How long until the Republican administration passes a law requiring Scottsdale residents to maintain a minimum area of green lawn throughout the year?
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Many varieties are edible. Don’t eat raw or pickled, they often have a cyanide like compound that’s destroyed by cooking.
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Although, they do have to go where the sun is because veggies need a ton of it. On my street, almost every house has a veggie garden (including me too soon!) and they’re all in the front because of the sun patterns. I like it- it’s a sort of preview of a solarpunk future where lawns are gone, everyone is pitching in to grow food, the bees are happy and no arable land is being wasted on dumb things (like lawns).
At my previous house, the neighbour across the street did that. Hooboy was I glad to have 30’ of concrete and asphalt between me and him. All his immediate neighbours were indeed forever plagued with the stuff.
I inherited yet another lawn with this house, but I’m gonna pay to get rid of it this time. No subsidies here for it (because water is pretty much infinite here- they don’t even meter it) but I’m still going to remove it on principle. I hate the maintenance and hassle just to have some vague echo of an Edwardian manor house for two seconds as I back out of the driveway.
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I don’t understand. Keeping actual grass is time consuming (you need to scarify after winter and treat with weed killer and fertiliser and of course water it - even here in Ireland) and it was steps two and three which made me decide no. Turns out native wild plants will take over. Where I am is pretty ideal for grass but there’s precious little of it left out front. I could have planted native plants had I been bothered. And I’ve just had to take out a sage plant that was taking over the place. That stuff grows madly.
What I mean is lawns will go away without any effort.
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Iamb so confused.
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We live in different ecosystems I guess. Not much grass on my “lawn” plenty of plants. It’s clover season right now, the lavender bloom is fading, so the bees are moving down to the “lawn”.
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Are ewe?
(Me too!)
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Weeds will take over, yes. Have you seen abandoned houses? That’s what happens to old lawns. You get a field of six foot high thistles, because if you just stop watering, that’s what happens. The grass gets weak, so the weeds take over, and more pleasant native plants never get a chance to get established. Sure, maybe in 40 years they would, but you’d be living in a terrible eyesore until then.
It really won’t. The grass has altered the ecosystem in front of your house. To get back to native plants, you have to recreate the natural environment that was there, which means getting rid of the grass and its bulletproof root system first. Then you have to establish native plants and nurse them along until they are strong enough to fight off weeds.
By the way, since nobody has yet mentioned it, native plant yards still need to be watered. Drip irrigation is the norm here, which is orders of magnitude less water, but irrigation is still required. This is because rain is sporadic and again, unless you want the weeds to take over, you have to create ideal conditions for the plants you want, even when they are native. Native plants means much less water is required, not “it’s magical and you don’t have to do anything!”. Nature doesn’t place nice plants everywhere. You might end up with a bunch of awful stuff.
I’ve spoken to lots of landscapers about this. I’m not making this up. Xeriscaping is great and once you’re there it’s a low maintenance and water friendly thing. But getting there from “lawn that has been irrigated and treated for decades” is a capital project.
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Doh, I knew it wouldn’t show up right. I wrote “iamb so confused,” but the dang capital I/lower-case l ruined the effect.
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Is that a metric meter or an imperial one?
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I dunno, all I know is this thing is good for finding metals, like goldy and bronzy.
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Okay. It’s just not my experience. I like a bit of grass in the front but it’s down to about a third of the coverage. We haven’t had any drought this year but when we do (most years now) the grass dies back (and rebounds of course) but the clover is much more drought resistant.
I mow with an edge trimmer thing so it’s never short but the kind of rhizomes that turn into monster trees are not tolerated.
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But it’s a tiny meter! 
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Lawns are dumb, whether they’re watered or not. That said, most lawns eventually cease to be lawns when they aren’t regularly watered, and/or doused with chemicals. I wouldn’t call a patch of land with a mix of grass, weeds, wildflowers, etc., a lawn. I like the UK’s “garden” nomenclature for spaces like that, though I’d call it a “yard” here in the US. Not all yards have lawns. Only the dumb ones.
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I grew up in a suburb east of Los Angeles in the 1950’s and '60’s. My father was the son of local Quaker farmers. We had a grass front lawn until around 1960, when Dad replaced the turf with… green-colored gravel. No more watering or mowing!
Expect to see more gravel ‘lawns’ in the dry USA Southwest.
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I bet the local ‘astroturf’ plastic lawn sales people are licking their lips in anticipation.
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My next door neighbour just installed Astroturf for her two boys because in the spring, her lawn was entirely destroyed by leatherjackets. They got into my lawn too but I was lucky enough to catch them with a double dose of nematodes and that stopped the rot.
It’s still a fairly crappy lawn, partly because the soil quality is poor. I’d be happy to turn it into wildflower meadow but my wife disagrees.
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