The Polarization of Grass
The History of Sustainable Southern Lawns Has Been Subjugated. It’s time to be proud of our eco-friendly lawns.
Grass, turf, lawn, the yard, or whatever you call it isn’t what it used to be. It used to be a place to put the swing set, to roll out a slip ‘n slide, or a spot for the dog pee. It was innocent.
Grass has grown as controversial as drag shows, abortions, and Oxford commas. Lawn-haters belittle lawn lovers with social media memes appropriate for pedophiles and big oil spillers. At the same time, neighborhood association board members impose fines on weeds and ignore the reality that monoculture turf can be truly wasteful and toxic.
Time out y’all. Listen to the moderates. We need grass and lawns. Lawns provide functional spaces, fire, and personal security for homes and can be beautifully sustainable. I’ve spent decades of my horticulture career using low-impact lawns that make lots of people happy. I’ve done it for small homes and on large scales. Once I even built a brand new, 70-acre botanical garden with only one lawn — an amphitheater where folks spread their blankets and listen to live music.
We can have diverse, eco-friendly lawns using tested techniques that use to be common throughout the country.
Old-School Country Lawns
The lawn used to be, and still is at my house, a collection of low and flat-growing plants that get mowed down. Useful spaces where people could be outside. In hot climates, like mine, the yard offered escape from a hot house. Lots of people remember well a parent saying, ‘go play in the yard and don’t come in ‘til dark.
As a teen, I was the go-to grass-cutting guy in a small town where no one had irrigation, used chemicals to kill weeds and only a few people added fertilizer. They didn’t have money or inclination for that sort of thing and wouldn’t have wasted it if they had it. Today, around here, this is still the norm. Grass was grass.
Except it wasn’t all grass. Centipede grass mixed with Bahai grass, wood sorrel, dandelions, red spider lilies, lyre-leaf sage, sour grass, American garlic, and Southern violets. I learned a lot about tiny plants, insects, and birds while I mowed. For three dollars an hour, around your home, cemetery, or farm, I’d mow your grass. No one even used the word lawn.
Subverted by Social Changes, Pretense & Money
Social and economic conditions changed the use and expectation of grass. Air conditioning, TVs, and bigger houses keep people inside more. We spent less time on the grass as houses grew more comfortable and spacious. Our relationship with grass changed.
Since we used grass less and less, you might think expectations of grass might be lowered, or that’d we’d need less of it. But the opposite happened. People started wanting fancy grass. Downton Abby style. Golf course style. Carpet-like monocultures. Grass got pretentious.
Certainly, plenty of high falutin’ folks in Atlanta had groomed Zoysia carpets around their mansions. But rural people, most people, most likely your grandparents included, had old-school diverse lawns.
But as the economy changed, we moved into suburbs and sought to distinguish ourselves from where we came from. Fancy grass as seen in movies and media is one way to do that. As new people moved in from places with different, ‘higher’ lawn standards, the idea of the perfect lawn was reinforced. Builders of new homes needed a quick fix for the new, mass construction style of clearing to build. Roll out the lawn.
Acres of mono-lawn became the norm.
Your Mono-lawn Kills My Fish
I’m a live-and-let-live kind of guy. But the idea of the perfect lawn doesn’t allow for that. To have a perfect lawn, one person must infringe on the rights and health of others. A perfectly groomed mono-lawn needs an irrigation system, winter over-seeding, regular herbicides, and fertilizer applications. All those things involve water. Since we’re all connected by water, one man’s new fancy grass, poisons me, you, and plenty of wild animals and plants too.
Most irrigation systems are set to use way too much water. That’s a human error but the systems err too. Most cannot tell when it’s raining or when the grass doesn’t need water for other reasons. From an ethical standpoint alone, water wasted on grass is simply vulgar and greedy. Every time I see the irrigation system at our local Mcdonald’s spraying into the road, my heart breaks for friends in Haiti who carry their open buckets of drinking water for miles.
From an environmental standpoint, groundwater is already threatened by overuse. Even in our rain-laden climate, in nearby Hilton Head, SC, overuse of water leads to saltwater intrusion, making the water too salty for plants or consumption.
Old-style lawns do not need irrigation. My family home, occupied since 1750 has never had irrigation on the grass. My 1940’s home in downtown Columbia, SC, on top of a sandhill, has never had irrigation. Millions of yards like them have grass that might get a little crispy in August but greens up with fall rains. Accepting this may take a change of expectation, and a release of pretension. Accept it. Sometimes grass is brown.
