a family. As kids we used to run around and play games, the dog liked to run a lot etc. and it’s easiest on a flat short and even surface. Plus you don’t have to worry about kids encountering critters, insect bites/stings, etc. If your yard is more to LOOK at than to use, then this makes more sense to me
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- mythobit 5y ago
  I live in a neighborhood full of families and the number that actually use their yards for anything other than mowing is minimal. As for my own kids they seemed to have much more fun in the nearby woods than the yards.
- i_haz_rabies 5y ago
  Kids will enjoy anything. Playing hide and seek in a backyard jungle is just as fun as running around on grass, and for most people there is invariably a park nearby. And kids encountering critters and stinging insects is a part of growing up! If anything, children are too isolated from nature these days.
  - dls2016 5y ago
    Agree, but ticks are no fun.
    - hosh 5y ago
      Backyard chickens will love to eat tasty ticks.
    - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
      Indeed. We've brought this on ourselves, though, by pushing out predator species that eat the mice that carry the ticks and expanding their range with climate change.
jawns 5y ago
I have kids who like to play in our yard. All sorts of sports and running around. For that type of activity, grass is ideal. In contrast, a yard full of native plants sounds nice ... but you can't really do anything in it. It becomes ornamental rather than functional. I can't play a game a baseball if my entire yard is ferns and flowers rather than grass. That said, in garden beds and places where plants and trees do make sense, installing native species is a no-brainer. We're in the process of getting rid of a bunch of non-native shrubs and plants and replacing them with native. And in that case, we're making a transition from ornamental to functional. Previously, the trees and shrubs looked nice, but the birds and bugs didn't particularly care for them. Now, the birds are eating the berries, the butterflies and bees are loving the flowering plants, and we spend less time on maintenance.
- oxfordmale 5y ago
  Living in the UK, and not taking particular care of my yard, grass is no longer the major species in my yard. There are plenty of native species in my garden such as daisies, dandelions and a lot of moss in the wetter places. The local bees and birds seem to be very happen with the garden and my kids can still play in it. I only mow the grass when it gets really too long (more than a few inches) to prevent any nasty native species taking hold (nettles and thistles).
- jonnycomputer 5y ago
  Just because something is a native species doesn't mean it can be a traditional lawn. https://content.yardmap.org/learn/native-grasses-for-your-native-lawn/ https://content.yardmap.org/learn/native-grasses-for-your-na... But its true that a lot of the ecological benefit would be forgone by a traditional lawn even with native grasses. But it does have the advantage of limiting the spread of non-native species that can (but no always) have harmful affects on local ecologies.
- peterb 5y ago
  I also have kids, but where I live we have plenty of pine & maple trees and traditional grass doesn't grow well in the shade. But we are lucky and native moss filled in. Moss is great for balls, they bounce & roll better, especially for games like bocce & croquet. The kids love it and I rarely have to mow or water. Sometimes there is a native alternative to grass, sometimes not.
elzbardico 5y ago
I find American home landscaping deeply boring. The absence of walls means you have no much privacy outside your backyard, or in the front rooms with your curtain opens. And given this "open-plan" scheme, there's no much you can do other than the ubiquitous grass front lawn and driveway. Along with this lack of privacy, comes the usual pains of suburbia: gossiping, neighbors pets and the need to conform because you're basically under watch. for a nation so professedly individualistic and fearful of collectivism this is truly puzzling. The sheer uniformity of it is truly suffocating. Now compare this with latin and Mediterranean urbanism and landscaping, free from the puritan obsession of the urban panopticon and the urge for uniformity.
- i_haz_rabies 5y ago
  Some days I look outside in my suburb and feel a sense of the surreal. It's a deeply unnatural and bizarre scene.
- dsr_ 5y ago
  That's quite the stereotype... and it is not universally true. On one side of my property, I have a wooden fence, almost 2m high. There are trees and bushes against it, and I'm starting a raspberry bramble. On the opposite side, there's a low mesh fence which is intertwined with a number of trees. On the back side, I have grape vines climbing over the native bushes and trees, and my property stops at the creek. In wintertime I can see the neighbors, and as soon as spring starts they disappear behind the greenery. This is all fairly normal for my town outside of Boston.
  - kyleee 5y ago
    The stereotyping of America is reaching absurd and comical levels here on HN, I'm finding it very funny lately
    - rootusrootus 5y ago
      I agree 100%. I'm amazed at the weird stereotypes I hear both here and on Reddit, and not a small amount of hate (or at least snobbish derision). I have a hard time relating what these people believe to the America that I live in.
goda90 5y ago
If you want lawn that is easy to walk/run around on, there are still things you can do to reduce impact. Overseed with clover(there's microclover that doesn't get as big as typical kinds). Never spray herbicides or pesticides. Don't fertilize(the clover will fix nitrogen on its own). Try to mow just enough that it isn't super short, but that you can mulch every time instead of bagging. In the fall, mulch as many of the leaves as you can into the lawn(start early before all the trees drop), the goal being to keep the leaf matter around, but to not have it start matting and killing the lawn.
- Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
