The end of lawns

[Brian Howell]

I spent my first few years growing up in the Village of Flossmoor, IL, a suburb southeast of Chicago. It was a town right out of Norman Rockwell’s oeuvre: on the 4th of July, the inhabitants turned out in the town square for a big parade with the high school marching band playing requisite Sousa marches (most people went on vacation in August), Boy Scouts trooping the colors, and the mayor and Village Elders riding in tops down American convertibles, waving at folks.

I lived in a red brick house on a street corner. The house was surrounded on three sides by a large, deeply green lawn. (An infill house has been built alongside my old house and occupies what was the largest portion of the lawn.) Preferably expansive, well-maintained greenswards became a symbol of the American Dream, a source of civic pride, and an expression of social class for whites fleeing cities to the suburbs during the post-war boom throughout the country. My parents were certainly glad to have theirs.

The Terp Boys, the two sons of our kindly neighbors across the street, dutifully maintained our lawn (for money) every Saturday morning—except during winter (when they shoveled our front walk and driveway instead. They mowed it, fertilized it in the spring, and raked it of leaves in the fall. And several times a week, my parents would set out and turn on sprinklers, which swooshed back and forth, clattered ’round and ’round, or otherwise sprayed lots of water to keep the grass hydrated and verdant, especially during the summer months when it got so hot that the tar on the streets would get soft and gummy enough that cars driving over it would leave behind tread prints. Excess water would trickle across the sidewalk and flow over the curb into gutter streamlets, where it would run off into storm drains. 

And of course our neighbors also had and carefully maintained verdant swaths of green around their homes. Some had bigger lawns than ours. Much bigger. But literally—not figuratively—every house in Flossmoor had a lawn. (It was and is a village ordinance that homeowners must keep their lawns in pristine shape, too! You couldn't—and can't—park your cars on the street, either. Yes, I grew up in the Stepford Village.)

Lawns are still popular across the Fifty States. Even in areas where water is scarce. Even in areas that are desertic. There are still lots of them in both drought-stricken Northern California and in Southern California (most of which is actually desert). I’ve seen them in Las Vegas and in cities and towns throughout Arizona (should have been called Arid Zone). 

But maybe it’s time to rethink lawns: Americans spend over $40B per year to maintain more than 50,000 square miles of lawn. Of the 9.0 billion gallons of water American consumers use every day, more of it is poured on lawns than is used for bathing and laundry. Irrigation runoff carries fertilizer phosphates and other chemicals which pollute streams and rivers and lakes, or after reaching the ocean cause algal blooms and dead zones.

Quartz, a unit of The Atlantic, has a good article up that elaborates on these facts and numbers. The article points out that lawnmowers are a notable source of GHGs, but another article I found from NASA indicates that the lawns themselves are carbon sinks. I don't know the net impact when both of these facts are accounted for. 

A final article I'll recommend discusses the 2013 imposition of lawn fertilizer limits in the Chesapeake Bay region: [T]here are lots of situations where fertilized lawns can lose as much nitrogen and phosphorus as a cornfield.

I'm curious: who has a yard around where their home?

[Craig Good]

On May 29, 2015, at 10:46 AM, Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I'm curious: who has a yard around where their home?
>

A yard? We have one. But no lawn. It’s mostly concrete. I will be adding some artificial turf before selling, though.



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[Brian Howell]

My mother replaced her backyard lawn with stream pebble fill (rounded rocks) a number of years ago. Her front lawn, on which she’d spent many $000s over 40+ years she’s owned her home, has recently been replaced with artificial turf. It’s not bad: Yann, who lives next-door to my mom, didn't even notice. 

We don’t have a lawn anywhere around our residence (a four-unit apartment building) but two complexes I’ve lived in, one in San Diego and another in Emeryville, each had multiple, sizable lawns. 

[Scott Hotes]

I would be a little concerned about a "public shaming" approach to dealing with consumer carbon footprint, and would likely argue for a more "education and we're all in this together" kind of approach.  In terms of large carbon footprint, it could be (and has been) argued that some of the largest contributors are things like:

- children

- airplane travel

- meat eating

(the first and third are also major sources of water use.)

In terms of water use and lawns in particular, is it fair to say that restrictions, if necessary, should be geographical (at least some parts of the US are not in drought condition), and possibly temporal as well?

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[jack saunders]

Public shaming is here to stay, and I, too, worry about the sour world we'll live in going forward.  Water bills, energy bills, yes, travel and children -- there will be attempts to sort through such data bases and come up with shocking lists of the 10 Worst People in Berkeley.  Watch. This is not a wild prediction.  It's the logic of development in Big Data media.

 

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From: Scott Hotes <sah...@gmail.com>
To: Brian Howell <bdho...@gmail.com>
Cc: Ipse-...@googlegroups.com; Craig Good <clg...@me.com>
Sent: Friday, May 29, 2015 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: [Ipse Dixit] The end of lawns

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/Ipse-dixit/CAC7%2BDACsBReOzyVq5ZknHPFp0qq82gNYxqRpSfXURe1LjhEhFg%40mail.gmail.com.

[Matt Fish]

The 10 Worst People in Los Angeles -- now that would be a list! 

We have a 28' x 28' lawn. We put this in five years ago so our two boys can play outside. We water twice a week, seven minutes per.  Of course turf grass species vary in water needs. We have St. Augustine. Those of us who grew up in the midwest know it as crab grass.  It's not thirsty, relative to other varieties. 

Advances in drip irrigation under turf could save a lot a water from evaporation. 

The L.A. county water district just re-funded it's "Cash for Grass" program. This has worked very well in Las Vegas. 

Still and all, can we just agree to stop growing alfalfa in California? I'd happily pay more for beef or whatever alfalfa feeds.

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[Jack Saunders]

As a UC Davis student, class of 67, I still link the smell new mown alfalfa with, well, mating.  Pheramonic properties.

[Matt Fish]

Do not go gentle out of that old alpha,

Rage, rage against the dying of the alfalfa.