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A perfectly manicured green lawn is bad for health due to the amount of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, herbicides and excessive watering required to maintain it. What to do instead that will be far less stressful, more beautiful, and good for your family and the community.
I hate lawns. No offense to any of you self described lawn freaks out there, but the fact is that the more perfect and unblemished a lawn is, the more I hate it.
Perhaps my extreme distaste for perfect lawns comes from my own Mother’s obsession with lawns while I was growing up. Even today, she waters, sprays, weed eats, fertilizes, and chemicalizes the living daylights out of her lawn season after season and then laments how my yard looks better than hers.
What do I do to achieve superior lawn status? Absolutely nothing. Please don’t call it a lawn, though.
The word lawn to me means that you actually work on it and spray things on it. I don’t work on mine at all; therefore, it is a yard. It’s amazing how nice – not perfect – things can look when you leave nature alone and don’t disrupt the soil balance with chemicals.
Golf Courses Are Just Too Perfect
As much as I love to play golf (and I played a lot growing up – basically every day), I would never live on a golf course because I hate how perfect they look all the time.
I much prefer the links-style courses of Australia and Europe where frequently nothing is sprayed and yet the grass is beautiful anyway with mottled patches of brown and various shades of green grass snaking up and down each fairway.
The “greens” may or may not be green .. but the grass is smooth and slick anyway providing a perfect putting surface just the same as the overchemicalized American versions.
I once was told that each golf course green in America requires about $10,000 in chemicals to maintain it each year. I have no idea if this is true or not, but even if it’s remotely close speaks volumes to the amount of poison that is dumped in our environment year after year simply to maintain small patches of green putting surface.
Insane.
Avoiding a lawn was a primary reason my husband and I moved to a rural neighborhood.
The thought of having a Homeowner Association send me a nasty letter because I had a brown spot or two on my lawn made no sense to me and knowing myself well, I realized I would never be moved to comply with these “rules”.
Such a letter would mean that I would have to spray chemical fertilizers and pesticides on said brown spots which my children would track into the house. Pesticides in a home take a very long time to break down. Kind of like a house guest you can’t seem to get rid of.
Pesticides on my lawn would also mean hormone-disrupting, cancer-causing fumes mixing with the air we breathed inside. Not to mention that pesticides have been linked with ADHD in children. Though I didn’t know this at the time we bought our house, it seemed common sense to me to avoid them.
I don’t need a scientific study to tell me that chemicals and children shouldn’t mix.
Weeds Can Be Beautiful
I love the mixture of weeds and grass that makes up my front yard. I even love the sandspurs. They have a place in my yard and my kids know to wear shoes in that area.
Do I try to get rid of them? Not a chance.
My front yard is predominantly one type of grass and my back yard is another type. Yeah and they look very different. Do I feel compelled to make everything uniform? Not in the slightest. If it’s green and it grows, I’m good with it.
I have never put down any pesticides or chemicals of any kind on my yard in the 25+ years we’ve lived here.
I love that my children can run barefoot on it and that when they were toddlers, they could eat the dirt, leaves, and grass without danger (toddlers eat dirt for a reason, by the way. It primes their immune system and leaves them healthier as adults).
Not only haven’t I ever sprayed my yard, but I’ve also never watered it either. Why? If there is no rain, a yard should die and turn brown.
I consider this a welcome relief from mowing and other yard duties. I hate thirsty lawns that suck up water by the hundreds of gallons. It is such a waste to me and a clear testament to the unsustainable living mentality of Americans in general.
A green lawn during the dry season is weird. It’s not only not natural, it’s downright distasteful. My brown yard comes back beautiful and green when the rains return. Do I need to resod or reseed? Of course not. Nature knows what to do. It’s only chemicalized perfect lawns that have trouble during and after droughts.
I’m thinking about lawns right now because my Mom is preparing to completely resod her entire (and very large) yard at the moment. The dirt had finally had enough abuse over the years and even the extreme treatments of lawn maintenance companies could not bring it back.
The soil was basically so dead nothing would grow in it anymore.
