I find grass so useless. Every boomer parent I’ve known is just obsessed with it, too. They think that not having a green, green monoculture lawn means you’ve failed morally or something, and that it’s how they show the neighborhood how responsible they are. One GF’s dad came over to our random Winconsin lawn of grass and weeds and strawberries and was “I WOULD JUST PULL THIS ALL UP AND START OVER”. Uh… no?
Then I had an across the street neighbor (guy with a bumper sticker “I’ve never seen a FLAG burned at a GUN SHOW”) who would mow his lawn every single day with a riding mower. You couldn’t even tell what part he had done yet. I went out of town for two weeks and he rode over and mowed my lawn. I left my backyard just go and it was awesome… after a few years, birds started nesting in the middle of the prairie, and I had flowers growing I’d never seen anywhere else.
They all seem obsessed with plastic grass now which is even worse.
My garden is mostly weeds. Haven’t cut it in 15 years. I pretend to be a trendsetting wild gardener, but really I’m just a lazy bastard.
Did you sue? I’d have been livid enough to try to sue. IANAL, but at a minimum I would hope that would be trespassing.
Some places have bylaws on maximum lawn height and you can actually be fined for letting it go. That’s how insane people are about lawns.
I thought it was virtually all places. I’m surprised the other guy could even let the lawn go native.
Not everywhere is in an HOA. And many people allow native vegetation on purpose to give local wildlife something to eat (see OP).
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I mean that’s probally overkill, that person was either OCD or was thinking he was doing them a favor. That sounds like a great way to have a pissed off neighbor and a potentially hostile neighborhood
I’d feel a little different (still pissed) if it was a next door neighbor who extended their mow. But to cross the street and change someone’s property without permission is already hostile to me.
I doubt that I could have demonstrated real harm, or even proved that he did it. I got back into town a week later and my brother, who had been watching the house, said “huh, the guy across the street mowed the front yard”.
By the letter of the law it probably is, but if they hadn’t expressly been told not to it won’t go anywhere.
It seems like people used to suburbs see that as the pinnacle of life but of course that’s not true.
In my experience rural areas get it because they are farmers and beekeepers with an understanding that working with nature is the way to go
I went out of town for two weeks and he rode over and mowed my lawn.
This happened to me too.
are so violently obsessed with inch-high fuzzy green rectangles of obedience that they’ll sometimes invade your property to make more of them, overriding any of their own pretenses about the sanctity of private property in the process.I think he thought he was doing me a favor, but really was just jerking off his lawn obsession. Same guy told me one time “HEY i saw a bear in your driveway and I was gonna come run it off so it didn’t mess with your garbage but it left!” I was uh, okay… no, please don’t come confront a bear in my driveway. Dude drank light beer all day.
In my case, it was deliberate aggression because I had told him, in person and to his face, that those were protected native plants and I had a legal right to have them on my property.
But
“did me a favor” with a disgusting little smirk when I confronted him about it later. He even implied that I got nothing to prove what he did because I don’t have the surveillance state shit that he has on his side of the fence.
I’m 52 and hate mowing yards. Most other people my age are also obsessed with their lawns or simply “enjoy getting out and working on the yard”
There few things worse than doing yard work. I think dying is one of them, maybe.
Anyways, yeah we have a yard. We try to keep various bushes and wildflowers as we can. We go as log as possible in early spring to not mow and get all the clover and stuff to bring the bees and like insects over.
As for mowing, I pay someone 50 dollars every 2 weeks to keep it not looking like crap.
My father-in-law, who lives with us, used to do most of the gardening and lawn stuff. He is too old now to do any of it. He’s always trying to get the rest of the people in the house to do stuff in the yard. I keep telling him "you know you are the only one who really gives a shit on how ‘nice’ the yard looks. My only goal is to keep the city and neighbors off our back, that’s it.’