  Isn't mulching counter-productive, then? I don't fertilise but also always bag for the same reason, to keep the grass lean in favour of the weeds.
  - goda90 5y ago
    The mulching keeps the organic matter in the lawn, so it becomes part of the topsoil, helping it be more nutrient rich and better at retaining water. It's part of developing an ecosystem. If you're spraying chemicals and fertilizing, then you also have to throw in extra work like dethatching because all the decomposition cycles get messed up and you might kill the grass. Honestly, the number one thing to do is change your definition of what is a weed. Clover used to be part of grass mixes, but was re-marketed as a weed because broad-leaf herbicides were profitable. There's lots of other broad-leaf plants that can blend in with grass just fine(some are even edible!) and they both help fertilize naturally, as well as fill in the gaps where things like annoying thistles or hyper-aggressive plants might try to edge in.
    - Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
      But the whole reason why I'm not fertilising is because I want it to to be nutrient poor. Why would I then want to make it nutrient rich again by mulching? Nutrient rich is what you want for those completely uniform boomer tier lawns with only one species of grass. Whereas nutrient poor forces the grass to take a step back and leave more space for all those broad leaf plants.
krupan 5y ago
I hope the people commenting about how great this is have really tried it for a few years. In my experience, living in the dry western U.S., it's not that great. You go from a cheery bright green lawn that only needs a quick mowing once a week to a bunch of drab desert plants and the need to do some back breaking hauling and spreading of wood chips every spring to keep the weeds (you know, also "native" plants) from growing. And as others have said, it's not usable for anything other than looking at or for doing more yard work. No soccer or frisbee among the shrubs. People pointing out that you can still mow your "prairie grass" down to a usable lawn must not live in the western US. The "native" "grass" here is all sagebrush and a variety of thorny things.
- 35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
  > living in the dry western U.S., it's not that great Over the last four or five years, my wife & I have killed 75% of our 1 acre Eastern US lawn and replaced it with native trees and plants. I have lovely grasses and flowers (asters, Susans, coneflowers and phlox) in the front, native trees and undergrowth towards the back, and a quarter acre or so of plain old lawn which we're planning to introduce clover into. We've got trees coming in nicely and starting to give shade, butterflies fluttering around the flowers, a vegetable garden in the corner, and 75% less lawn to worry about mowing. I wouldn't give it up for anything.
- cgs 5y ago
  It's not all roses. We are on year 2 after hardscaping/xeriscaping our central Oregon yard. We took out all grass and put in about 40 native plants and grasses, mostly on our easement. Our main lawn is mostly mulch. We ran into a few issues. 1 - one time a freak wind storm with 40+mph gusts blew some of the mulch away and we had to get about 1/2 yard more to replace it. 2 - our yard is on a slope and we did not account for proper drainage. During a huge storm, part of the yard washed out. We have since put in a drain/sink and it's fine now. We still have to weed and touch up the mulch. So just know it's not a maintenance free thing. I'd still do it again though for the the following reasons: 1 - much lower water usage. 2 - one less asshole on our street running lawn equipment. I absolutely hated maintaining/cutting grass. 3 - Really nice curb appeal. It actually looks great and we've had neighbors ask about it.
dukeofdoom 5y ago
Or keep the lawn, and plant some vines. If you combine two or more you can get some stunning results. A climbing rose with clematis for example. Maybe some sort of native vine. Best of both worlds.
- readflaggedcomm 5y ago
  That can backfire. I allowed some confederate jasmine to grow and now its strong-as-wire vines are destroying building and equipment. I have to use those plastic blades on my weed eater to make a dent in it, and they don't last the hour because it's all on fence and the edge of concrete. After not mowing for a couple of weeks I see vines popping up a few inches above the grass, and I know it will bind the blades if I let it go further.
  - HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
    In case you don't know about them, they also make plastic blades with steel teeth embedded in them. I use them to get rid of thistles for when I don't want to deal with the extra weight of my brushcutter.
montalbano 5y ago
A video on this topic from my favourite botanist: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M
- i_haz_rabies 5y ago
  this guy is the best.
- aporetics 5y ago
  Awesome!
bobiny 5y ago
https://reddit.com/r/NoLawns https://reddit.com/r/NoLawns There are examples of how such lawns may look like and an attached post with wiki that contains a lot of resources for beginners and the curious.
CaptArmchair 5y ago
This is one of those issues where individual choices end up having compounding effects. Sure, on an individual level, it's totally reasonable to shape the patch of private property around your house into a grass lawn or a garden with a selection of species. Driveways are common as everyone needs a parking spot for their car, right? Compound that over regions with millions of people and that's quite big percentage of land that gets devoid of it's natural biodiversity. Which has all kinds of secondary consequences. Where I live, 75 years of fiscal policies have promoted home ownership. And so, houses with a front and back garden, terraces and hardened driveways are the norm. I also live in a one of the most densely populated regions of the world, which used to have a rather wet climate. And so, combined, this region has been optimized for drainage of excess water. It used to have a rather wet climate but that's