Friday, June 07, 2002

In Defense of a Bad Lawn

At the risk of sounding like one of those people (people like me, I hasten to add) who defend their messy houses and office desks with clever quips about clutter as a sign of genius and tidiness as a clinical symptom of obsessive monomania, I am here today to speak in defense of the less than emerald lawn. I used to feel guilty about our mottled grass in a neighborhood of mostly velvety lawns, but Rachel Carson’s ecological protest song has finally reached my ears, and, I tell you, I am a new woman—who sees her “bad lawn” in a fresh light with the aid of environmental science. I now shake off the social anxiety that leads Americans to spend 700 billion dollars on lawn pesticides and over 5 trillion dollars on fossil fuel-derived lawn fertilizers each year in a battle to keep the 20 million acres of residential lawns in this country artificially green.*

It’s true, I once caved into horticultural pressure and bought poison to rid a portion of our lawn of grubs. The result was that none of our nearby peonies opened that year; the poison drove off or killed the ants that nibble open their fragrant blossoms. As I mourned the loss of their sassy magenta blooms, I kicked myself and swore: Never again. At that moment, I began to see the dandelions in our lawn as flowers and salad—and as the food of choice this spring for some prickly second-grade science-project caterpillars until they pulsed and fluttered into their brash new lives as Painted Lady butterflies.

At our house, our first step toward a more ecological yard was setting aside our polluting gas mower for a throwback reel-action push mower—the kind you hear grandparents reminiscing about, back when their soft whisk-whisk sound heralded summer’s return. True, with such a human-powered machine, the finished product lacks the crisp ballpark geometry of a power- mowed lawn, but I now have built up splendid biceps, my children can safely romp outside and chat with me while I mow, and none of this bothers the good folks next door dining al fresco.

Happy ecological stories can be found: Friends with a chemical free lawn are able to invite a neighbor’s guinea pig for grazing parties on their sweet grass. Other folks we know sowed their yard with a slow-growing grass variety spiced with lots of fluffy clover—a plant that only became a weed as recently as the 1950s—making a bouncy, low-maintenance green carpet that might not pass muster at a golf course but which is a delight for their children and animals.

Water is a key resource for the eerie monoculture of a treated lawn, of course, and, depending on the city, 30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used to keep American grass green.* Having grown up in parched Colorado summers, I am hyper-aware of the decadence of watering lawns, but still have to fight the urge to sprinkle. The turning point for me came a few years ago when, during a Midwestern drought, we returned from a late summer vacation to find large portions of our lawn blanched bone-white. I was horrified, but a cheerful organic-living neighbor pointed out, with upbeat practicality, how neat it was that the grass just naturally knew when to “go dormant.” I liked that euphemism for grass I would have called dead as a doornail, and now, of course, gardening experts like NPR’s Ketzel Levine urge us above all to “let go of the lawn” in dry spells.

Now, I’m not advocating that we forego yard care altogether. In the spirit of uplifting our neighborhoods, I’m a huge fan of the City of South Bend’s Building Blocks Grant Program that offers money to those who want to beautify their front yards—especially with flowers, shrubs, and trees. Last year, like an increasing number of Michiana residents, we dug out a large front yard garden for effortless flowering perennials and herbs, and are hoping to increase our garden-to-grass ratio every year, with the happy benefits of increased butterfly and bird traffic. There are great resources out there for naturalizing our Midwestern yards. Check out Prairie Nursery’s web site, with its “no mow” variety of native grasses and gorgeous photos of flowers native to our area.

Perhaps a bad lawn, then, is really just a Good lawn waiting for someone to see its “gone native” qualities with enlightened eyes. Rather than poisoning our lawns into artificial turf, we may come to appreciate nature as the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins did, in all of its “Pied Beauty”—“dappled,” “stippled,” and “couple-colored.” At our house, we’ve certainly met more folks walking by who stopped to chat about our columbine and spectacularly silly allium than ever stopped to admire our grass. And that, though not scientifically provable, is certainly good for the environment.

* Statistics on U.S. lawn care taken from Redesigning the American Lawn by F. Herbert Normann, Diana Balmori, Gordon T. Geballe, Yale University Press, 1993.

Broadcast by April Lidinsky on June 07, 2002
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