EDIT: Also neighbors seem intent on having a single uniform grass breed and obsessed with having no weeds. Nah, I have all the grasses and weeds. I have a neighbor down the street who is always just HAND PULLING weeds out of her lawn. Like hours and hours of it. I mean… wat
It seems to be something that retired people love, to keep them active and give them something to do (a sense of purpose besides grandchildren?). I don’t mind yardwork myself, but I don’t feel like it’s virtuous or something. I also understand that a chemical-sodden monoculture isn’t really the best for humans and wildlife.
My mother used to try to get us… oh, she still does… to come “PULL WEEDS”. As kids it made sense, like okay, she wants us to get away from the video games and be outside and do whatever she’s saying, but at this point…
I get it as a dog owner with only a courtyard. But he goes on long hikes in the bush and big walks a few times a week. It’d be nice to give the little fella a patch to hang on while I’m at work. And I mean a patch—I hate mowing and any yard work motivation in me is for citrus, chilli, and grapes.
Dogs will happily lay in high grass.
There is the risk of tick transmission of Lyme disease in tall grass. I suppose you can pretreat to prevent contraction, but mowing grass means you don’t have those threats/hazards to worry about.
I still hate lawns and wish more would be native, but I wonder if there’s a way to grow a native lawn such that you invite the good wildlife and keep out the bad. Would need a biologist to chime in
One of the 10 plants in this article would work. And one of them is bound to be native to your area.
My dog loves tall grass so much. He likes stomping them.
My yard was very low with ground cover. I actually did mow the front, I just didn’t care if it was grass or a bunch of random other plants. I had a dog when my gf lived with me, but at this point, didn’t. There were so many rabbits and deer I actually just grew my vegetable garden on the front porch in containers.
i never understood why american front yards dont have fences. just a barren wasteland of green from the curb to the front windows. fence your garden in!
Many do, but it really depends on the area.
That guy was an asshole for doing that to you. I wonder if that might be considered trespassing. Dunno if you can have any civil remedy served to you, or if it’s even worth it, but still sucks.
do you have kids? they love playing outside. barefoot. and a nice lawn is a paradise for bare feet. not to mention the actual process of mowing (electric mower) is very peaceful and good for my mental health. super therapeutic.
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hot take: you can have bee gardens AND a lawn
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seems pretty naive to think that it’s joe homeowner that’s the problem, and not insecticides and fertilizers from mega farm corporations like monsanto. let me know where to mail my apology letter lol
How tall did the grass get? Did it pollinate, and if so, was it noticable for allergies? Were you still able to walk through it?
I’m wondering what sort of plant you could let grow where you could still walk through easily. Maybe clover?
Low height ground cover type plants grew naturally there. Clover, alfalfa, strawberries, unknown other plants, with an occasional thistle. Larger plants (whatever they were) would grow on the periphery. When he mowed my lawn it was maybe about a foot high.
We were surrounded by acres of forest where plants grew wild, so if there was a problem with pollen, it wasn’t the .4 acres of my front lawn. Myt front lawn, I did mow occasionally. The back I let grow wild and yes, one could still walk through it.
One of the lame things about lawn is that people don’t let them go to seed. If grass goes to seed, it not only regenerates itself, but also provides food for birds and squirrels. I was on an acre and a half across the street from this guy, and bounded by 30 feet of trees on ones side and 200 feet of forest on the other.
Aren’t these allergies sometimes caused because you’re not exposed to the stuff? Like how it is for peanuts.
I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want people who come over to cough uncontrollably even if I was used to it.
Is there a nolawns community here?
Weirdly enough, it’s small on reddit, and the biggest are on Facebook ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Facebook users typically skew older, so people that are more likely to have established careers, larger spaces and yards to work on. I feel like a lot of Redditors and Lemmings are young and live with parents or in apartments, and are thus less likely to have a yard to care for.
That being said, anyone with a deck or porch can pot a plant or two to try and help local pollinators.
I want to make a short film / animation where aliens are approaching earth, the only thing we know about the aliens is that they plan to destroy all life and replace it with their own twisted creation. A few minutes of typical story follows, heroes assemble, go to fight, etc. The heroes lose and the ending scene shows that the aliens have succeeded and replaced all the diverse life on Earth with a perfectly manicured lawn that covers the entire planet. A biological wasteland.