So, thousands of dollars are now required to completely resod the whole thing!
I am very happy to report that my Mom is open to using one of the new organic lawn services that have become more widespread in my community in recent years once her new lawn is laid. You go Mom!
One step at a time, though.
Maybe someday I can convince her to turn off those sprinklers and love the weeds as much as the grass!
Last year I had a lawn care salesman stop at my house to let me know that they could give me a beautiful lawn with all their lovely chemicals (ok he didn’t say the part about the lovely chemicals). I told him I did not want any chemicals on my grass and I didn’t believe in putting money into a lawn. He tried to convince me that the chemicals are safe since they were approved by some governing body. When I said that I love dandelions and was disappointed that we didn’t get many that year he finally knew that he wasn’t going to sell me!
If I had written on this subject I would have said the exact same thing. Thanks!!
Sorry, you say lawn/yard… All I see is pasture. 🙂
We live in the woods and have only a very small yard circling the house that we actually mow. (Like you said Sarah, look out for the snakes) I would like a alternative to spray for mosquitos because they get really bad this time of the year. The bathouses are not quite enough help. Any ideas?
You inspired me to come out of the closet about my overgrown lawn. There were many reasons not to mow all of it this year and I hang my head in shame when one of my friends sees me and says, “You need to cut your grass!” They just don’t get it. Glad to find a kindred spirit on this! Watch for my field turned yard turned field (pasture?) story coming soon!
well we live in AZ…I would love the forest and the trees and a constant garden but alas such is not the nature of our lives at present…but I realize that imperfect is beautiful and that each imperfect fruit weed and plant has it’s place in making us safe and healthy…I wish I knew then what I do know now…I coulda started earlier being an activist for health!
I completely agree with you! not to mention the round-up people use to kill the weeds is made by MONSANTO! I hate that company.
We live in a deed restricted neighborhood and thus have a lawn. However we have found that a lawn is a good place for play. I’ve been working on the soil in a few spots to get it ready to grow some edibles and my husband does all rest of the maintanance himself using natural methods (gotta do something with the food the kids don’t finish). As my beliefs line up with yours and my husband dreams of golf course living this was the best compromise we could come up with. Given how great our lawn looks we’ve even converted some of the neighbors, mostly ones with small children. When our kids outgrow romping in the yard I have plans to convert the front lawn to edible landscaping. The husband isn’t quite sold on it yet, but I have a few years to work on him (and admittedly my gardening skills).
That is awesome Heather! What a shining beacon of sanity you are in your neighborhood for bypassing the chemical approach to lawn maintenance!
If a yard has been sprayed in the past, will it ever produce weeds that are edible? How long do the pesticides etc stay and have an effect on the ground?
For a property to be considered organic (not necessarily certified which tends to mean squat), I think there has to be at least a few years with no chemicals sprayed.
I was wondering the same thing…thanks for the reply. We just moved into a new house, and I know the previous owners weren’t in any way ‘green’. I want to start gardening, etc, but I was unsure of whether it would be smart to use the soil as is. I’ll probably just start container-gardening for the time being.
Here’s another question for you that is unrelated to lawns, but has everything to do with pesticides. We live in an area where it is EXTREMELY frowned upon not to have your home treated for termites on a regular basis. I see no way around it, but am wondering if there is a safe way to do it? I really hate not to be able to utilize the soil around the house because of possible contamination.
I personally would never put that termite stuff in the ground around my property no matter what. If you get termites you can treat them in a nontoxic manner. There is a company in our area that gets rid of them with orange oil. Come to think of it, they might do prevention in a nontoxic way too. The company is Earth’s Best.
Who knew I was being so green and healthful by simply letting my yard be. All we do is mow it when it needs it. We also don’t rake the leaves, but now over them until they’re mulch. We get so many compliments, too. My sil wanted a golf course type lawn like her neighbors, but my brother wisely refused. Their entire back yard is wild thyme! Besides, how would I get loving, cheerful yellow tussie mussies of dandelions from my children if we abused our lawn?