Since lawns are bad for the environment, what do you think lawns should be replaced with?
Optional poll if you want, since this place doesn’t have polls,
https://submatrix.net/article/Polls/CYL6qLm7eL
I might add some of the suggestions
Natural local plants gardens. They take little maintenance or water.
moss is quite nice
Can’t walk across it, it falls apart.
I think the common answer is native plants.
Fediverse community links:
Thanks! Came here to link this lol
native wild flowers and grasses make for a very pretty garden imo, and benefit nature a lot
Gardening stores should more commonly have seed packs of hearty local plants that make good lawn replacements. People shouldn’t either be stuck researching and sourcing seeds or just giving up and doing clover.
Yes, I keep slowly expanding my mulched native flower bed.
If you’re in the US, Prairie Moon Nursery has a great selection of exclusively plants native to North America and ships. Live plants tend to be best in the spring, their seed mixes are excellent in late fall. And they have a lot of how to guides.
Letting what naturally grows without adding water grow.
It takes a LOT of work for most people to go from lawn to native plants. Disturbed earth will grow invasives first. I’ve got an unwatered 10x20 space that I hand weed, carefully preserving natives and desirable volunteers. If I don’t stay on top of it, it’s all burr clover, Himalayan blackberry and puncture vine in no time. I had hope that if I could reestablish natives it would settle down and be maintenance free, but it’s been too many years to keep that dream alive.
This generally doesn’t work in suburbia.
Its called a meadow yard or some such.
Theres one on my street, been like it for a decade or so. Its just weeds and Kikuyu from the neighbours.
A residential block is always going to need to be manicured to keep undesirable plants out.
My mom always just mowed whatever grew in the yard and called it “grass” and that’s all I have ever done. Mow the weeds, who cares? They get nice flowers, the bees like them. Except bull thistle. We dug that up with prejudice before it could flower. But as far as lawn, that is just a mowed space where I grew up, and I did grow up in a suburb, though not a house farm sort of development, not an HOA situation. And it’s just a mowed space where I live now too. Maybe 1 house in every 10 has the literal Grass Lawn, with the chemicals and monoculture. 9/10 have a mix of whatever.
For my property, the best stuff is wooded land. Cedar, pine, fruit, cottonwood, dogwood, birch, walnut. Cedar being my favorite due to the smell. The tree canopy keeps the ground mostly clear. Lots of birds, raccoon, squirrel, possum, deer, mice, etc. Ample shade. Natural sound deadening. Never have to water it. And a wall of green around my home for most of the year.
There’s a type of clover, I think. I saw it on Reddit a few years ago. I only remember it’s green and short and sort of looks like grass, but is better for some reason, I don’t remember its advantages over grass.
Here in NM, we mostly use rocks. This is common in front yards:
For backyards with kids, it’s real grass if you can afford the water, or fake grass and gravel. Without kids, it’s pavers, a pergola with furniture, and native plants along the walls/fence.
Miniclover maybe. There’s a few varieties. I totally didn’t buy some bags a few years ago and accidentally dumped them in with the grass. That’s what I’d tell my HOA anyway. This year it’s coming back again slowly again.
Rocks are so. fucking. hot. Landscaping with rocks increases the ambient temperature around your house by like 10 degrees vs. bare dirt. Even in New Mexico, there are so many native trees and shrubs. Please shade the ground and help keep your neighborhood cooler
In my neighborhood, each house has a large cottonwood (or other type) tree for shade, plus bushes, juniper, etc. and 3/4 of the houses have a plot of grass of about 100 sq ft, in the front yard. The other houses have only rocks. OP asked about options without grass, though.
Xeriscape with native plants and drip irrigation
Edible garden/pollinator’s garden. Flowers, fruits, herbs
I would like berry bushes and flowers, personally.
Vegetable gardens seem like they would be more useful
If you’re community minded, a free vegetable garden might help you know your neighbors better.
I mean, the correct answer is MORE HOUSING. Yes, lawns are bad for the environment in their own right as a monoculture that requires dumping fertilizer and pesticides on it to maintain an “acceptable” quality. But if you are in the US, it is not unlikely that you have mandatory minimum lot sizes, minimum setbacks on all sides of the propety (especially large in the front), and a mandate that the front area must be grass. You also are not allowed to construct more structures on your lot for the purposes of housing, or run any kind of business on your property that might have customers physically visit the space or have any visible impact on the property.
The result is:
- More expensive housing, since each house is required to sit on more land than it physically takes up.
- More expensive cost of living, since finding sufficient new land requires building farther out, making commutes longer and therefore more expensive.
