Go for an 'Edible Estate': The Case Against Lawns

from Metropolis Books, via AlterNet:



Go for an 'Edible Estate': The Case Against Lawns

By Fritz Haeg, Metropolis Books. Posted April 4, 2008.

Why do we dedicate so much property to something that requires precious resources, endless hours and contaminates our air and water?



Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn from Metropolis Books.

The front lawn is so deeply embedded in our national psyche that we don't really see it any more, at least for what it actually is. What is that chasm between house and street? Why is it there? Or rather, why is nothing there?

I grew up surrounded by a lawn. This is a common American phenomenon. Perhaps the first growing thing most of us experience as a child is, indeed, a mowed grassy surface. How are a child's ideas of "the natural" affected by this? Of course, there is nothing remotely natural about a lawn. It is an industrial landscape disguised as organic plant material.

As a teenager I passed many weekend afternoons mowing the lawn and I loved it. The more overgrown the lawn, the greater the sense of satisfaction as you roar over it to reveal that crisp trimmed surface and fresh grassy smell. I suppose most of my outdoor time as a youth was spent on a lawn. It is the first defensive ring between the family unit and everything beyond. It is the border control that physically and psychologically keeps wilderness, city, and strangers at a safe distance.

.....(snip).....

The American front lawn is now almost entirely symbolic. Aristocratic English spectacle and drama has degenerated into a bland garnish for our endless suburban sprawl and alienation. The monoculture of one plant species covering our neighborhoods from coast to coast celebrates puritanical homogeneity and mindless conformity. An occasional lawn for recreation can be a delight, but most of them are occupied only when they are being tended.

Today's lawn has become the default surface for any defensible private space. If you don't know what to put there, plant grass seed and keep watering. Driving around most neighborhoods you will see lush beds of grass being tended on narrow unused strips of land. In the United States we plant more grass than any other crop: currently lawns cover more than thirty million acres. Given the way we lavish precious resources on it and put it everywhere that humans go, aliens landing in any American city today would assume that grass must be the most precious earthly substance of all.

Yet the lawn devours resources while it pollutes. It is maniacally groomed with mowers and trimmers powered by the two-stroke motors that are responsible for much of our greenhouse gas emissions. Hydrocarbons from mowers react with nitrogen oxides in the presence of sunlight to produce ozone. To eradicate invading plants the lawn is drugged with pesticides and herbicides, which are then washed into our water supply with sprinklers and hoses, dumping our increasingly rare fresh drinking resource down the gutter.

Meanwhile, at the grocery store we confront our food. Engineered fruits and vegetables wrapped in plastic and Styrofoam are cultivated not for taste but for appearance, uniformity, and ease of transport, then sprayed with chemicals to inhibit the diseases and pests that thrive in an unbalanced ecosystem. The produce in the average American dinner is trucked 1,500 miles to reach our plates. We don't know where our fruits and vegetables came from or who grew them. Perhaps we have even forgotten that plants were responsible for the mass-produced meal we are consuming. This detachment from the source of our food breeds a careless attitude toward our role as custodians of the land that feeds us. Perhaps we would reconsider what we put down the drain, on the ground, and in the air if there was more direct evidence that we will ultimately ingest it. The garden began behind walls, a truce, a compromise, between human need and natural resource. .......(from)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/environment/80531/

I just switched to a german made push mower, quiet, smooth, actually fun to use. And cuts better than any other mower.

But the garden is growing, and pesticide free again this year. Marigolds, and other natural methods.

I've been using a forty year old Mastercraft for years, now - but it is wobbly, heavy as a whale, but cuts nicely...I would LOVE to get a new one, however...

I actually tested the Scotts, and a couple of others.

The Brill is light, yet cuts incredibly well. I highly recommend it, especially when the neighbor has the tools out trying to start his machine, until he hired someone to do it for him.

I just bought one five minutes ago. $250!!! Awesome!!!

I
JUST
CAN'T
WAIT.


http://www.peoplepoweredmachines.com/brill/brill_razorcut38.htm

like for FREE :wow: :headbang:

We have a big lawn actually but also a lot of native plants and many flowers I grow specially for hummingbirds and bats and bees. I grow a lot of food too, I try to balance things out.. I realize the big green lawn part is silly but it's important to my husband and our neighbors.

and gradually bury the grass underneath them in mulch.........Plant a bunch of culinary and medicinal herbs in nice undulating-border beds around that lawn, too. He'll never notice.

Baby steps, baby steps.......

I planted some blueberry bushes a couple of years ago that are gonna take up part of the lawn soon I hope.
The good thing is I'm the one in charge if the whole yard :headbang: his pretty green lawn ideas will never die but whatever, he's not about to go out there and take care of it either.

With vegetable beds, blueberry bushes, flower beds and a small native plant area.

"Lasagna gardening" is an easy way to create new planting beds over lawn without digging. I've done this for years and it works well. It involves laying inch-thick layers of wet newspaper over a given area, and then covering it with layers of compost, peat moss, and some specific other materials. You can plant directly into this without mixing it up.

Here's a link for information: http://ourgardengang.tripod.com/lasagna_gardening.htm

There's also a book called "Lasagna Gardening", which can be found in many public libraries.

I have always hated front lawns and have always thought them as a complete waste of space.

I've been wanting to replace it with veggies and berry bushes.

Cheers!

Our nation is counting on you and others just like you to make us strong! :patriot:

WW II brought us Victory Gardens. PO and GW (and that goddamned GWB) have brought us Survival Gardens.

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We have maybe an acre of "lawn" here, so a push mower is not feasible.

Two mowers, one push(gas) and a riding mower.

LIving in the north, and in the country, - bugs are a big issue if one wants to enjoy the outdoors.

Keeping a cut down space around the out-buildings greatly reduces the bugs around the dwelling and out-buildings.

All we have to do to notice the difference is to take a few steps into the tall grass.

And as far as the gas consumption?

Over a year, the mowers use less gas than a week or two of normal driving.

Article is bullshit.

The lawn doesn't make much sense. Yet where I live, if I was to let it go wild, it is likely I'd wind up in court. I'm tempted though anyway.