The Cult of the American Lawn

&gt; &quot;We were being bullied on our own property.&quot;<p>Solution - Refuse to purchase property subject to an HOA. I realize this might not be a tenable solution for some people, and I find that to be a very unfortunate situation. We should really educate our friends, kids, neighbors on the perils of these often-broad and legally binding agreements that seem to be sneaking into real-estate contracts&#x2F;deeds at an alarming rate nationally. If you aren&#x27;t comfortable with each and every provision being enforced upon you, don&#x27;t purchase!<p>Regarding the grass lawn situation, there are alternatives like mixing in clover varieties which actually fix nitrogen (e.g. improve soil health) while requiring considerably less water than most lawn grass to survive. Here in urban Denver my wife and I have opted for a 100% &quot;mini clover&quot; lawn in both the front and back yards. It&#x27;s already green and growing while neighboring yards are still dead winter brown grass. It also stays nice and green well into the late fall after most grass is dormant&#x2F;dead.<p>I realize this doesn&#x27;t do a lot to address the biodiversity angle the article took on, but it&#x27;s a potential alternative for those seeking options. If you allow it to grow a bit you&#x27;ll get flowers that are helpful for pollinators in addition to the healthier soil. I can attest that after you give the clover seed 6 weeks or so to set roots and sprout (no walking on, keep it moist) it will serve you for years. We&#x27;re on year 4 at our house. No regrets.

I grew up in the North East in the US and I only knew a few people across all the places I&#x27;ve lived that actually were interested in their lawns. Most of everyone&#x27;s laws just &quot;happened&quot;. I really never gave it much thought. Water comes from the sky and your lawn grew to the point you needed to cut it every two weeks or so. You had some clovers and weeds in there, but it was mostly grass. We&#x27;d pull weeds as kids if they were particularly egregious, but that was only when my mom would plant flowers near the house.<p>I rent in a city now, so I have very little lawn exposure these days, but is this experience similar for others in the North East (or maybe East coast in general)?<p>HOAs are a completely separate beast entirely. I can&#x27;t imagine spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on a home only to pay an additional fee for the privilege to do what someone else tells me. I don&#x27;t care if my neighbors have a project car that&#x27;s half built sitting in the drive way or a dead lawn.

HOA&#x27;s are part of how supremacists of the day, after losing a tool (&quot;state-backed discrimination, segregation, and oppression of ppl of the global majority&quot;) figured out how to hide the oppression elsewhere.<p>The concept in american jurisprudence of &#x27;the government is less likely to interfere with contracts between private parties&#x27; meant refusing to sell a home to a person of the global majority, while being illegal in some ways, is no longer illegal if it&#x27;s backed by this fictional entity called &quot;a home owner&#x27;s association&quot;.<p>The belief in political authority, and indeed any sort of authority, is sometimes hard to view as anything but a dangerous superstition.

Lawn apologist here. I have one because my kids use it daily, and it’s easy to spend 30 minutes to mow it a few times a month instead of maintaining countless bushes in the same space. I also don’t use chemicals except fertilizer and a copper-based fungicide, so there’s a decent amount of bug life.<p>The real ecological dead zones are the fake grass “lawns”, that are both nutrient free and heat islands, and for some reason get tax breaks to install.

When I&#x27;ve lived abroad everyone (Norway, Poland, Canada...) almost everyone also had lawns in the suburbs. This is not an American-only thing.<p>Obviously the HOA resistance to anything different is bad, but less than 30% of homes in the US are in a HOA. Most homes with a yard without an HOA still have a green lawn.

&gt; Hartzheim identifies as a libertarian but told me she considered neat lawns a sort of civic virtue, which she acknowledged could be inconsistent with her usual suspicion of onerous regulations. “I generally think government should stay out of people’s business,” she said. “But we live in a city, and there are rules for a reason; we have to live next door to folks. Letting yards go willy-nilly, having mice and voles everywhere — that isn’t something we should support.”<p>This is such a perfect encapsulation of actually-existing libertarianism that I would call it a mean-spirited and uncharitable parody if it wasn&#x27;t quoting a real person. &quot;The government should stay out of your business, except when I hold you at gunpoint until I like your lawn.&quot;<p>(And you can&#x27;t even blame this part on HOAs, this was a city councilor talking about a municipal regulation for lawn standards)

When Americans talk about getting rid of lawns, they generally assume that means allowing just sparse or natural growth over the same construction arrangement. I&#x27;m thinking of Tucson, Arizona and places around New Mexico.<p>I think there is a much better approach. I&#x27;m lived around the Middle East, where most residential planning is around walls and courtyards. It&#x27;s a wonderful use of space. I would always prefer a house with a courtyard over the traditional American open layout, lawn or no lawn.

