Living on the Lawn - A pledge for a happy place
Controversial and complex
Lawns have always been controversial and complex. “Rasen betreten verboten!” – “Keep off the grass!“ is a running joke about the law and order obeying Germans. I could easily counter that with the image of big family mansions in the Irish countryside surrounded by two acres of lawn and not a human in sight sitting or playing on it. What is it with lawns? Why are some people obsessed with neat uniform lawns? And why do I feel depressed when I see houses surrounded by nothing than grass? Here is my pledge for lawns as a place of happiness!
Lawns as a status symbol – a very, very short history
Historically, the first lawns were grass fields surrounding English and French castles, old English “launde” meant an “opening in the woods”. Formal lawns became popular with the aristocracy in northern Europe from the Middle Ages onward, when lawns were the perfect status symbol for the nobility. Peasants on the other hand could never afford wasting their time or land with these artificial meadows. Lawns as status symbols ended up outlasting the monarchies that created it and after Kings and emperors were toppled, new presidents and prime ministers kept the lawns.
Keeping huge lawns in shape was very labour intensive. In Blenheim Palace in Oxfordshire each day fifty people were employed to cut the grass and maintain the lawns. This all changed during the Industrial Revolution with the invention of the lawn mover in 1830. A perfectly mowed lawn became the ultimate suburban status symbol for the emerging middle classes, who could afford their own mini versions of wealthy manors, while working class people, living in industrial housing estates, grew vegetables in allotments on public land to supplement their food.
Lawns and Biodiversity
Today in a world threatened by global warming the debate about lawns has taken on a new dimension. “To humans, a neatly manicured lawn looks tidy, but without being dramatic, to our wildlife it must look a bit like the apocalypse.” says Dr Úna Fitzpatrick, a senior ecologist with the National Biodiversity Data Centre. And American food writer Michael Pollan describes lawns as emblematic of a “skewed relationship to the land,” adding, “they teach us that, with the help of petrochemicals and technology, we can bend nature to our will.” (In a 1989 article in The New York Times Magazine, “Why Mow? The Case Against Lawns,”)
And Alys Fowler, garden columnist with the Guardian, calls moss and weed killer products for lawn maintenance “chemicals that silence the soil”.
Lawns and Climate Change
The total estimation of greenhouse gas emission from lawn care, which includes fertilizer and pesticide production, watering, mowing, leaf blowing and other lawn management practices, was found by a University of California-Irvine study (Judy Lowe, January 22, 2010) to be four times greater than the amount of carbon stored by grass. In other words, our lawns produce more CO2 than they absorb.
Worldwide greater amounts of chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used per surface area of lawn than on an equivalent surface of cultivated farmland, leading to environmental pollution, disturbance in the lawn ecosystem, and increased health risks to the local human and wildlife population. Lawn care can become an obsession and consume lots of valuable time and fossil fuels to keep them looking good.
Lawns in a pandemic
In today’s world, living through a pandemic, outdoor spaces, like lawns become a different meaning altogether. “During (a) period of isolation, the lawn in residential gardens can be used in different ways: an open-air living room, space for children’s play, sports, reading and sunbathing, family picnics, among others.” (Pandemic, social isolation and the importance of people-plant interaction, Ornam. Hortic. vol.26 no.3 Viçosa July/Sept. 2020 Epub Sep 18, 2020)
During the various levels of restrictions many lawns have often for the first time become meeting places, exercise areas, playgrounds and football pitches. Many people have gone even further and turned lawns into gardens during 2020, which is a much better and more productive use of land. If you (still) have a lawn why not dream big and turn your lawn into happiness. At least sit on it and watch the clouds and listen to the birds.
Imagine, what your (too big) lawn could be:
Just imagine what your lawn could be and think what you could buy for the €600- €1000, that is spent on average on lawn maintenance per year.
-a small orchard with apples, pears and plums, grown on semi dwarfing rootstock and spaced 4 m apart. Start with two-year old trees and go for indigenous varieties.
-a soft fruit area with currents, raspberries, blackberries, gooseberries and strawberries. Once established there is very little maintenance, except a little pruning and mulching.
-a garden with four raise beds, dimension 5m x 1.20m, with purple potatoes, broad beans, shallots and salad leaves. Grow varieties you cannot buy. A too big of a lawn can house a polytunnel.
- a herb garden with culinary and medicinal herbs, again once established there is little maintenance for great returns. And you can add plants each year to your collection. Simply start with herbs in pots or containers. Ideally in a sunny and sheltered spot.
-a mini woodland with one or two big trees (birch or alder), fruiting varieties like elder, rowan, hawthorn, hazelnuts and sea buckthorn.
- lawns were not always of grass, other possible plants can be camomile and thyme. Lawns in difficult conditions for grasses can become dominated by clovers in dry conditions and moss in damp conditions, let them be. Your wildflower meadow can be just buttercup, ragged robin, bethany, cranesbill and knapweed.
Our law of the lawn
Finally, let me tell you about our lawn. I call it a football pitch or play area, years ago for our children and now for our grandchildren. As it was part of a damp field when we bought the cottage, it’s full of dandelion in the Spring, has patches of red clover and lots of plantain besides the less useful creeping buttercup and a few rushes. So, it is a foraging area before it becomes a football pitch and the grass clippings from the occasional mowing in the summer are a superb mulch for our raspberry plants and current bushes. Surrounded on two sides by a native hedgerow providing us with hawthorn berries, elderflowers and berries, rose petals and rosehips, hazelnuts and rowan berries. Native trees shelter it against the SW winds and provide shade in the summer for our outdoor dining area. It is a lived-in lawn.