Commence high pitched screeching
So is this like a whole movie with the premise of “the cage” from star trek?
Pretty sure one of the nearby planets to Earth in The Foundation series is like that.
An entire planet covered in sunflowers that shoot deadly ass rays against anything that comes close. Perfect homogeneity.
Please, not the ass rays!
I’m glad someone got it lol.
The pistols and stamens, the center part of the flower are where the reproductive organs are. So it’s the closest thing to an ass a plant has.
People need to be proud of their.puns again damnit!
I will admit there is something very pleasing about looking at a well trimmed yard. That said, the percent of the earth’s land surface covered by manicured lawns is tiny. The ag industry would love for you to believe your lawn is the problem. It isn’t. The problem is the monoculture farm land. Acres of fields with only one type of crop. And probably other things like pollution and such. But industries love to play the “you are the problem” card to divert from themsleves.
Yes, but also: Every little bit of help, well… helps.
Don’t let those industries playing the blame game discourage you from dedicating a part of your yard to a bunch of flowers, because then the problem would get ever so slightly worse.
Yeah but you could easily have a patch of lush green grass the size of this one in your lawn and also some nice flower beds, bushes, trees and whatever else. Most people want some of that, not just a plain garden with no features. The problem isn’t peoples’ yards, it’s pesticides.
This is the correct answer, this shit is „your carbon footprint“ all over again
“Walk to work, ignore corporate consumption, and use only the highest quality refined petroleum products, and go easy on the avocados.”
This + a massive over usage of pesticides
Could be worse
This does not require mass weed killer, pesticides, and water though?
Weed and grass killer, yes, otherwise you have patches growing up.
Weeds are very easily pulled without damaging anything in a rock garden. Also it doesn’t require fertilizer or water (except for a very small amount for those small bushes).
You can pull weeds by hand.
If it’s in the desert no.
Honestly, that may be better. At least it doesn’t use water and it would be fine in a very dry environment out western US.
Native plants would still be even better though.
I mean, do we know it’s not native? Not everyone is in the US.
When I say that, I mean having a full garden of native plants rather than the couple of bushes that are there.
Looks like an example of xeriscaping, or gardening with a minimal need for irrigation. Not the best I’ve seen, but at least it’s water-conserving.
Is the native landscape a rock garden? If you live in the Mojave: Go nuts, but that black rock is going to bake your house and drive up your carbon dioxide usage. Plants breathe just like animals do and that increases humidity locally, and in dry climates that can be a significant cooling effect. Essentially cheap evaporative cooling.
I feel like this can still be a native lawn depending on which biome it’s in. Seems more desert like than a prairie/forest type “native lawn” you might traditionally think of.
But yeah native can look different depending on location so I might be ok with this
Remember it’s not just about saving honey bees! Honey bees are domesticated, which means that humans will make sure that they have food and shelter and appropriate medicine and care throughout the year to ensure they make honey.
Saving “the bees” moreso means saving wild, native, often times solitary bees like bumblebees or carpenter bees that don’t produce honey but that also aren’t domesticated - they have no safety net that humans give them.
Those bees along with all other pollinators like bats, birds, and other insects are the ones at risk!
Still, we should all consider growing native yards to return habitat back to these dying species!
The EU has uncultivated land subsidies. To avoid overproduction of food and overexploitation of the land, the EU pays farmers to keep their land uncultivated. Some countries, like mine, force farmers to uncultivate their land once every N years, and, of course, they get subsidies for this.
In my region, farmers will plant flowers and let weed grow, since they’re not putting any pesticide. They let the flowers and weeds die and rot at the end of the season. This way, they dont have to put as much fertilizer the next year. I’ve always seen these uncultivated fields full of bees and other pollinators in summer.
That happens in the US too. It’s why there’s New York addresses that own huge “fields” of land that’s usually a wetland. The marginal land is protected and they get a corn subsidy from the government to not farm the land.