clearly changing. This region has seen an increase in heat waves during summer times and over the past decade. Low water tables and increased temperatures in micro climates are causing concern with policy makers regarding water shortages and public health issues (heat strokes and such). Academic research and engineers are modelling that the problem will only be exacerbated by how land has been shaped through human activity. As a response, in a general public policy shift, public awareness campaigns and citizen research projects are now targeting home owners to re-think the way they shape their lawns and gardens. One of the biggest projects currently ongoing: https://curieuzeneuzen.be/home-en/ https://curieuzeneuzen.be/home-en/ Of course, the big issue is that this involves private property, and it's extremely hard convincing people that a harmless decision to have a nice or functionally cultivated property with your house on, does have end up having an environmental impact. This wasn't an issue for decades on end, but as external circumstances are changing, this is gradually becoming part of a complex issue.
- rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
  > ...the big issue is that this involves private property, and it's extremely hard convincing people... Money helps. Some locales in drier areas of the U.S. provide incentives for making changes to your property to reduce it's environmental impact. E.g. replacing a grass lawn with native desert plants, adding solar panels to the roof, capturing rainwater from driveways and roofs and using it to water plants and flush toilets, etc.
steve76 5y ago
China and India, it's time stop building a coal power plant a week just because you don't know what you are doing, don't read the instructions, burn it down by messing up big, and bulldoze it all into the ocean.
twobitshifter 5y ago
> “I was just reading how running a lawn mower for one hour creates the same amount of pollution as driving the average car for 350 miles,” Merda said. It’s a quote but the author should have fact checked this since it’s the type of thing people will love to repeat. New lawnmowers are all 4 stroke and based on the quantity of gasoline consumed alone cannot produce as much emissions in terms of CO2 as a car driving 350 miles (unless it’s a Tesla). In terms of NOx and CO, the EPA added regulations in 2011 to reduce these emissions by 35%, and with those regulations followed followed it should be much lower than a car driving for 350 miles. And finally - electric lawnmowers are now very common.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- captainmuon 5y ago
  Also, if your lawn is not too huge, you can try out a spindle (mechanical) mower. They are much easier to push than I imagined and give a very clean cut since they work like scissors and don't just chop the grass off.
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    Do you mean reel mower? Those are pretty great, but they do need to be kept in good repair, clean, lubricated, and blades sharp. And you have to cut often enough so the grass doesn't get too tall. But for a small city lot they're pretty neat. We had one when I was growing up, but it was none of those things so it was mostly a great big PITA ;).
    - captainmuon 5y ago
      Yeah that's the right English term, thanks. I now have a modern, new one and it works much better than I remember them from my childhood. But you're right about the downsides, I occasionally have to use the electric mower when the grass becomes too tall.
- aporetics 5y ago
99_00 5y ago
I don't understand the advocacy and politics around home landscaping. If you want a lawn, get a lawn. If you want something else do that. It's great to present and talk about options. But when people feel the need to justify and defend their choice it's gone beyond landscaping and become something unsavory.
- aporetics 5y ago
  There are actually consequences to what you choose to do with/to the land. Its not just about personal preference.
  - 99_00 5y ago
    There are consequences to every decision people make. This type of policing is the wrong path to take. Diet, transportation, having a pet, having children, flying, the list is endless.
    - aporetics 5y ago
      Who is policing? Providing and spreading the best available knowledge and trying to activate others’ conscience is not policing. Yes there are consequences, namely the collapse of ecosystems. Decide what’s more important, and know why its more important. What is the alternative to thinking about how you live?
      - frumper 5y ago
        Not everyone is going to agree on the best available knowledge because not everyone has the same goals.
BJBBB 5y ago
The National Wildlife Federation says that a native plant "...has occurred naturally in a particular region, ecosystem, or habitat without human introduction." Given that, the article may have problems because some of that stuff is not native. For my region (my property abuts a wildlife refuge, a national forest, and an Indian reservation), many 'native' plant species are illegal or are disallowed by insurance policies within 5m to 50m of a building. Climates have changed and appear to be rapidly changing. So the affected ecosystems will change. And does the re-introduction of a plant species that is no longer found at large, constitute a non-native species introduction? Is the synthetic preservation and cultivation of a native plant species that is no longer suitable for a changing ecosystem constitute an unnatural and thus non-native species? And what about plants that pop up from germinated seed (probably transported by birds and wind) that are not native to this area but thrive because I have altered the habitat? [additions and changes from pond and drainage control and fencing projects]
SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago
A back yard lawn provides a nice flat, private space. A front yard lawn is far more public, and typically smaller (so not useful for activities). Plant a garden in front to actually make use of that space.
neonate 5y ago
https://archive.is/8NH13 https://archive.is/8NH13

