8 November 2021 – by Ben Chappelow
The suburban lawn, also known as turf grass, exists as a space of fruitless continuity. In the United States it is the largest crop by acreage, tripling corn, yet it produces no nutritional or agricultural value. Americans use nine billion gallons of water per day to maintain their lawns, but research has found as much as 50% of that water goes to waste due to inefficient irrigation methods.[i] Residents destroy between 5,000 and 385,000 acres of natural habitats per day using harmful chemicals, clearing away biodiverse land vital for pollinators in the process.[ii]
To make matters worse, lawn equipment also makes up 4% of U.S. greenhouse gas emissions,[iii] outstripping emissions from livestock and manure.[iv] Though the UK any other suburban-abundant nations descended from Great Britain (e.g., Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) may not hold the lawn to such heights as the United States, they too share similar residential traditions. As droughts, wildfires, and colony collapse loom, why are so many people holding on to something that sucks up so much water, time, energy, and wildlife while producing so little?
Its Origins
The lawn acts as a symbol of middle-class ideals, of curb appeal and leisure time. It demonstrates civilization ‘triumphing’ over wild land by ritually manicuring it into uniformity, and has become a hallmark of residential life across much of the Global North. However, turf grass isn’t a part of North America’s natural prairies, meadows, or pastures. Poa pratensis, better known as Kentucky bluegrass, and its related species, make up almost every suburban lawn, but are native only to Europe and Asia – not to areas like Kentucky at all.
What we know as lawns today emerged in 16th century France, where aristocratic landowners had slaves and peasantry cultivate empty spaces of neatly manicured grasses.[v] Being able to afford to keep empty space that produced no food was a sign of vast wealth. The lawn grew in popularity within Great Britain, where Enclosure laws ended land rights for commoners and put an end to commonly owned land. These laws prevented individuals farming on the formerly shared land, pushed them into wage labor for landowners, who could deem that the land would be cultivated for strictly aesthetic purposes. Once the British empire established colonies in North America, colonists sought to mimic these displays of elite wealth. Indigenous communities—who had cultivated and maintained the landscape through controlled burning and establishing interdependent relationships with the wildlife—were either killed or driven off the perennial prairie grasses, where colonists would replace native Buffalo with European cattle.
However, these cattle, woefully maladapted for their new North American habitat and couldn’t get enough nutrients from the North American terrain. And so, the British brought their own grasses from Europe, which pushed out native plants and animals that could not subsist with the Kentucky bluegrass. As they shaped the North American land to look like a European countryside, ecological colonization became a self-fulfilling prophecy.
By the late 19th century, with the invention of the push lawnmower, the sprinkler, and the birth of the suburbs, the lawn began to shift from a symbol of wealth and leisure to one of conformity. Lawns were no longer something only the ultra-elite could have. After World War II, middle-class people afford to cultivate their own little pieces of luxury. With soldiers returning home, warfare chemicals becoming reinvented as pesticides and artificial fertilizers, and rapid suburban development, having a strip of trimmed grass in front of your house became the staple of a domestic life.
A significant part of your property value is its curb appeal (how attractive your house looks when viewed from the street). But because the front lawn connects to the street, it isn’t a space cultivated for use. You might imagine the front lawn as a space for children to play, but with cars speeding down your street, dogs defecating in your grass, and the lack of privacy, the backyard is generally where domestic life (playing, gardening, grilling, swimming) resides, and the front lawn serves as a symbolic space of uniformity with the neighborhood. So roughly half of the lawn space you own serves no physical purpose. And while it may be your property, depending on where you live, the front lawn’s aesthetic does not belong to you. Instead, it must conform to outdated legislation based on guidelines set by tradition, no matter how inefficient or harmful those guidelines may be.
Its Disutility
The Kentucky bluegrass can only naturally thrive in climates like those of Northern Europe, which means residents who live anywhere other than New England and some parts of Canada need to constantly tend to their Kentucky bluegrass to keep it alive. The same goes for other common lawn grasses such as scutch grass (native to Africa) and Zoysia grass (native to Asia and Australia, typically hardier than the other two and often used for golf courses). As a result, most residential areas are ripping out native plant species, inserting nonnative grass species in an incompatible climate, and constantly tending to them so they don’t die. These grasses typically require more water than what natural rainfall provides. They require fertilizers to pump more nutrients into a soil in which it has not evolved to grow. And even if you do those two steps right, they require constant maintenance in order to fit an aesthetic ideal.