I stopped cutting my grass and now I have rats :(
Rats do not live off grass. If you have them, there’s some sort of food source on your or your neighbors property.
Or, like, insects.
They don’t live off grass but long grass is great cover for them to move freely. My lawn is pretty wild, but I have to mow directly around the house otherwise mice and all sort of insects start taking up reaidence in the house.
Tons of blackberries.
lmao my guy rats literally eat everything
Yeah, but they really can’t digest grass.
they eat seeds, overgrown grass develops seeds. man this thread is ridiculously misinformed lol even on RATS
Simple, get an owl
Now we have an owl infestation
Simple, get a condor
We do have foxes, but they’ve been a disappointment thus far.
I’m not sure where you live but if you can find some native seeds from your area, plant those! It’s the perfect time in many northern-hemisphere places for overwintering things like wildflower, clover seeds and more! Fancy lawn grasses are bogus and weak
Bold to assume we own yards
Your yard in your summer residence then. Jeez
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I have lived at my current property for nearly 7 years now, and while I cut the main area up against the house once a week, I typically let the rest grow out for a month. Never used sprays other than flea and tick for my dog’s yard, and never even pulled weeds.
Still, it’s almost all completely homogenous grass. Not sure what species, but it doesn’t grow very high. 3-5 inches. No wildflowers have encroached, no other grasses except clover, not even weeds other than dandelion. The only other thing that grows anywhere is some English ivy that’s pissing me off all over the house. Every time I pull some out and dig up the root, I find more a few days later.
Still, MUCH higher insect, pollinator, and other wildlife activity vs my previous residence. It’s been nice seeing fireflies again, even if it’s still nowhere near what it was when I was a kid.
Our yard is about 3" of top soil on top of basically solid clay. When we moved in a little over a decade ago I tried taking on the dandelions, but I quickly pivoted to planting clover. Now we have tons of the stuff, fewer dandelions despite no chemicals (not that I really mind them anymore), and our yard smells fantastic in mid to late spring when all the clover is in full bloom. Tons and tons of bees, crickets, etc. We re-did a flower bed and intentionally planted swamp milk weed and red crocosmia in it. They look fantastic together and the bees absolutely love it, not to mention the butterflies.
But yeah. About English ivy. Been fighting that stuff for years…
Switch it for a proper garden.
I prefer a garden full of grown weeds than a clean grass cutted one. If a weed can grow and prosper without me watering it once a day, I think they deserve the right to be there more than anything my father ever planted on his yard that would die without getting water for 3 days or too much rain water.
uhhhh most weeds provide almost zero food for pollinators. literally just as bad as grass.
Are you actually growing native plants or do you just not care that you’re growing a massive amount of invasive on what we would call marginal lands?
We keep the front mowed for the HOA.
The backyard can grow until we worry about snakes affecting our pups.
We have a front garden that gets no care outside HOA recommendations. It came with the house.
Can’t wait until I can OWN a house, but the market (with all the influences upon it) isn’t there.
I’m saving, and considering moving to another state, if that helps all the pedantic monsters our there.
Just quit watering the grass except for in small walkways and start a food forest.
Reading all the comments and everyone is like not my yard , its full of flowers but for some reason I don’t see any bees or butterfly 🤷♂️
That’s because it’s not the only reason. Another big one is pesticides.
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great bot
I only mow at the last possible second to not get a fine, has been working really well for my yard. I have seen flowers, corn, and a beautiful assortment of creepers and clovers start taking over the sterile grass. My neighbors neighbor seems to get butthurt. They take care of my direct neighbors yard whom I share a chain link fence with, she loves my vines with the flowers and strange gourds that wind around the fence. Neither of us planted it but the people who tend her yard destroy it 😭if we just let everything happen naturally some very cool things start to crop up. I’ve seen some absolutely massive grasshoppers and a bunch of praying mantis as well. My bee hotel never attracts anything but I’ve seen plenty of bees about which makes me happy.