159 points by gennarro 5y ago

I used to live in the oldest home in a subdivision; it was completely xeriscaped. Over the years as the city grew more and more people moved into this subdivision building much larger homes with traditional yards. I got a lot of grief from the new neighbors. The didn’t like my modest home—it was wooden not masonry, they didn’t like the fence, they didn’t like the garage, but most of all they didn’t like the native plants in front of my house. I eventually moved to a new neighborhood, but I did keep the unoccupied xeriscaped house for a few years, out of spite I suppose.

jhunter1016 5y ago

I grew up in Tucson, AZ. A grass yard was a foreign concept to me. Everyone had rock landscaping in their front yards and either dirt or rock in the backyard.

midhhhthrow 5y ago

I think a lot of HOA are not going to allow this in the front yard. And the number and size of HOA have been growing rapidly in the last 30 years

readflaggedcomm 5y ago

My grass is native. Its densely-matted roots stabilize against erosion and make walking on wet ground possible. I let it go to seed once. It grew several feet tall and fell over, which led to thinning out, which left the yard muddy and slippery. Do not recommend. Bare spots quickly fill with saplings or poison ivy that have to be removed, anyway. My electric mower and weed eater do just fine without direct pollution, and my fern flowerbed is still muddy.

foobiter 5y ago
some grass is indeed native, that’s not what this article is advising against… many many lawns have grass in places where it would otherwise not grow
HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
We achieve a similar effect by benign neglect: I never mow more than once a week and often it happens in 2-week intervals or when I'm bored. 2+ acres gets to be a pain, even on a riding mower. When we moved in, the lawn was whatever grass the previous owner had maintained. Now it's grass, various forms of clover, daisies and black-eyed susans in the areas where I only mow every couple weeks or so and a bunch of plants I can't identify. I like it, but the dandelions are spreading more than I want them to, so I may have to do something about that.
- ragingrobot 5y ago
  > and a bunch of plants I can't identify. Check out Planet.net as I mentioned above, it works pretty well. > but the dandelions are spreading more than I want them to, so I may have to do something about that. Like bitter greens, perhaps in a salad? Just pick the small leaves, and although I haven't noticed, supposedly they're no good too late in the season.
  - beej71 5y ago
    Also search for dandelion coffee. Delicious stuff, though time-consuming to prepare. Personally, I like the plant. Nice flowers, doesn't need watering.
- foobiter 5y ago
  IMO dandelions look better when there are a lot of them, bees love them too! let them grow
readflaggedcomm 5y ago
To reply to foobiter's dead comment: >some grass is indeed native, that’s not what this article is advising against… many many lawns have grass in places where it would otherwise not grow No, they advising against suburban grass maintenance in general. This without considering downsides of clean flower beds without the dense root structure homeowners are used to, or snake-friendly hiding places near your front door. Thick, muddy, pest-filled brush is native, but I have enough of it without it around my house and walkways.

i_haz_rabies 5y ago

I am in the process of doing this. I would highly recommend starting with your backyard... because it's surprisingly difficult and it's better to make your mistakes out of view of the street. I've already noticed an increase in bees and other insects though! Another tip for helping out your local insect (and thus bird) population... leave your yard "waste" where it is! It's a whole ecosystem that most people pack into bags and take to the dump every year.

cptskippy 5y ago
> leave your yard "waste" where it is! It's a whole ecosystem that most people pack into bags and take to the dump every year. Every year? During peak summer in Georgia, my 1/4 acre lawn was producing 8-12 30 gallon yard waste bags of grass clippings.
- Faaak 5y ago
  We used a mulching lawn mower. no "waste", and never the need to fertilize the lawn as nutriments never leave the area
  - bluGill 5y ago
    I use a regular blow out the side mower. Even when the grass is thick it decomposes fast. The windrows will make the grass turn brown if I let the grass grow tall (like 30cm tall), but two weeks latter it all decomposes and you can't tell.
    - cptskippy 5y ago
      > Even when the grass is thick it decomposes fast. I don't know what region you're in but that was not my experience in Georgia. During the summers there isn't enough rain and the grass clippings just dry into hay. It doesn't matter if you vary your cut pattern and go over the windrows of cut grass from the previous week to scatter them about. It builds up and quickly kills the grass. It's next to impossible to maintain a healthy looking lawn without picking up the clippings. You can try composting but, unless you're diligent about watering and turning your piles, it's too slow and you eventually run out of space due to the amount of grass clippings that amass.

js2 5y ago

HOA won’t let me, but I use electric lawn tools now and I don’t water it beyond what the rain gives it. That means it goes a bit brown and dormant during the heat of the summer but the HOA rules don’t say anything about that and it recovers just fine with rain.

yummypaint 5y ago

A useful search term for more info on this is "re wilding." You can just lay down cardboard over your Kentucky bluegrass for half a year to kill it off. It also makes a big difference in water consumption if you live somewhere where that's a concern.

jaywalk 5y ago

I like my grass. If I wanted to have more "natural" parts I'd move somewhere with more land where that would make sense.

yummypaint 5y ago
The key question is whether people like you will support changing HOA requirements, ordinances, etc to allow your neighbors to be good stewards of their land. It's a tragedy that so much residential land is effectively forced to be used exclusively for non-native grasses, often requiring herbicides, pesticides, and outsided water consumption to keep propped up. If people want to damage their land so be it, but they have a habit of forcing others to do the same.
- i_haz_rabies 5y ago
  To "keep property values high." In today's market, at least, I seriously doubt the quality of a neighbour's lawn will have any significant impact on property values.
  - Jtsummers 5y ago
    Or even the home's lawn. Next door neighbor's home is being sold (they're renters) and the lawn is in awful shape (not just weeds but large dead sections). It's still being sold over asking and way over what the owner paid 10 years ago. The price is in line with better maintained homes on the street that have been sold. The yard doesn't seem to matter at all.
    - sumtechguy 5y ago
      A yard takes 1-2 years to fixup into shape. Less if you go with the quick and easy 'rye' way, but that is only good for 1 year. If you can afford it hire someone who does it for a living and it will be amazing. But if you want DIY just buy plants that fit the area. Aeration and proper grooming will be the top items on the list. I would go house shopping with friends and family. I would walk into houses that were basically amazing. But they would hate the backyard had not been mowed this week and nope out. When buying a house keep an eye on structural, shape, layout, and location. Everything else is mostly decorative. For example I had to kind of move recently fairly quickly. So the apt I ended up in is very 70s. There is no fixing that structural. The owners have tried with paint and colors. But it still has a very closed in 70s build to it. No amount of paint will fix the walls that are in the way.