However, even if one does want to move towards a more natural and less wasteful gardening approach, letting your lawn die and decreasing curb appeal does come with obstacles. If your property is governed by a Homeowners Association, they can fine you for not maintaining your lawn.[vi] One common practice is for the HOA to hire a landscaping crew to renovate your lawn, and make you pay the bill. In certain jurisdictions, you can even be arrested for not mowing your lawn.[vii] For those who are old or physically unable to tend to their lawn, there is no exception.
Aside from the harms inflicted on biodiversity and water security, there are also practical, financial, and health and safety challenges related to lawns. Many choose, or are forced, to hire professionals to handle lawncare, and the average American homeowner spends between $700 and $2,600 per year.[viii] In countries like Australia and Canada where the average suburban lawn is much smaller in surface area, costs are expected to be less. It would be cheaper to tend to your lawn yourself (Americans on average spend $1080 on lawn equipment),[ix] but this increases the likelihood of physical injuries. In 2016, more than 86,000 American adults and 4,500 children went to the emergency room for lawnmower-related injuries.[x] Those whose jobs involve lawn maintenance also face considerable danger. In 2019, 229 ground maintenance workers died from workplace-related accidents, more deaths that year than firefighters and law enforcement combined.[xi]
As freshwater becomes increasingly scarce, using nine billion gallons of water a day to maintain golf courses, roadside greenways, and lawns is a dire misplacement of resources. Despite this seemingly limitless enthusiasm for the garden lawn, in the drier parts of the U.S. and Australia, we are already seeing restrictions and mandates on how households use limited supplies of water. In Australia’s New South Wales, from December 2019 to February 2020 the government placed restrictions on the use of sprinklers and hoses for watering lawns and washing cars.[xii]
The world’s freshwater security is becoming increasingly jeopardized, and if water supplies continue to fall in the near future, governments will be forced to further restrict outdoor water use. In states like Nevada, lawmakers are banning the watering of grassy areas that do not serve a function, mainly at office parks, in street medians, and at entrances to housing developments. This trend might continue for other states reliant on the Colorado River, which is continuing to dry up.[xiii]
So, with lawns causing all these problems, what are some alternatives?
What else can we do with our property?
Turning away from the traditional lawn may feel uncomfortable. As humans, we have evolved towards conformity. We want to feel a sense of belonging to a tribe. Even without local law enforcement or HOAs forcing you to keep a turf grass lawn, some people naturally want to keep up their home’s appearance. We want to feel like a part of our neighborhood. We want to be aesthetically united with our neighbors.
According to biologist and entomology professor Douglas W. Tallamy, getting rid of the lawn doesn’t mean losing a sense of community. As he states in his book Nature’s Best Hope, you can imagine your property “as one small piece of a giant puzzle, which, when assembled, has the potential to form a beautiful ecological picture.”[xiv] He proposes we exchange the traditional residential lawn with native plants that can support local species. Based on one’s given location, replacing 70% of one’s property with native plant species can provide wonderful benefits to local birds, amphibians, reptiles, and invertebrates.[xv] While invasive does not always mean harmful, filling your lawn with plants that require less water and offer better support to local pollinators is one step towards building a more beneficial landscape.
Another alternative is gardening. Fruit and vegetable gardens, per square foot, require 75% less water on average.[xvi] Even in places like California where water is scarce, gardening under proper methods is more than feasible.[xvii] If you take pleasure in the constant maintenance a yard requires, keeping and maintaining a garden provides a similar outdoor routine that needs less carbon-emitting lawn equipment and produces (sometimes literal) fruit for your labor. We can learn from Cuba’s organoponicos (urban farms).[xviii] With the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 90s and an 80% reduction in the country’s trade, Cuba faced a dire hunger crisis. It had to produce twice as much food with less than half of its usual chemical inputs.
With fewer resources, Cuba converted much of its residential land for gardens. Residents utilized more integrated pest management, applied soil and composting conservation methods, and rotated crops. By 2002, Cuba produced 3.2 million tons of organic food from organoponicos, staving off impending hunger crises. Such a radical change to a more nurturing suburban landscape could help remedy food deserts in urban and rural areas. At the very least, converting empty lawn space to gardens would redirect limited resources towards more beneficial investments while keeping properties lush and green.
