If you’ve followed my writing over the years, you’ll know that I hate lawns. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hate them for being green. I hate them for being a status symbol rather than a useful tool for the family. Stick with me for the next few minutes and I’ll explain.

Lawns Are Hyped Up

The yard of that small 2, 3, or 4 bedroom home is the first thing you’ll see when house hunting or just walking around your neighbourhood. Looking at the front yard, you might admire it if it is well kept or look on in dismay. Real Estate agents call it curb appeal. Whether you’re selling or buying you’ll hear them tell you to maximize the curb appeal if you’re the seller or admire the curb appeal if you’re the buyer. The hyped up notion of the lawn envisions it looking like the side of a well manicured mountain top or some stately manor belonging to some Lord of the Manor.

You’re told that people judge you by the condition of your lawn. Maybe you’ve heard that an ill-kept lawn is a sign of a lazy owner or someone with no ambition. Maybe you’ve heard that an exquisitely kept lawn is a sign of a person with real ambition and attention to details. But are lawns really worth it? In Canada, lawn care is a $3 Billion industry.

Lawns Waste Your Time

Here’s one of my theories about lawns: they are designed to occupy the free time of the working class to keep them from thinking too much about the condition of the world around them. Americans with an average yard size of 0.15 acres spend on average anywhere from 7 to 48 days of their precious life cutting grass. If you spent 2 hour every 2 weeks of spring to autumn (March to October), you’re looking at 32hrs per year. Over a 30-period that is the equivalent of 40 days of your life. Could you accomplish something else? Canadians also fall into the lawn trap.

Mowing

This is an exercise in futility. You’re expected to cut a lawn that will grow back again. Then in two week you come back out of the house and do it again. In my typical suburban home I observed my neighbours mowing with their electric lawn mowers or gas lawn mowers. I even had one brave neighbour who used the manual push mower. It made the task take longer in the heat of the day.

Weeding

Prior to spending the 45 to 60 minutes mowing the lawn, don’t forget about spending 30 minutes pulling up “garden weeds” from the lawn. Of course, garden weeds are really just wild plants that the property owner does not love. You get out the weed grabber and you walk around the yard pressing it into the soil and gripping the roots and pulling it out of the soil.

Fertilizing & Aerating

And there is the fertilizing of the lawn. You stand with a hose and a container of fertilizer spraying it over the lawn to get it grow greener, stronger, and look more like… lawn? You spend time from your day to water and care for the lawn looking for spots that is less vibrant or browning and attend to it quickly. Aerating done adequately with the equipment you rent from the big-box store or you pay the lawn care university student knocking at your door to do it.

Lawns Waste Your Resources

Your Water Bill

When you live in the suburbs you have to pay a water bill for hte water that comes throught your tap provided by the local governing body. Sometimes there is also a sewage/sewer charge for the disposal of the water coming in. If your lawn uses 1000 litres to water it, you’re paying for it coming in through your pipes while you spray it onto your lawn. Then as 1/3 evaporates into the air, you’ve already paid for it through the sewer fee included in your water delivery charge. That’s wasting your money. Plus you’re paying for water to use for your lawn like its a dog or cat or cow.

Your Gas or Electric Bill

If you’re running your electric or gas powered lawn mower, you’re paying for the privilege of cutting down the lawn that you spend money to grow. According to a Yale University study America uses 600 million gallons of gas in mow and trim lawns every year. Lawn care consumes over 150 million litres of gasoline annually in Canada. With the sky-high price of fuel, imagine how much gas we would save if homeowners replaced their lawns with something more useful to them. Your electric bill also goes up due to working on your lawn too.

Lawn Treatments (weed treatments, pesticides)

Your lawn will do well for the first couple of years with regular maintenance but as time goes on, the soil nutrients will become depleted. Grubs will start living in your lawns attacking the lawn from under the soil. Then you will begin to see brown patches which means you’ll have to hire lawn-care companies to spray, treat, and reseed your patch. If your lawn dies completely then you’ll have to rip up the old lawn and lay down fresh grass which costs a lot.

Leisure Time

Most people never count time as a cost but it is a cost. You only have 24 hours in a day to spend. When you spend 30 minutes every other day watering the grass and 2 hours every 2 week cutting it, it add up over the course of a year. That is time you spent! In real practical terms, you spent that time on the lawn, what does the lawn give you in return for your time spent? Food? Money? Peace of mind? Protection? The exchange of your time for your lawn is a poor deal for you.

Lawns Are For Rich People

Now that you’ve got all the previous considerations, I’d like to submit for your consideration the idea that lawns are for rich individuals, big businesses, churches, academic institutions, and government. Lawns are not for the average working class person because as I’ve highlighted in this article, they are highly resource intensive. Think about this. All those entities I described have deep pockets to pay to maintain their lawns. Let’s lump all of them as the rich because they have access to financial resources.