ragingrobot 5y ago

This is something I read about years ago, and have slowly done. I've let native clover (and some transplanted from nearby) take over a bit of the lawn. In my back yard, I've been even less meticulous, letting whatever grow do so as long as it's not unsightly. Clover (and others), in addition to the different yet nice flowers, are also beneficial to the local environment. Bees love them. As such, I have to be careful to keep it back from walkways. Dandelion leaves picked right can be used in salads. I've started using the Plant.net app to identify some of the better looking "weeds", and this summer will make it a goal to learn how to get them to propagate more. Some of these are actually part of the rose family, yet considered "bad weeds." One thing the article doesn't mention, as maybe it's not an issue where the author lives: Unfortunately some municipalities, (like my town in New Jersey) can be a pain. If you don't have a good looking lawn, you'll have Code Enforcement knocking on your door. I've had the guy stop in front of my house while I was working and tell me my grass looked a little long (in fact the mower at top deck height couldn't cut it). Especially if you have what they consider excessive weeds (clover, goldenrod and others ,while native and nice looking IMO are considered "weeds"). So the native thing can only be taken but so far. The chosen ground cover may not cover as much as grass either, which may be a turn off. If this is an appealing idea, before you really get into it, check with your town/municipalty/homeowners association.

hosh 5y ago
There are some tricks with this too. If it looks cultivated, then neighbors generally think it is supposed to be there. If parts of it is set aside to let it grow out with borders, it's amazing how people think that it is somehow contained. I have seen people put signs out on the front declaring the space to be a wildlife habitat. I have no idea if there are anything official like a registry that protects that.
- rascul 5y ago
  > I have seen people put signs out on the front declaring the space to be a wildlife habitat. I have no idea if there are anything official like a registry that protects that. The National Wildlife Federation [0][1] will certify a space to be a wildlife habitat [2] in the United States. [0] https://www.nwf.org/ https://www.nwf.org/ [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wildlife_Federation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Wildlife_Federation [2] https://www.nwf.org/CertifiedWildlifeHabitat https://www.nwf.org/CertifiedWildlifeHabitat

josefresco 5y ago

We built a simple WordPress website for a local environmental organization to help people find native plants. I hope it's replicated!

mrweasel 5y ago
That’s a great idea, because I have no idea what’s actually native to my area.
- josefresco 5y ago
  Not ours, but this website was our inspiration: https://mainenativeplants.org/ https://mainenativeplants.org/

sokoloff 5y ago

> Americans also spend way more water and fertilizer on their lawns than farmers use to grow corn, soybeans and other crops, according to the study. I have no idea where that study's data came from. Corn needs about 250 pounds of nitrogen per acre per year. Soybeans are higher at 300-325 pounds/acre/crop. Grass needs (on the high side) around 45# of nitrogen per acre per month only while actively growing. For a 6 month growing season (longer than mine is), that's only equal to corn, not "way more". Any homeowner who is using "way more" than that is going to get terrible (and self-correcting) results.

kickout 5y ago
This is highly misinformed. Corn doesn't 'need' any supplemental fertilizer (and was grown without much for centuries), we choose to do it because it's more profitable. Soybeans, being a legume, make their own nitrogen. So you comment is wildly misleading making people believe people are putting 300 pounds of nitrogen per acre
- sokoloff 5y ago
  "Needs" might be slightly too strong a word in terms of supplemental nitrogen for corn, but note that the corn is going to take nitrogen either way, whether naturally provided or supplemented. (Corn is a grass with very tasty seeds.) However, when the article makes comparisons to what farmers are actually doing, I think it's fair game to bring in data around what farmers are actually doing.
  - kickout 5y ago
    No farmer is applying nitrogen to soybeans. They fix their own nitrogen, and generally add nitrogen to the system. Any plant is going to take nutrients (native or otherwise) from the system. Just because ornamental species don't have a commercial value doesn't mean they aren't extracting nutrients I am very familiar with corn being a grass. Although its seed are very much not tasty unless they happen to have a well known sucrose mutation.
    - 5y ago

hn8788 5y ago

I don't think it's as simple as feeling peer pressure to have a yard look the same. My backyard got out of control one year, and it quickly became a haven for mice, rabbits, snakes, turtles, crickets, mosquitoes, etc. All of that affects your neighbors as well. Since I've gotten better about keeping the grass cut, I haven't had to deal with any of those pests. I still don't fertilize or bother to keep weeds out, but keeping it short enough that it doesn't become a vermin sanctuary is part of being a good neighbor, IMO.

