Picturesque Green Lawns Are An Ecological Nightmare

http://www.nytimes.com/ref/opinion/22op-classic.html?th&emc=th

In 1991, Michael Pollan wrote an op-ed in the New York Times urging then president George HW Bush to tear up the white house lawn. Mr. Pollan then recommends the lawn be replaced with an orchard, a meadow, wetlands, or a vegetable garden. What is interesting is that Mr. Pollan is more interested in getting rid of the lawn then in planting, say, a vegetable garden, as the Obamas have now begun to do.

'Beginning in the 19th century, at the urging of such landscape designer-reformers as Frederick Law Olmsted and Andrew Jackson Downing, we took down our old-world walls and hedges (which they had declared to be "selfish" and "undemocratic") and spread an uninterrupted green carpet of turfgrass across our yards, down our streets, along our highways and, by and by, across the entire continent. Front lawns, we decided, would unite us, and, ever since, their maintenance has been regarded as an important ritual of consensus in America, even a civic obligation. Indeed, the citizen who neglects to vote is sooner tolerated -- and far more common -- than the citizen who neglects to mow: in hundreds of communities the failure to mow is punishable by fines.

[The lawn] carries an absurd and, today, unsupportable environmental price tag. In our quest for the perfect lawn, we waste vast quantities of water and energy, human as well as petrochemical. (The total annual amount of time spent mowing lawns in America comes to 30 hours for every man, woman, and child.) Acre for acre, the American lawn receives four times as much chemical pesticide as any U.S. farmland.

The lawn is a symbol of everything that's wrong with our relationship to the land. Lawns require pampering because we ask them to thrive where they do not belong. Turfgrasses are not native to America, yet we have insisted on spreading them from the Chesapeake watershed to the deserts of California without the slightest regard for local geography. Imposed upon the land with the help of our technology, lawns encourage us in the dangerous belief that we can always bend nature to our will. They may bespeak democratic sentiments toward our neighbors, but with respect to nature the politics of lawns are totalitarian.'

My family got rid of our lawn several years ago and not only does our yard look more interesting but I certainly appreciate not having to bring out the mower every other week. So talk to your family and try and get rid of your lawn. Maybe also talk to your local town board and remove punishments for not mowing / try to provide incentives for gardens instead of lawns.