It’s time to break up with your lawn

I have been mowing lawns since I was about 12 and I worked in landscape maintenance for many years, so I know the satisfaction of making visually pleasing patterns with the mower and I love the smell of fresh cut grass. I also love having a soft but durable surface to play or relax on, but with the climate crisis coming on faster than predicted, the lush green lawns of our past are going extinct - and that’s a good thing.

This garden used to be lawn that was never used. Now it looks more beautiful, contributes more to local ecology and requires a fraction of the maintenance.

What’s the problem with lawns?

Where do I even start? Lawns were first symbols of colonialism and imperialism. Originally they were a way of showing off your wealth, basically: “I have so much money I can afford to have all this land that I don’t use and that takes a lot of resources and labour (often through chattel slavery) to maintain”. Now, lawns are simply part of the status quo that many people accept without question. Lawns take enormous resources (usually fossil fuels and precious water) and time to maintain and they provide very little in return. A “perfect” lawn is essentially sterile, and the more “perfect” it is (short and monoculture), the less resilient it is to pests like European chafer.

Keeping up with mowing your lawn when you work full time is hard. If you live on a property with lawn, I invite you to think about it for a moment. Do pets and/or people use the lawn frequently? If so, that’s great! Regardless of how it is used, seriously consider how it benefits you. Do you enjoy caring for it? Do you like the way it looks? What do you like about the way it looks? Now imagine if it was something else, maybe a native meadow, a veggie garden, or a mix of garden space with a multi-species lawn. I promise you that you can have it so much better.

It’s not you, it’s your lawn.

I can say with certainty, that if you don’t choose to make changes to your lawn, something will change it for you. Maybe a chafer beetle infestation will end up looking like a rototiller attacked your lawn, or the stress of repeated hot, dry summers will make the soil inhospitable and your grass will start to die off. In my neighbourhood many lawns are brown or have bare spots - it’s April, they should be lush and green. Nature will not abide with bare soil, “weeds” will show up and do their job to protect the soil. You can work with - or against - these natural processes; the choice is yours.

Choose your own adventure.

Hopefully this blog post has expanded your thinking, even just a little. There are so many options if you do want to remove or reduce the amount of lawn you have. I will post more about that in the future, but for now I want to leave you with some food for thought:

• In order to address climate change, we need to make dramatic changes in our landscape practices. Many of our local garden centers are clinging to the status quo instead of expanding their native plant selection and educating their customers about how to garden for our changing climate. Many even still sell invasive species! You can push for change by asking them to stop selling invasives and to carry more native plants.

• Astroturf is not the solution it’s being sold as. I could rant about this forever, but I will save the details for a future blog post.

• Nematodes are also just a band aid fix for a larger problem and aren’t affective if you don’t use them correctly.

• We also have to shift the way we think about landscapes. It may require some discomfort to start challenging why you find things either attractive or unattractive, but if you find a way to make it fun or interesting it’ll be easier. If you’re active on social media, find accounts that have educational content about ecology. Here are some accounts that I enjoy:

  • Taurus Land Care posts their work to show what landscaping with native species can look like in urban settings https://www.instagram.com/tauruslandcare/

  • I’m just a Stan for everything Alexis Nicole does, and she gets me looking out for edible species in my own neighbourhood https://www.instagram.com/blackforager/

  • Future Ecologies is my favourite podcast, hands down https://www.futureecologies.net/

Regardless of your situation, solutions can be found to meet your needs for your yard. As always, Branching Out is here to help you decolonize your yard. For the month of April, we are offering $50 off consultation visits. Contact us today to set up a site visit!

Grass wouldn’t grow in this dry, shady area. Now redwood sorrel thrives there.