fnimick 5y ago
Your "vermin" is someone else's healthy native ecosystem. I am letting my yard overgrow right now because it is providing homes for wild rabbits. Is that being a bad neighbor?
- krupan 5y ago
  If we wanted native ecosystems we wouldn't live in tightly sealed homes in engineered neighborhoods, we'd have lean-tos in the woods.
  - AlexandrB 5y ago
    Yes, it has to be one or the other. No other types of housing exist.
- hn8788 5y ago
  If the rabbits aren't just staying in your yard, then I'd say you're being a bad neighbor. In my experience, the rabbits dig a bunch of holes, and leave piles of poop everywhere, even on porches and sidewalks. If you want to have a wild animals living in your yard, you should move to a rural area.
  - ceph_ 5y ago
    If you want to live in an area devoid of nature you should move to a city. But holy shit, rabbits are so benign in their impact. They're not creating tons of burrows like moles. And oh no, you have to deal with tiny poop that's 90% grass and doesn't even smell? People like you are the problem.

xivzgrev 5y ago

One aspect I didn’t see mentioned was that a lawn can be practical for a family. As kids we used to run around and play games, the dog liked to run a lot etc. and it’s easiest on a flat short and even surface. Plus you don’t have to worry about kids encountering critters, insect bites/stings, etc. If your yard is more to LOOK at than to use, then this makes more sense to me

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
mythobit 5y ago
I live in a neighborhood full of families and the number that actually use their yards for anything other than mowing is minimal. As for my own kids they seemed to have much more fun in the nearby woods than the yards.
i_haz_rabies 5y ago
Kids will enjoy anything. Playing hide and seek in a backyard jungle is just as fun as running around on grass, and for most people there is invariably a park nearby. And kids encountering critters and stinging insects is a part of growing up! If anything, children are too isolated from nature these days.
- dls2016 5y ago
  Agree, but ticks are no fun.
  - hosh 5y ago
    Backyard chickens will love to eat tasty ticks.
  - i_haz_rabies 5y ago
    Indeed. We've brought this on ourselves, though, by pushing out predator species that eat the mice that carry the ticks and expanding their range with climate change.

jawns 5y ago

I have kids who like to play in our yard. All sorts of sports and running around. For that type of activity, grass is ideal. In contrast, a yard full of native plants sounds nice ... but you can't really do anything in it. It becomes ornamental rather than functional. I can't play a game a baseball if my entire yard is ferns and flowers rather than grass. That said, in garden beds and places where plants and trees do make sense, installing native species is a no-brainer. We're in the process of getting rid of a bunch of non-native shrubs and plants and replacing them with native. And in that case, we're making a transition from ornamental to functional. Previously, the trees and shrubs looked nice, but the birds and bugs didn't particularly care for them. Now, the birds are eating the berries, the butterflies and bees are loving the flowering plants, and we spend less time on maintenance.

oxfordmale 5y ago
Living in the UK, and not taking particular care of my yard, grass is no longer the major species in my yard. There are plenty of native species in my garden such as daisies, dandelions and a lot of moss in the wetter places. The local bees and birds seem to be very happen with the garden and my kids can still play in it. I only mow the grass when it gets really too long (more than a few inches) to prevent any nasty native species taking hold (nettles and thistles).
jonnycomputer 5y ago
Just because something is a native species doesn't mean it can be a traditional lawn. https://content.yardmap.org/learn/native-grasses-for-your-native-lawn/ https://content.yardmap.org/learn/native-grasses-for-your-na... But its true that a lot of the ecological benefit would be forgone by a traditional lawn even with native grasses. But it does have the advantage of limiting the spread of non-native species that can (but no always) have harmful affects on local ecologies.
peterb 5y ago
I also have kids, but where I live we have plenty of pine & maple trees and traditional grass doesn't grow well in the shade. But we are lucky and native moss filled in. Moss is great for balls, they bounce & roll better, especially for games like bocce & croquet. The kids love it and I rarely have to mow or water. Sometimes there is a native alternative to grass, sometimes not.

elzbardico 5y ago

I find American home landscaping deeply boring. The absence of walls means you have no much privacy outside your backyard, or in the front rooms with your curtain opens. And given this "open-plan" scheme, there's no much you can do other than the ubiquitous grass front lawn and driveway. Along with this lack of privacy, comes the usual pains of suburbia: gossiping, neighbors pets and the need to conform because you're basically under watch. for a nation so professedly individualistic and fearful of collectivism this is truly puzzling. The sheer uniformity of it is truly suffocating. Now compare this with latin and Mediterranean urbanism and landscaping, free from the puritan obsession of the urban panopticon and the urge for uniformity.

i_haz_rabies 5y ago
Some days I look outside in my suburb and feel a sense of the surreal. It's a deeply unnatural and bizarre scene.
dsr_ 5y ago
That's quite the stereotype... and it is not universally true. On one side of my property, I have a wooden fence, almost 2m high. There are trees and bushes against it, and I'm starting a raspberry bramble. On the opposite side, there's a low mesh fence which is intertwined with a number of trees. On the back side, I have grape vines climbing over the native bushes and trees, and my property stops at the creek. In wintertime I can see the neighbors, and as soon as spring starts they disappear behind the greenery. This is all fairly normal for my town outside of Boston.
- kyleee 5y ago
  The stereotyping of America is reaching absurd and comical levels here on HN, I'm finding it very funny lately
  - rootusrootus 5y ago
    I agree 100%. I'm amazed at the weird stereotypes I hear both here and on Reddit, and not a small amount of hate (or at least snobbish derision). I have a hard time relating what these people believe to the America that I live in.

goda90 5y ago

If you want lawn that is easy to walk/run around on, there are still things you can do to reduce impact. Overseed with clover(there's microclover that doesn't get as big as typical kinds). Never spray herbicides or pesticides. Don't fertilize(the clover will fix nitrogen on its own). Try to mow just enough that it isn't super short, but that you can mulch every time instead of bagging. In the fall, mulch as many of the leaves as you can into the lawn(start early before all the trees drop), the goal being to keep the leaf matter around, but to not have it start matting and killing the lawn.

Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
Isn't mulching counter-productive, then? I don't fertilise but also always bag for the same reason, to keep the grass lean in favour of the weeds.
- goda90 5y ago
  The mulching keeps the organic matter in the lawn, so it becomes part of the topsoil, helping it be more nutrient rich and better at retaining water. It's part of developing an ecosystem. If you're spraying chemicals and fertilizing, then you also have to throw in extra work like dethatching because all the decomposition cycles get messed up and you might kill the grass. Honestly, the number one thing to do is change your definition of what is a weed. Clover used to be part of grass mixes, but was re-marketed as a weed because broad-leaf herbicides were profitable. There's lots of other broad-leaf plants that can blend in with grass just fine(some are even edible!) and they both help fertilize naturally, as well as fill in the gaps where things like annoying thistles or hyper-aggressive plants might try to edge in.
  - Tabular-Iceberg 5y ago
    But the whole reason why I'm not fertilising is because I want it to to be nutrient poor. Why would I then want to make it nutrient rich again by mulching? Nutrient rich is what you want for those completely uniform boomer tier lawns with only one species of grass. Whereas nutrient poor forces the grass to take a step back and leave more space for all those broad leaf plants.

krupan 5y ago

I hope the people commenting about how great this is have really tried it for a few years. In my experience, living in the dry western U.S., it's not that great. You go from a cheery bright green lawn that only needs a quick mowing once a week to a bunch of drab desert plants and the need to do some back breaking hauling and spreading of wood chips every spring to keep the weeds (you know, also "native" plants) from growing. And as others have said, it's not usable for anything other than looking at or for doing more yard work. No soccer or frisbee among the shrubs. People pointing out that you can still mow your "prairie grass" down to a usable lawn must not live in the western US. The "native" "grass" here is all sagebrush and a variety of thorny things.

35fbe7d3d5b9 5y ago
> living in the dry western U.S., it's not that great Over the last four or five years, my wife & I have killed 75% of our 1 acre Eastern US lawn and replaced it with native trees and plants. I have lovely grasses and flowers (asters, Susans, coneflowers and phlox) in the front, native trees and undergrowth towards the back, and a quarter acre or so of plain old lawn which we're planning to introduce clover into. We've got trees coming in nicely and starting to give shade, butterflies fluttering around the flowers, a vegetable garden in the corner, and 75% less lawn to worry about mowing. I wouldn't give it up for anything.
cgs 5y ago
It's not all roses. We are on year 2 after hardscaping/xeriscaping our central Oregon yard. We took out all grass and put in about 40 native plants and grasses, mostly on our easement. Our main lawn is mostly mulch. We ran into a few issues. 1 - one time a freak wind storm with 40+mph gusts blew some of the mulch away and we had to get about 1/2 yard more to replace it. 2 - our yard is on a slope and we did not account for proper drainage. During a huge storm, part of the yard washed out. We have since put in a drain/sink and it's fine now. We still have to weed and touch up the mulch. So just know it's not a maintenance free thing. I'd still do it again though for the the following reasons: 1 - much lower water usage. 2 - one less asshole on our street running lawn equipment. I absolutely hated maintaining/cutting grass. 3 - Really nice curb appeal. It actually looks great and we've had neighbors ask about it.

dukeofdoom 5y ago

Or keep the lawn, and plant some vines. If you combine two or more you can get some stunning results. A climbing rose with clematis for example. Maybe some sort of native vine. Best of both worlds.

readflaggedcomm 5y ago
That can backfire. I allowed some confederate jasmine to grow and now its strong-as-wire vines are destroying building and equipment. I have to use those plastic blades on my weed eater to make a dent in it, and they don't last the hour because it's all on fence and the edge of concrete. After not mowing for a couple of weeks I see vines popping up a few inches above the grass, and I know it will bind the blades if I let it go further.
- HeyLaughingBoy 5y ago
  In case you don't know about them, they also make plastic blades with steel teeth embedded in them. I use them to get rid of thistles for when I don't want to deal with the extra weight of my brushcutter.

montalbano 5y ago

A video on this topic from my favourite botanist: Crime Pays but Botany Doesn't https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=oz9I2YwmV8M

i_haz_rabies 5y ago
this guy is the best.
aporetics 5y ago
Awesome!

bobiny 5y ago

https://reddit.com/r/NoLawns https://reddit.com/r/NoLawns There are examples of how such lawns may look like and an attached post with wiki that contains a lot of resources for beginners and the curious.