&gt; How did the American lawn become the site of such vicious disagreements? American culture embodies a zeal for individuality and property rights — of the idea that people should be able to conduct their own affairs in their own territory without the neighbors or the government imposing their views and forcing conformity.<p>As recent events showed, this position is purely an aesthetic one for most. Americans are actually very keen on dictating to others what they should or shouldn&#x27;t do.

Middle class habits and whatnot get the blame for most ecological ills.[1] It’s your car commute that is causing climate change, not the whole system of fossil fuel dependence.[2] It’s all those plastic straws and plastic bags that you’re using, not the fishing industry dumping their equipment in the Ocean. It’s you throwing out food, not food makers being incentivized to throw out food in order to optimize supply for profit. It’s your lawn using all the water which is causing a water shortage in California, not the farming industry growing almonds in an arid climate. And now it’s your, oh look it’s your lawn again.<p>On the one hand you can look at America. It ain’t very densely populated. And it takes active effort to get rid of dandelions. Are we really that good at mowing lawns and paving over nature?<p>On the other hand Georgia is a big piece of land.<p>If I were an American I would say screw it, let’s just<p>1. Ban sickeningly green residential lawns in arid climates<p>2. All lawns that remain are required to have at least 1&#x2F;3 dandelion per square feet<p>Would that help the bees and the water shortage? Maybe. But at least opinion-makers would stop complaining. (And move on to the next thing.)<p>[1] I wrote all of this and then a Ctrl+Shift+W fatfinger killed it, thanks Chrome. Reminds to use a “notepad” before posting.<p>[2] And cars play a role in that. And who made countries like America massively car-dependent? Joe Parkingspace who has to live one hour by car from work <i>or</i> two hours by bus? (This is ill-informed. I’m not American so I don’t know what the ratios are on the ground. And it will differ from Philadelphia to Vancouver, WA.)

I had a lawn and it cost money to maintain but ..I liked it. I liked the space it gave my kids to play, for me to play, and I liked the dark green grass; the area got lots of rain. The lush green is pleasing to the eye but I do agree that we should be as environmentally concious about it as we can in avoiding pesticides and other harmful chemicals

Simple solution is marginal water prices. Make the price curve steeper and steeper until water consumption decreases to desired levels.<p>Convincing people to care about the future is the hard part though, and I have no solution for that.

As a non-owner, I would love to have a lawn of dandelions, but the owner insists on a lawn and buys a lot of chemicals to keep it that way.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freakonomics.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;how-stupid-is-our-obsession-with-lawns&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;freakonomics.com&#x2F;podcast&#x2F;how-stupid-is-our-obsession...</a>

This article is conflating the need for a &quot;lawn&quot; and what it means with people violating the terms and covenants they signed when they joined an HOA.<p>If your HOA requires grass, you&#x27;ve gotta have grass, even if you want a garden. As someone that has had the poor fortune of being on an HOA board neighbors like these might say they&#x27;re well meaning but really they&#x27;re just breaking a promise and not willing to do the hard work to convince the HOA to amend their bylaws.<p>Having a lawn can be great - it&#x27;s hard to play soccer or toss a frisbee in a rain garden. Having a garden or letting it go &quot;natural&quot; is also cool and a lot of people do it in the US - but not if you&#x27;ve signed a piece of paper saying you will keep your lawn a lawn.

Why would anyone do drugs when they could just mow a lawn? - Hank Hill

The natural angle is cool if you don&#x27;t want to lounge around in your yard. The pollen, ticks, mice, raccoons, weeds, etc. are generally not what people are looking to deal with in urban&#x2F;suburban living.<p>I have a shop on a couple of acres that I let get pretty unruly because I don&#x27;t really give a shit how it looks. After picking off quite a few ticks and dealing with raccoons constantly trying to get into the building for a while, I just started knocking down all the bushes and kept the grass real short. No issues since.<p>Additionally, the HOA rules aren&#x27;t there to stop well meaning homeowners who want a more natural yard, they&#x27;re there to stop completely untamed blight. The latter case is significantly more common than the former and it is absolutely a problem. As much as it pains me to say (I think HOAs are one of the saddest, most pathetic parts of American life), lawn rules are reasonable at their core, even though the enforcement is overzealous.