These rich entities can afford to pay gardeners to care for their lawns. They actually hire people to do the work of caring for the lawn for them. Your local governor or premier doesn’t go out to mow the lawn outside his government offices, does he? Neither do pastors, priest, or religious leaders head out to mow lawns. University presidents don’t mow the campus lawns. It’s a rich ego and posturing thing.

The rich entities can afford to waste water pouring gallons upon gallons of water on lawns to keep them green even in the hottest months of summer. While farmers are screaming for water to grow food to actually feed people in some parts, these rich entities can waste water on that which is not even good for food.

And why isn’t it good for food? Because the rich entity spends money on pesticides, fungicides, fertilizers, and other treatments. These all go in and contaminate the ground and the grasses making them inedible for garden pests and also unsavoury for pets and humans too.

These rich entities also can afford the excessive gas bill and/or electric bill to maintain the lawns, light the lawns at night, run automatic sprinkler systems and who knows what else. The bigger the lawn, the more resource intensive it is.

Lawns Don’t Benefit Middle-Class or Poor

I’d like to submit to you that lawns do not really benefit the middle class except for the fleeting “curb appeal” of it. Once that is gone, you realize just how worthless lawns are for the middle-class and the poor. Lawns do not produce fruits for consumption. If you plant just one fruit tree, you may be able to get fruits from the tree for 10 to 20 years or more. I have a friend that purchased a house about 2 decades ago with fruit trees in the backyard. He and his wife are still enjoying fruits from those trees today.

Lawns don’t grow veggies. All that time and effort you put into grass is much better time spent growing veggies because you can at least eat those veggies in their season. The Return On Investment (ROI) on lawns is just piss-poor unless you’re involved in buying and selling real-estate.

Lawns are useful on large estates and large acreages. It makes it easier to see predators approaching the castle or farm animals. These also make it hot and unpleasant for small pests like ticks, mice, and snakes to approach cross the exposed open lawn.

Why Lawns?

Tradition and Envy

Lawns are a hold-over from the old world status symbol. You can image those knights or dukes or duchesses all moving around their estates with beautifully manicured lawns. Seeing that lawn care is a billion dollar industry, it made sense to socialize folks into thinking lawns were really very important. There is a lot of money riding on getting rich entities and working-class folk to obsess about their lawns.

Neighbours are also monitored by by-law officials who are looking for violations regard the proper height and coloration and health of the homeowner’s lawn. Neigbours are trained to be envious of their neighbours with lawns that look plush and to be spiteful of their neighbours with lawns that look ragged.

As a society we often give up old traditions that no longer serve us. It’s time the working class or the other 95% reconsider seriously the tradition of the lawn in suburban homes. In a climate crisis, it is one of the most useless resource hogs to keep.

Lawn Stories

Here’s a story I read about. In the story a Michigan woman was at risk of spending 93 days in prison for the condition of her front yard. She turned her front yard lawn into an edible garden and after finally giving up the struggle to make her lawn look pretty. Now she and her husband are able to save money on groceries and rekindle new friendships with neighbours walking past the house as they stop for a chat, share ideas, and take notes.

During World War 2, the nation saw how completely useless were and people were encouraged to convert any green spaces like lawns into victory gardens growing food. It was necessary because all of the food was going abroad to support the troops in the war effort. Those who stayed at home were forced to live off meager rations. Victory gardens were a way to supplement the family diet and avoid starvation or malnutrition.

Lastly, I can tell you a more personal story of a friend I know who lived in a beautiful luxury home in Toronto. The house had its own private elevator, and beautiful lawn all around. My friend did not like the idea of shoveling snow or taking care of her lawn. She moved into a high-rise condo in the heart of the city close to the entertainment district so she could be in the heart of the city life. She also loved never having to care about lawns, snow, or garbage day.

My Recommendation:

Convert Lawn To Garden

I want you to challenge you old-fashioned thinking about lawns as a homeowner. If you’re not eating your lawn and grass, it’s eating you! Given the tight economic times ahead, the extremely high price of gas, food, and the cost of living, I urgently encourage you to turn your lawn liability into a food asset.

Extend Your Driveway

If you’re the kind of person that entertains guests, networks, or hosts special events at your home, then why not convert your useless lawn into more driveway or parking space. I knew one person who converted the space to allow them to park 6 cars in the space. If you’re a social butterfly, then this is an option for you.

No Mow May Spring

I wrote about the concept of “No Mow May” in an article that speaks to the idea of allowing your lawns to grow wild for the entire month of May. You can read more about No Mow May for yourself after this. My suggestion in this article is why not extend it to No Mow Spring (April to June) or mow one month, skip one month, alternating monthly so that you can save you time and reap the benefits I mentioned in the article.

Until next time, continue to learn and grow!

References

Yale Study Mentioned, https://pss.uvm.edu/ppp/articles/fuels.html