Table of Contents[Hide][Show]
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!
I own Scottish Terriers and they are prone to a specific kind of cancer. Purdue University Veterinarian School put out a top 10 list of things to avoid to prevent this cancer in Scotties and the #1 item is never to allow them on treated grass/lawns. Not even once in a while on a walk or in a dog park that might be treat – but NEVER! After losing my beloved MacDuff to this cancer (I lived in an apartment complex that always treated the lawn with nasty chemicals and unfortunately found this info out too late) I now own my home and never treat my grass not even with so-called natural products. 2 Scotties later (MacKenzie and Angus) and I am happy as a clam with a far from perfect “lawn.” When I get weeds out back taller than myself I Google “organic weed killer” and they have fabulous recipes using boiling water, vinegar and salt. For large areas of weeds just put a tarp over the area and weigh it down with a few rocks and voila-dead weeds due to lack of sunshine and rain. Of course my dogs like to poop on the tarp but there you have it.
i have green frond and back yard but mostly creapy charlie,…it has a good root system and some time i use to sit and pull it out like a sweather yarn to get rid of it b/c of the next door people….pear pressure…i wanted to look like i put hard work into my “lawn”….both neighboors spray with chemical crap…i feel that my rights are voilated b/c they spray it with no warrning!!!
Thank you Sarah for your article i will love my yard and enjoy to walk bear foot in it…( i will feel no shame anymore)….btw i would never use chemicals and no monsanto toxic stuff for sure.
Thank you i needed to read this article so much!!!
Lead paint is illegal. Asbestos is illegal. Exactly why are toxic lawn care chemicals legal? Many of the chemicals in lawn sprays are known carcinogens.
If someone wants to be a lawn freak and dedicate their lives to their lawns, that is fine by me. Live and let live, you know. (You want to spend your life fretting over every little dandelion and patch of clover? Go for it, mate. Knock yourself outl)
However, when they start spraying toxic chemicals, that’s an entirely different matter. That should be a crime. God only knows how many people have cancer, asthma and other ailments from toxic lawn chemicals. Seirously, why are these products legal?
I remember a new lawn being laid where I used to live when there was a heatwave. It turned brown and I was convinced the grass was dead. I was proved wrong once it started to rain again!
When I first moved to Arizona almost three years ago, I remember taking my first walk around a neighborhood near my apartment and being horrified upon seeing a homeowner’s yard flooded with water. What could have happened?! Why is no one doing anything about this tragedy before the water seeps into the house’s foundation? As I continued, I saw one or two other flooded yards. After speaking to a local home-owning friend, I learned that residents in downtown Phoenix regularly FLOOD IRRIGATE their yards. The complete absurdity of this practice, in the middle of a desert absolute shocks and disturbs me. I agree that if it’s green and it’s on the ground in front of your house, you have succeeded with your lawn. What could possibly be the benefit of fighting nature in such a harsh ecosystem just to have grass covering sand?
I really don’t understand such a wasteful mentality. Such a practice should be made illegal as it is so blatantly wasteful in the midst of ever dwindling water resources.
For those who want a non-toxic lawn fertilizer/weed control, I recommend the products by Gardens Alive. They have corn-based “WOW – without weeds” that blocks weed seed germination, and an iron product for eliminating weeds. Their other products are great, too. Try their natural tomato fertilizer. Our tomatoes are ginormous!
http://www.gardensalive.com/
The Lunacy of the American Lawn – The Healthy Home Economist http://t.co/cH2Jyci
We used corn gluten for three years in a row, but then we ran out (it had been purchased from a local grain mill and was in huge bags) and we probably won’t use it again. It worked — but it stinks! Pheww!
Love your website! : )
Oooo! I also love beautiful yards. But I never understand people who pour copious amounts of pesticides and inorganic fertilizer on their grass, let their dogs and cats run around on them and lick their feet and fur, and then wonder why their animals have cancer or some other disease. (Not to mention how it damages every other living thing!)
I’m an organic gardener and certified Lawn Maniac. My dogs can stick their heads into my bag of fertilizer (has dry molasses in it) and get a lick and I don’t have to worry about them being poisoned. I also use corn gluten meal in Feb as a pre-emergent. It not only stops weed seeds from germinating, but it is a good fertilizer too. (Also edible if my pups choose to sample it.) For the weeds that still appear one can mow twice a week (great exercise) and they will eventually go away. But a nice spring dandelion salad is quite yummy!
I also plant clover in the back yard because it’s so beautiful, durable and nourishing for the health of the yard. Here in Texas we have a wild plant called horseherb that is low growing with tiny yellow flowers on it. It’s drought tolerant, makes a beautiful lawn and if you could ever get enough of it going you would never have to mow! My pups look so beautiful snoozing in the clover and horseherb!
I am loving this website! Thank you for speaking out against the American obsession – the manicured lawn. I have a lawn that is a mixture of short grasses, clover, birdsfoot trefoil and a host of other pretty, flowing, lovely grasses and ground covers. I mow as infrequently as humanly possible, and let wild things grow where I can. When I get a letter from the City telling me I have to mow I crank the wheels up to about 4″ and whiz over it like a one-woman hurricane, whacking off the tippy-top and little else. My “grass” harbors critters like baby bunnies, is cushiony soft under my feet when I walk on it barefoot, and is wonderfully attractive. Thank you for your great site.