Mono-lawns pollute our clean water when synthetic fertilizers and herbicides move. If you could track the nitrogen in fertilizer, you see it run through the grass, through the soil, and into our common water. Some is taken up by the plants. But once it rains, that fertilizer is gone on into the ground. On a local island, I can look down the marsh and tell who over-fertilizes by the thick marsh vegetation in front of their lawn. It’s often too dense for fiddler crabs to live under. On a grand scale, massive algae blooms in lakes and the ocean, killing marine life. In the US, we’ve created one of the largest dead zones in the ocean. Excess nitrogen causes waterways and ecosystems to destabilize. Across the Atlantic, environmentally conscious Holland’s Minister for Nature and Nitrogen Policy monitors nitrogen pollution which should be considered as thoroughly as we consider our carbon footprint.
Herbicides behave similarly. One chemical used on lawns is causing the feminization of male frogs. That means our sensitive, insect-eating little frog friends’ testicles shrink up and fall off. Frogs and other amphibians are indicator species and critical to watch as a sign of the health of an ecosystem. This is more than a local problem. The chemical in question, used on big turf and in big ag, is found in about 70% of US groundwater. You’re probably drinking or brushing your teeth with it. (Read More About This)
When I see a perfect mono-lawn, I don’t see high class, good taste or skill. I see deformed frogs, polluted water, and human misery.
But a real, beautiful, unpretentious lawn doesn’t do any of that.
Back to the Old School Lawn
My Mother, who grew up sweeping her yard in the 40s says, “I’d never want to go back to sweeping the yard! I love that we have grass now.” She’s raised children, and pets, hosted weddings and wake and parties on her grass. I’ve mowed it for decades — about 15 times per year. But this hundred years old lawn doesn’t hurt anyone. She’s proud of it. You can be too. Here are some facts about the old school lawns.
It‘s never had an irrigation system.
It’s a diverse ecosystem. I’ve counted about 30 species of plants in it including Southern violet, American Strawberry, American Garlic, and plenty of other native plants. Drawn to the lawn for nectar, it sustains butterflies, moths, and European honeybees, ants, birds and critters I never see.
It’s not had synthetic fertilizer since the 1960s. If at all.
It’s never had a herbicide application.
It’s beautiful in the spring when thousands of bulbs flower.
It’s functional most of the year.
It requires mowing about once every three weeks from April through August.
Birds love it. Avian studies prove that suburbia actually houses the most bird diversity of any other landscape.
If you’d like to know more about the history and species in this lawn, there’s a story in my book Funky Little Flower Farm about the bulb lawn.
Ready to Go Back? Tips on Transitioning from Mono-lawn to Old-School Lawn.
Relax. Embrace diversity. Let some weeds grow. If you live in a community with ‘Lawn Standards’ get on the board and rewrite them. We, nor the animals and plants we should be stewards of, nor our grandchildren, can afford to let a few mono-lawn enforcing jerks set our standards.
Plant some tiny bulbs. My favorite, no-fail bulb to get sneak into a lawn is Muscari neglectum. Plant in October.
Seed in micro-clover. It will have little white flowers in spring but more importantly, it provides nitrogen to your grass.
Eliminate or reduce irrigation. Most grasses are fine with one inch of water twice a month. Remember, in our driest month, August, it’s better to let the lawn go crispy than to give it a bit of water here and there.
Quit herbicides. Just quit.
Brace for the transition. This is a slow and sometimes frustrating process.
It’s Ok to Enjoy to Enjoy Your Grass
From the Garden District of New Orleans to the marshes of Norfolk, people have and still do mow what grows. Recognizing the myth that lawns were ever perfect gives us a bit of common ground between the lawn bashers and the mono-lawn tyrants. I’m proud of my ecologically diverse, low-impact lawn. You should be too. Let go, relax, and learn to love and mow what grows.
The Polarization of Grass
Yes, you hit the sweet spot on this issue. I've read entire books about eliminating lawn, and they claim that an ornamental garden is less work and less money. It's only less money if you were pouring money into making and keeping the lawn a monoculture. And if you don't have the knowledge, time, or physical capability to maintain an ornamental garden, it's far easier to find and less expensive to pay someone to cut the grass than to weed a perennial border or even prune shrubs. As I mention in this blog post (https://www.coldclimategardening.com/2017/06/28/the-flowery-lawn/), Ken Druse in his book A Passion for Gardening calls our type of lawn a "cropped meadow." That makes it sound properly upscale, ecological, and sustainable. Nevermind it's also old-fashioned. Vintage? Heritage! I'm calling my lawn a heritage lawn. Oh, I think in Minnesota they call it a bee lawn.
Love this article and love my wild yard!