- Car dependency for daily tasks, since no one can build a gym or a corner store in your neighborhood.
- Reduced social cohesion, since even if a friend lives nearby, you will probably drive to their place since walking in a lawn-filled neighborhood is boring, and the gaps between homes mean their house is that much farther away
Sure, but if you build all around your existing house, how do you get in or out or see through the windows?
This seems like just airdropping our favourite cause into a practical question.
I mean, once we build a single monolithic glass and steel skyscraper to completely encase all the single family homes, we’ll begin to exterminate their inhabitants, so they don’t need to get in or out, you see?
Seriously - obviously you won’t completely encase existing housing in other housing. Exactly how to create a productive, enjoyable environment for everyone will depend on the property, the owner, and what they want to use the space for. This is more art than science, and I certainly can’t make universal declarations about how to best do it. But land is valuable because it can be put to productive uses - not just be expensive ornimentation. Of course, there is nothing wrong with ornimentation, so if you want your lawn to be a lawn, or artistic gravel, or whatever, then you are welcome to it. But a great many people, if they were freed legally, would take a great interest in what use the majority of their property could be put to for others’ benefit and their own profit.
We need housing. We need small corner stores. We need neighborhood pubs. We need independently owned restaurants. We need art studios and workshops. We need gyms and daycares. We need so many things more than we need empty space on every parcel of land devoted exclusively to looking good (whatever your definition of “good” is).
And the thing is, if a land owner were to more fully develop their property - a small, blocky shop building in front built up to the street; a second residence in the back; a detached shed/workshop; and a space for a compact gypsy wagon, maybe to host guests - then what to do with the remaining “lawn” space would hardly be a question worth asking. Once a space has its landmarks and usefulness and is no longer a vast expanse of nothing, what to do with it becomes obvious. Put in small paths. Put some pavers down and add a pergola for an outdoor space. Put garden beds here, and some grass over there. Maybe a koi pond if you’re ambitious.
Happy cake day!
Thank you kind stranger!
the entire debate is set up to promote answers other than this, the correct answer
In the UK. Lawn surrounded by shrubs and other plants that regrow every year.
The vegetable garden suggestion isn’t bad, but it depends heavily on you liking gardening.
Clover or (edit: if you can establish them) wild plants are a decent answer for low maintenance vegetation. Pavers or gravel will look a bit dire but they do the basic job of providing walkable space.
Artificial turf is nice. Somebody might point out it’s plastic, but this is an application where you want it to last forever.
It doesn’t last forever though - it breaks down, and gets mold. I cannot understand it at all. What a mess. Like landscape fabric. Something to enjoy for a year and regret for ten years afterwards as it breaks down and you keep finding bits of it.
Even in places that aren’t as humid and alive as our subtropical steam room here, under ideal conditions maybe 10 year life on that plastic carpet of grass. All the time it’s shedding plastic into the world.
It very much depends on where you’re located, what sort of climate the place has, even what sort of neighbors you have.
I have a relatively small front yard and am located in a temperate region with reasonably good rainfall. So I planted a bunch of perennial flowers and clover in the existing grass of my lawn, laid down some decorative stone pathways weaving through it, and some shrubs around the edges. Bought a sign that reads “Meadow Habitat Restoration - Please Do Not Mow or Spray” to make it clear that I wasn’t just neglecting my front yard but was deliberately turning it into a patch of pseudo-wilderness. Now I can basically leave my front yard completely untouched all summer (occasionally pulling a few thistles because I personally hate them) and it looks lovely and has plenty of bees and whatnot visiting it. There’s no such thing as “weeds”, just wildflowers.
My back yard is much larger and I wanted to keep the lawn because it’s a nice space for activities. But I got a pushmower, and the lawn doesn’t grow fast because I’ve allowed trees to grow all around the edges and that makes it quite shady. The trees make for a nice privacy screen once the leaves come in, it’s like my back yard is a forest clearing. I scattered clover seed among the grass there too, you can mow clover just like grass so I figure whatever survives best gets the territory.
Personally, I’m not fond of gravel because it’s an unnecessary dead zone. There’s already plenty of bare concrete everywhere, we don’t need more of that. But if you’re in a dry environment that doesn’t support greenery without watering or fertilizer then some hardscrabble landscaping could look quite nice. Maybe plant a few sagebrushes or even cacti (cacti can put out some very nice flowers) with some interesting piles of larger rocks to add visual interest.
Maybe take a wander around your neighborhood to see if other folks have set up interesting alternatives to lawns and get some ideas off of them, they’ll have done the testing to see if it works.
