“Lawns are a reflection of the fact we’re socialised to keep up appearances, to be cohesive with the community. Those who spray chemicals are more likely to know their neighbours by name,” he adds. “And in the US at least you might even be legally obligated to tend to your lawn and fined if you don’t. It’s remarkable how people often say that they don’t even want a lawn but feel they have to have it.”
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Nah. Now that I actually am an owner instead of a renter, I kinda feel some obligation to make it ok. But the owners before the previous ones were apparently pretty wild. They got the town to agree to let them have any large flightless bird, such as an ostrich, emu, or rhea. And the way they planted things around the yard are more or less what you’d expect from such people - not the standard grass yard.
Now that we’ve taken over (with no large flightless birds - yet), we’re committed to making the yard the same sort of mini-wilderness that those previous owners would’ve loved.
It’s a whole lot of work to tend to the gardens and the planter boxes and the various plants they’d put in place before the previous owners took it and didn’t do anything to care for all that.
But yeah, we’ll have no lawn here. At least not intentionally. We’ll have herbs and bees and maybe vegetables or whatever instead. It is not as easy as having the typical grass yard, but we’re committed to it and it’s worth it.
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I want mine to get taken over by red thyme so I don’t have to mow it.
It’s a bit exhausting for me.
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When we moved in to our house we had a shabby front lawn, and some lawn out back, mostly compromised by the shade of a dozen large oaks on our lot. We just let our planting beds advance over the years, all with native perennials, hostas, lilly of the valley, pakasandra, vinca, till there was no lawn left. The rest of the areas get covered with shredded leaves from the oaks, which we long ago stopped sending off site. A couple of years ago I gave away my lawn mower after not using it for about 5 years. We’ve gotten nothing but compliments from passers-by on our little bit of wilderness.
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We have some trees, bushes, and grass in the front yard, mainly because it was there when we moved in. Gardening is just not for us, so we mainly ignore it and get someone cheap to mow it. Out back most of the yard is wild with huge trees. A small part is grass, but is being slowly taken over by the wild part. Again, a lack of interest except for gazing at it (just lovely to look at). We have lots of deer out there, as the edge of a forest is their habitat (so I’ve read). We rarely go outside due to deer ticks and possible lyme disease. We have patches of hostas, lily of the valley, pachysandra, and myrtle.
So the presence of grass is mostly due to sloth.
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have them stop mowing, and have them start transplanting hostas, lily of the valley, pachysandra, and myrtle from the back. Soon the front grass will be gone and you won’t need their services weekly.
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Our house is in the middle of basically, hay fields. I could just not mow it, but then there would be a lot of ticks. I do mow the part around the house, including anywhere I’d care to walk, and the rest just goes. Gets about 3 feet high and is sometimes baled for cattle. I don’t really care how it looks, to be honest. There are new houses going in around us, and if they have opinions, they can keep them to themselves, or pound sand. There are a bunch of reasons we didn’t buy in a neighborhood, we just weren’t rich enough to buy more land as a buffer. So it goes.
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They’re good about doing it only when it gets long, sometimes going to seed. We’ve got some hostas out there where shadows from the trees prevent grass from growing. Looks nice too. Of course the deer find it tasty, I think, or are desperate. I don’t know which.
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I live in a city where the grass can’t be longer than six inches, even at the fence line. My house is 864 square feet and the lot is 7,504 square feet. I don’t know the area of the garage, though. Still, it’s more lawn that I care to…uh, care for.
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The little town near us is like that, it’s ridiculous. If you don’t mow, they send the city worker to mow, and then bill ungodly amounts, like $600 for a small lot, and then they insist on coming back every week to inspect. Fulla assholes that place.
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I’m on two acres, about two thirds of which is lawn (much of the rest is remnant forest).
Even with the ride-on mower, sorting out the grass is a full day job. A fairly short time cruising on the ride-on will do most of it, but then there are hours still to go with the small mower and the linetrimmer to get at all the fiddly bits that the big mower can’t reach. I have isolated plants all over the place, so it isn’t just a clear sweep of lawn.
I don’t need to do it too often; the grass pretty much stops growing here during the winter, and isn’t too vigorous even in summer. And, given how the only people who see my grass are myself and the sheepfarmers over the back fence, leaving it to run wild for however long I care to isn’t a problem.
But I still tend to keep it mown fairly tidily. In part, it’s a fallback chore: if I can’t think of anything else to do that day, I’ll mow the lawn.
I don’t mind it; it’s quite relaxing and meditative once you get into the swing of it. I usually have a podcast or music playing under my ear protectors, and cruising around my garden is no great imposition.
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I live on the top floor, so unless I want to put some sod on my tiny deck, nope.
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I am actively anti-lawn, unless it’s being used. We have 3.5 acres, about 1 acre of which could be lawn if we wanted (the rest is a steep slope, then established forest, which, why would I mess with that?)
We keep a part out front mowed for our badminton court, then just have a guy with a big riding mower come mow paths around the edges of our meadows (one in front, one in back), one path through the middle, and one out to and around our fire pit in the front meadow.
My main motivation is to provide pollinator habitat, which is working.
I totally understand the peer pressure mentioned in the article, though. When we first moved here nobody even said anything but I felt this sense of displeasure, like the new neighbors all must think we’re lazy. But through selective mowing and some added plants, we have blooms now from April through October (Maine), in all colors, and it’s totally worth a little side eye!
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There’s a property about two or so miles northwest of where I live that has wild flora growing all over where there would be lawn. I wish I could find a pic of it online. Day lilies, ornamental grasses, et al. I don’t know how they get away with it, lol.
This is what I want:
Good band name, too.
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That creeping thyme is really pretty! I’ve been thinking of doing something similar in certain areas with oregano. It wants to take over the herb garden, but i’m thinking of pulling up parts of it and just trying it in different areas around the place. It has a really long bloom time, and the pollinators go mad for it. And, you know, spaghetti!
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Sage is good at taking over as well.
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The bunnies or the deer tend to keep the sage down to manageable levels, even killing it off in particularly harsh years.
Mint, on the other hand! Don’t get me started. It has taken over one of our beds and crept out onto the lawn, but it smells SOOO good when I walk or weed-whack over there, I’m fine with it.
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Oh yes, we had mint at the house in which I grew up in Detroit, but it just grew under the back porch. And aromatics repel vermin.
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