CaptArmchair 5y ago

This is one of those issues where individual choices end up having compounding effects. Sure, on an individual level, it's totally reasonable to shape the patch of private property around your house into a grass lawn or a garden with a selection of species. Driveways are common as everyone needs a parking spot for their car, right? Compound that over regions with millions of people and that's quite big percentage of land that gets devoid of it's natural biodiversity. Which has all kinds of secondary consequences. Where I live, 75 years of fiscal policies have promoted home ownership. And so, houses with a front and back garden, terraces and hardened driveways are the norm. I also live in a one of the most densely populated regions of the world, which used to have a rather wet climate. And so, combined, this region has been optimized for drainage of excess water. It used to have a rather wet climate but that's clearly changing. This region has seen an increase in heat waves during summer times and over the past decade. Low water tables and increased temperatures in micro climates are causing concern with policy makers regarding water shortages and public health issues (heat strokes and such). Academic research and engineers are modelling that the problem will only be exacerbated by how land has been shaped through human activity. As a response, in a general public policy shift, public awareness campaigns and citizen research projects are now targeting home owners to re-think the way they shape their lawns and gardens. One of the biggest projects currently ongoing: https://curieuzeneuzen.be/home-en/ https://curieuzeneuzen.be/home-en/ Of course, the big issue is that this involves private property, and it's extremely hard convincing people that a harmless decision to have a nice or functionally cultivated property with your house on, does have end up having an environmental impact. This wasn't an issue for decades on end, but as external circumstances are changing, this is gradually becoming part of a complex issue.

rrrrrrrrrrrryan 5y ago
> ...the big issue is that this involves private property, and it's extremely hard convincing people... Money helps. Some locales in drier areas of the U.S. provide incentives for making changes to your property to reduce it's environmental impact. E.g. replacing a grass lawn with native desert plants, adding solar panels to the roof, capturing rainwater from driveways and roofs and using it to water plants and flush toilets, etc.

steve76 5y ago

China and India, it's time stop building a coal power plant a week just because you don't know what you are doing, don't read the instructions, burn it down by messing up big, and bulldoze it all into the ocean.

twobitshifter 5y ago

> “I was just reading how running a lawn mower for one hour creates the same amount of pollution as driving the average car for 350 miles,” Merda said. It’s a quote but the author should have fact checked this since it’s the type of thing people will love to repeat. New lawnmowers are all 4 stroke and based on the quantity of gasoline consumed alone cannot produce as much emissions in terms of CO2 as a car driving 350 miles (unless it’s a Tesla). In terms of NOx and CO, the EPA added regulations in 2011 to reduce these emissions by 35%, and with those regulations followed followed it should be much lower than a car driving for 350 miles. And finally - electric lawnmowers are now very common.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
captainmuon 5y ago
Also, if your lawn is not too huge, you can try out a spindle (mechanical) mower. They are much easier to push than I imagined and give a very clean cut since they work like scissors and don't just chop the grass off.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Do you mean reel mower? Those are pretty great, but they do need to be kept in good repair, clean, lubricated, and blades sharp. And you have to cut often enough so the grass doesn't get too tall. But for a small city lot they're pretty neat. We had one when I was growing up, but it was none of those things so it was mostly a great big PITA ;).
  - captainmuon 5y ago
    Yeah that's the right English term, thanks. I now have a modern, new one and it works much better than I remember them from my childhood. But you're right about the downsides, I occasionally have to use the electric mower when the grass becomes too tall.
aporetics 5y ago

99_00 5y ago

I don't understand the advocacy and politics around home landscaping. If you want a lawn, get a lawn. If you want something else do that. It's great to present and talk about options. But when people feel the need to justify and defend their choice it's gone beyond landscaping and become something unsavory.

aporetics 5y ago
There are actually consequences to what you choose to do with/to the land. Its not just about personal preference.
- 99_00 5y ago
  There are consequences to every decision people make. This type of policing is the wrong path to take. Diet, transportation, having a pet, having children, flying, the list is endless.
  - aporetics 5y ago
    Who is policing? Providing and spreading the best available knowledge and trying to activate others’ conscience is not policing. Yes there are consequences, namely the collapse of ecosystems. Decide what’s more important, and know why its more important. What is the alternative to thinking about how you live?
    - frumper 5y ago
      Not everyone is going to agree on the best available knowledge because not everyone has the same goals.

BJBBB 5y ago

The National Wildlife Federation says that a native plant "...has occurred naturally in a particular region, ecosystem, or habitat without human introduction." Given that, the article may have problems because some of that stuff is not native. For my region (my property abuts a wildlife refuge, a national forest, and an Indian reservation), many 'native' plant species are illegal or are disallowed by insurance policies within 5m to 50m of a building. Climates have changed and appear to be rapidly changing. So the affected ecosystems will change. And does the re-introduction of a plant species that is no longer found at large, constitute a non-native species introduction? Is the synthetic preservation and cultivation of a native plant species that is no longer suitable for a changing ecosystem constitute an unnatural and thus non-native species? And what about plants that pop up from germinated seed (probably transported by birds and wind) that are not native to this area but thrive because I have altered the habitat? [additions and changes from pond and drainage control and fencing projects]

SAI_Peregrinus 5y ago

A back yard lawn provides a nice flat, private space. A front yard lawn is far more public, and typically smaller (so not useful for activities). Plant a garden in front to actually make use of that space.

neonate 5y ago

https://archive.is/8NH13 https://archive.is/8NH13