There's a small pot of land in my city that starts right where one of our parks end. It's not fenced, the amount of traffic (people, dogs, cats, trucks) is simi

There's a small pot of land in my city that starts right where one of our parks end. It's not fenced, the amount of traffic (people, dogs, cats, trucks) is similar to that of the park. On that land, grass grows freely, bushes stretch and grow at will, weeds come and go throughout the year. Native flowers bloom seemingly out of nowhere. There's always bees, mosquitoes, ticks, birds and the likes during the warmer months. Every fall, a new layer of mulch forms as leaves, plant matter and dog poop gets stuck in the grass and plants, protecting the soil from both heat and winter in the coming year. On the park land, there is an annual cycle of desperate attempts to keep the grasses and bushes alive. Each fall, months of cutting the grasses short, plucking weeds, removing leaves and plant matter, cutting down bushes to "encourage root growth" and general practices that expose the soil to sunlight during dry months have decimated most plants. By winter, something like half of all grasses are gone, a small section of bushes get diseased and die off, leaving only a few patches of healthy soil versus a large amount of compacted earth and/or mud that gets washed away during heavy rain fall. Each spring, the city drives heavy machinery to replant most of the grass(es) again. The earth being heavily compacted, all seeds land on top of the soil. They subsequently dry out in the sun, and a large majority of them never get to root. The regrowth of grass is either via direct transplant (soil and everything) or when people in the neighbourhood plants their own seeds (and make sure to water them) after deaf complaints to the city/municipality. Taking inspiration, we tried to replicate such a system for our shared courtyard. Branches, twigs, leaves and food waste is composted and used as mulch (though we started with store-bought wood chips). No dirt is exposed to sunlight or frost, only plants are. Barely no effort to remove weeds as very few are strong enough to grow through all that mulch. When we are forced to restrict water usage during the driest months, most plants pull through, with some having minor die off or they just look droopy and sad until next rainfall. The neighbours (three courtyards) do it the more traditional way of removing leaves, dead plants and pulling the large(r) amount of weeds that pop up in the barren soil. During years when water use is restricted, a lot of their plants and flowers dry up and die, causing them to buy and replant new ones the season after. We've managed to convince some by showing them our results, but so far it's only us in our block that does this. It's madness, and I wouldn't be suprised if there were similar stories with (industrialized, work-intensive) farming.