3 ms·

What would you have instead? Seeing greenery is good for mental health.

cinntaile 5y ago
There are a lot of green alternatives that don't require the weekly maintenance and are better from a flora/fauna point of view than grass monoculture.
- worik 5y ago
  My lawn (that I love) is not a mono culture. The parts I planted are dominated by the grass I planted (fescu? sp?) but the invasive flowering weeds are encroaching and I am happy to see them. Biggest influence is foot fall. High traffic areas are very different from low traffic areas. I imagine my lawnmower is like a herbivore eating the tops. I have experimented with letting it grow. Gets dominated by dock and long grasses generally
wrycoder 5y ago
I’ve heard of a guy who paved his front lawn with green concrete and mounted a lawn mower on a pedestal in the middle. I’ve heard of HOAs going after people for planting vegetables in their front yard. But, there is seriscaping, which is popular in dry areas.
analog31 5y ago
In my neighborhood, there are quite a few wooded lots, where they just let the trees grow with varying levels of deliberate gardening under the trees. It's quite pleasant. My neighbors have something like that in their back yard, and prairie grass in the front. My house has a big vegetable garden, some flower gardens, some bushes, and trees. We also have some lawn, but it's un-maintained and only needs to be mowed a couple times during the spring before it goes dormant. It's also about 1/2 weeds. Every year we convert more of it to garden. Only about 1/5 of the houses have actual managed green lawns. Contrast with my parents' neighborhood in another state. Every lawn in the entire 'hood is bushy bright green, and the people are out there mowing all the time. Many of their neighbors mow twice a week. One neighbor had a large mature tree cut down because it was shading their grass. Of course you can't see the lawns because all of the streets are lined on both sides with giant cars. In addition to the visual appearance, there's the noise. A relative of mine went on vacation recently, to a place that was more or less off the grid. His comment was that there were no string trimmers or leaf blowers. A lot of suburban neighborhoods are just a constant racket of equipment. I get it, it's a culture thing. But it's interesting to see that there are actually lots of possibilities for what to do with the grounds around a detached house.
zip1234 5y ago
Street trees!
iso1631 5y ago
My front garden is full of various different plants, much nicer to look at. Back garden has a lawn which the kids play football and other things on, not very interesting - the squirrels on the fence and power line, and and pheasants which seem to somehow get in are better
mhh__ 5y ago
To my that implies wandering around in a forest or tracking the edges of farmland (this is a very British thing keep in mind, YMMV), I don't think I'd get the same effect from some grass. I count myself fairly lucky that I can walk from the sea to a suburb to a field full of cows in less than an hour where I live.
watwut 5y ago
The odd thing to me is that grass fields I see in nature are not arbitrary high. It naturally stays small in a lot of places. And there are even small flowers in it. Nature had also high grass, but why do people put the high one into gardens is weird.
oblio 5y ago
Real greenery. The mind boggles at the lack of imagination. Trees, bushes, hedges.
- rootusrootus 5y ago
  Every lawn in my neighborhood has all of that, in addition to patches of green grass. Not many houses I've seen just have perfect manicured golf-course style green grass with no other plants.
rdedev 5y ago
For me it's the diversity of plants that count. A porch with just plain grass is too boring after sometime.

There are a lot of green alternatives that don't require the weekly maintenance and are better from a flora/fauna point of view than grass monoculture.

worik 5y ago
My lawn (that I love) is not a mono culture. The parts I planted are dominated by the grass I planted (fescu? sp?) but the invasive flowering weeds are encroaching and I am happy to see them. Biggest influence is foot fall. High traffic areas are very different from low traffic areas. I imagine my lawnmower is like a herbivore eating the tops. I have experimented with letting it grow. Gets dominated by dock and long grasses generally

wrycoder 5y ago

I’ve heard of a guy who paved his front lawn with green concrete and mounted a lawn mower on a pedestal in the middle. I’ve heard of HOAs going after people for planting vegetables in their front yard. But, there is seriscaping, which is popular in dry areas.

analog31 5y ago

In my neighborhood, there are quite a few wooded lots, where they just let the trees grow with varying levels of deliberate gardening under the trees. It's quite pleasant. My neighbors have something like that in their back yard, and prairie grass in the front. My house has a big vegetable garden, some flower gardens, some bushes, and trees. We also have some lawn, but it's un-maintained and only needs to be mowed a couple times during the spring before it goes dormant. It's also about 1/2 weeds. Every year we convert more of it to garden. Only about 1/5 of the houses have actual managed green lawns. Contrast with my parents' neighborhood in another state. Every lawn in the entire 'hood is bushy bright green, and the people are out there mowing all the time. Many of their neighbors mow twice a week. One neighbor had a large mature tree cut down because it was shading their grass. Of course you can't see the lawns because all of the streets are lined on both sides with giant cars. In addition to the visual appearance, there's the noise. A relative of mine went on vacation recently, to a place that was more or less off the grid. His comment was that there were no string trimmers or leaf blowers. A lot of suburban neighborhoods are just a constant racket of equipment. I get it, it's a culture thing. But it's interesting to see that there are actually lots of possibilities for what to do with the grounds around a detached house.

zip1234 5y ago

Street trees!

iso1631 5y ago

My front garden is full of various different plants, much nicer to look at. Back garden has a lawn which the kids play football and other things on, not very interesting - the squirrels on the fence and power line, and and pheasants which seem to somehow get in are better

mhh__ 5y ago

To my that implies wandering around in a forest or tracking the edges of farmland (this is a very British thing keep in mind, YMMV), I don't think I'd get the same effect from some grass. I count myself fairly lucky that I can walk from the sea to a suburb to a field full of cows in less than an hour where I live.

watwut 5y ago

The odd thing to me is that grass fields I see in nature are not arbitrary high. It naturally stays small in a lot of places. And there are even small flowers in it. Nature had also high grass, but why do people put the high one into gardens is weird.

oblio 5y ago

Real greenery. The mind boggles at the lack of imagination. Trees, bushes, hedges.

rootusrootus 5y ago
Every lawn in my neighborhood has all of that, in addition to patches of green grass. Not many houses I've seen just have perfect manicured golf-course style green grass with no other plants.

rdedev 5y ago

For me it's the diversity of plants that count. A porch with just plain grass is too boring after sometime.