As individuals, taking small steps is the key to creating a more beneficial landscape. One such step would be working within your local community—with neighborhood committees and HOAs—to make sure property owners have a greater freedom in their choices, and allow homeowners to establish more beneficial spaces without punishing them for going against uniformity. If you’re too busy to garden, replacing yard décor with native vegetation provides benefits to wildlife without all the upkeep. Inform your neighbors about the problems with turf grass lawns, and of the alternatives available. The pride many people take in their lawns isn’t rooted in the lawn itself, but the act of maintaining and cultivating an aesthetic space. If we get rid of the turf grass lawn, we can hold on to the culture of lawncare while changing residential spaces to actually provide utility. And with impeding droughts on the horizon, the time redirect water towards necessary channels is growing more urgent.[xix]
Benjamin Chappelow is a writer and narrative designer in the Appalachian mountains, United States.
As an immigration researcher and former Narrative Writer for the Climate Resilience Toolkit, he is focused on how the stories we tell dictate our behavior in an ecological crisis.
References
[i] Environmental Protection Agency. (2013). Outdoor Water Use in the United States. EPA. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html.
[ii] National Aeronautics and Space Administration. (2005). More Lawns than Irrigated Corn. NASA. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/Lawn/lawn2.php.
[iii] Banks, J. L. (2015). (tech.). National Emissions from Lawn and Garden Equipment. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.epa.gov/sites/default/files/2015-09/documents/banks.pdf.
[iv] Center for Sustainable Systems, University of Michigan. (2021). Carbon Footprint Factsheet | Center for Sustainable Systems. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://css.umich.edu/factsheets/carbon-footprint-factsheet.
[v] “RE”. (2017, October 26). Lawns, class, and colonialism. The Re-Enchantment. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://thereenchantment.ca/2017/10/25/lawns-class-and-colonialism-part-one/.
[vi] Taylor, G. (2018, December 12). 10 things no one tells you about homeowner associations. Bob Vila. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.bobvila.com/slideshow/10-things-no-one-tells-you-about-homeowner-associations-52429.
[vii] Herzog, K. (2021, April 7). Lawns are Dumb. Arresting People for Poor Lawn Care is Dumber. Grist. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://grist.org/article/lawns-are-dumb-arresting-people-for-poor-lawn-care-is-dumber/.
[viii] Learn about the cost of projects in the lawn & garden category. HomeAdvisor. (n.d.). Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.homeadvisor.com/cost/lawn-and-garden/.
[ix] Caballero, G. (2021, October 11). Do you really save time and money by mowing the lawn yourself? USA’s #1 ‘Lawn Care Near Me’ Service. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.yourgreenpal.com/blog/are-time-and#:~:text=Here’s%20the%20deal%2C%20data%20gathered,save%20only%20%24270%20per%20year.
[x] Lawn mower injuries in children. OrthoInfo. (2018, January). Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://orthoinfo.aaos.org/en/diseases–conditions/lawn-mower-injuries-in-children/.
[xi] Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2020). (rep.). National Census of Fatal Occupational Injuries in 2019 (pp. 1–10). https://www.bls.gov/news.release/pdf/cfoi.pdf
[xii] Brown, N. (2019, December 11). What Sydney’s new water restrictions mean for you. news.com.au. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.news.com.au/technology/environment/conservation/sydneys-tough-new-water-restrictions-begin-tuesday/news-story/adaef7cb21d8d76a90d3769c2a3c140b.
[xiii] Lustgarten, A. (2021, August 27). 40 million people rely on the Colorado River. It’s drying up fast. The New York Times. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/27/sunday-review/colorado-river-drying-up.html.
[xiv] Tallamy, D. W. (2020). Nature’s best hope a new approach to conservation that starts in your yard. Timber Press.
[xv] Narango, D. L., Tallamy, D. W., & Marra, P. P. (2018). Nonnative plants reduce population growth of an insectivorous bird. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 115(45), 11549–11554. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1809259115
[xvi] Conserving water: Edible gardens versus lawns. California Farm and Garden. (2021, August 2). Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://cafarmandgarden.com/water-conservation-fruit-and-vegetable-gardens-vs-lawns/.
[xvii] Wei, C. (2016, October). How to kill your lawn and grow a food forest during a drought. VICE. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.vice.com/en/article/mgk37q/how-to-kill-your-lawn-and-grow-a-food-forest-during-a-drought.
[xviii] Ewing, E. (2008, April 4). Cuba’s Organic Revolution. The Guardian. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2008/apr/04/organics.food.
[xix] National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. (n.d.). Drought timescales: Short- vs. long-term drought. Drought.gov. Retrieved October 15, 2021, from https://www.drought.gov/what-is-drought/drought-timescales-short-vs-long-term-drought.
