Top Comments 7.18.08: Kill Your Lawn

I walked out to the mailbox the other day and found The Issue--you know, that city-centric magazine with the Obamas on the cover? Instead of burning it or defacing and returning the subscription cards, I sat down and read through the cartoons until I bumped into Elizabeth Kolbert's "Turf War." Though technically a book review, Kolbert's piece is really an overview of our green problem. Specifically, our American fetish: The luxuriant, well-manicured lawn that stands in for our ideas about propriety, character and achievement.

As Kolbert writes, "A lawn may be pleasing to look at, or provide the children with a place to play, or offer the dog room to relieve himself, but it has no productive value. The only work it does is cultural." Michael Pollan opens his essay "Why Mow?" with an even more pointed interpretation of the work performed by Kentucky bluegrass: "Anyone new to the experience of owning a lawn, as I am, soon figures out that there is more at stake here than a patch of grass. A lawn immediately establishes a certain relationship with one's neighbors and, by extension, the larger American landscape. Mowing the lawn, I realized the first time I gazed into my neighbor's yard and imagined him gazing back into mine, is a civic responsibility."

Having grown up in suburbia, I have a slightly different take. It's not so much civic responsibility so much as the outward manifestation that everything inside a house is fine, the reassurance that we pay our taxes; that we have an obedient child out there behind the mower; that we take part  in the idea that American manhood involves sharp blades and loud engines; that we know about linked property values; that we care very much about whether our neighbors respect this green, dandelion-free representation of self and family.

Not being very good at suburbia, and not having the loud-and-sharp-DNA, I am ripping up my lawn.

What's wonderful is that now (despite having purchased a secondhand reel mower last week) I have some justification for it, and that is that the American lawn is unsustainable. According to the Lawn Institute, which bills itself as "one of the most respected authorities in North America among turf professionals and scientists,"

As of 2004, the annual value of the U.S. turfgrass industry was $35 billion.

Over 25 million acres of lawn are tended in the US.

Nationally, homeowners spend $6.4 billion per year on lawn care.

To achieve a four-inch soil moisture depth, a homeowner would apply 375 gallons of water per 1,000 sq. ft.; at a standard 40 lbs.-per-sq.-inch water pressure in a three-quarter inch. 50-ft. hose, 528 gallons of water-per-hour would be delivered to the sprinkler head—this watering set-up would take slightly less than 45 minutes to release the equivalent of 375 gallons an hour (0.6 inch. of water to achieve the four-inch. moisture depth on totally dry soils).

(All factoids appear here.)

That's a lot of water. That's a lot of money. That's a lot of water and money going into something that's only job is to look pretty. And that's not even mentioning the monetary and environmental costs of lawn mowers.

What are the options? There's always xeriscaping, or landscaping with plants that require little water. Or perhaps you're more inclined toward an older style of American yard, per Pollan: "As Cobbett and many other 19th-century visitors noted, hardly anyone practiced ornamental gardening; the typical yard was ''landscaped'' in the style Southerners would come to call ''white trash--a few chickens, some busted farm equipment, mud and weeds, an unkempt patch of vegetables." (Uh, I have the chickens, my garden is starting to be overrun with weeds and we won't discuss the livestock trailer my husband pines for.)

Or maybe you want to get rid of your grass in favor of a garden; we've tilled three large patches and it sure is more fun to grow than mow. Perhaps it's time to horrify your homeowner's association? (Be prepared to face the consequences, though; Betty "Lawn Lady" Perry, a 70-year-old resident of Orem, Utah, was arrested and tried for letting her lawn go brown.) Experiment with the Freedom Lawn?

Kolbert suggests additional alternatives:

In "Noah’s Garden" (1993), Sara Stein, by contrast, advocates "ungardening"—essentially allowing the grass to revert to thicket. Sally and Andy Wasowski, in their "Requiem for a Lawnmower" (2004), recommend filling the yard with native trees and wildflowers. For those who don’t want to give up the look or the playing space provided by a lawn, the Wasowskis suggest using Buffalo grass, one of the very few turf species native to North America. Smaller American Lawns Today, or SALT, is a concept developed by William Niering, who for many years was a professor of botany at Connecticut College. Niering planted trees around his property, then left most of the rest of his yard unmowed, to become a meadow. "The meadow can take as much of your remaining lawn as you want," he observes in an essay posted on SALT’s Web site. "There are some people who prefer no lawn, which is ideal!" For the past few decades, David Benner, a horticulturist from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, has been touting moss as an alternative to grass: he himself has a one-acre "moss garden." Recently, there have been several calls to make the lawnspace productive. In "Food Not Lawns" (2006), Heather C. Flores argues that the average yard could yield several hundred pounds of fruits and vegetables per year. (If you live in an urban area and don’t have a lawn, she suggests digging up your driveway.) "Edible Estates" (2008) is the chronicle of a project by Fritz Haeg, an architect and artist, who rips up conventional front yards in order to replace them with visually striking "edible plantings." Haeg calls his approach "full-frontal gardening."

The American lawn may be coming to an end, long before we, as a culture, are ready to give up the increasingly imaginary values and activities it represents. It's time to start thinking about what comes next and how we can convince each other to value it as much as we prize the wide, green expanse of our self-image.

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And now: your picks for tonight's top comments.

Remember, if you see a comment worth wider notice, send it to topcomments over at gmaildotcom by 9:30 Eastern. Please include your user name, links to the comment and diary in which it appears, and a few words about your choice.

From NonnyO:

"I know I'm much too late with my nominees for tonight's Top Comments, but hope tomorrow will find these in your diary.

"ArthurPoet in Hunter's FP diary, "Welcome to Netroots Nation." After the thread was started, ArthurPoet then wrote his own diary,  "RE:Pelosi- A request to NETROOTS Attendees ... (updated)" based on the above comment:

"Jimstaro's comment in Ralph Lopez's diary, "9 Republicans Vote for Impeachment Hearings, 10 Abstain."

"Both comments stand on their own with "must see" videos that I appreciated on several levels, and for the comments that followed."

From Man in the Middle:

"Oldjohnbrown punctures the euphemism balloon......and lightens the mood a bit in the "Come Fly With Me..."  thread."

From bronte17:
"Here's a P.S. to someone who "feels sorry" for McCain after he outed Obama's travel plans to Iraq." Psychosavannah's comment appears in turneresq's "Asshat McCain Trying to Leak Details of Obama's Iraq Visit."

From Light Emitting Pickle:

"Iconoclastic cat ponders about amorous adventures at Netroots Nation." Heartsandflowers provides the opening for this comment in "I'm at NetRoots and I'm Bored."

From juslikagrzly:

"From open thread, by xxdr zombiexx."

As for Top Mojo? Damn thing's gone off to Austin, talkin' policy and gettin' down. Whenever it shows its seedy, wonky, drunken, funky self, I'll post it for all the world to see.

Update: Well, that was libel on my part. Sorry, Top Mojo, and thank you to BeninSC.

Top Mojo - everything included:

1 tips by thereisnospoon - 732
2 Tips by turneresq - 531
3 Tell me what to do. by droogie6655321 - 368
4 Hello everyone! by Rick Noriega - 344
5 John McCain: Unsafe at any speed. eom by Geekesque - 285
6 Tips. by xxdr zombiexx - 283
7 My response by Governor Chris Gregoire - 216
8 Tip Jar by poichick - 209
9 tips/recs. by icebergslim - 208
10 Ouch by qmastertoo - 190
11 the story of what was done to Siegelman by clammyc - 174
12 Thanks for your support by Paul Delehanty - 174
13 Mojo for good reporting. by DraftChickenHawks - 167
14 "hate crimes" by miasmo - 125
15 tips and stuff.. by rapcetera - 125
16 Tips / Mojo: 18 July 2008 by A Siegel - 120
17 Tips by jem286 - 120
18 Good Mojo Friday to all the irregular MFers!!! by Hedwig - 112
19 . . . by Muzikal203 - 107
20 Tips To Retire David Gregory by StuHunter - 102
21 Now by Hedwig - 99
22 Live from Austoi! by donnamarie - 99
23 She's a hypocritical liar by o the umanity - 98
4 Let me guess by Plutonium Page - 95
25 I loved that response by turneresq - 95
26 I would get in touch with by KentuckyKat - 94
27 It's Austin Hotel Live! by sarahnity - 94
28 Wahoo!!!! by Hedwig - 92
29 Please Recommend this for IMPEACHMENT by xxdr zombiexx - 91
30 Is Charlie Daniels there? by Hedwig - 91