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The Deep Middle


Gardening & writing in the prairie echo

Why Lawn is Easier to Maintain Than a Natural Garden

9/27/2021

10 Comments

 
It isn't. But it also is. (This is going to get deep!)

I can't tell you how many clients come to me lamenting a spouse who loves their lawn because, in part, it is easy maintenance. I think, though, "easy" is getting confused with "simple and clear and familiar." Lawns are NOT easy to maintain -- it takes a lot of time every week, from mowing to weed eating, and requires making sure there's gas on hand (most mowers are gas powered), as well as maintaining equipment with lots of moving parts. That's not easy.

Perhaps "easy" means:
  • I have spent a lifetime mowing lawn and it's a known quantity.
  • Lawn maintenance is predictable -- when it gets X it's time to Y.
  • Fertilize, water, mow. Pretty simple, right?
  • Having a lawn dominate landscape means I fit in with those around me, and our animal brains have evolved for this survival technique.

Ok, that last one is a stretch for most, but it's there just beneath the surface. Perhaps the real difference rests in the contrast between the term "maintenance" and "management." The former implies specific actions performed at specific times on the calendar -- there's little second guessing as it's fairly cut and dry. The latter term implies being more actively responsive to what's occurring in the landscape and tweaking / pivoting at a moment's notice. For example, the landscape might be going great in May, but by June it's clear one plant is taking over or some gaps from winter kill have emerged. Now you have to figure out how many plants to remove or what kind to replace with, respectively. And the garden certainly won't look or act "as it should" immediately -- that could take years. A mowed lawn shows off hard work immediately; it's easily gratifying and uplifting.

Of course, gardeners know those last two sentences aren't entirely fair or true. A natural, native plant garden's show-off-ness is in rewarding patience and seeing failure (or hiccups) as exciting opportunities. Gardens change and shift over time, they are not static like lawns. It's that ebbing and flowing which, to many folks, can feel disorienting and destabilizing. In my book A New Garden Ethic I discuss a how at every turn in our lives, personal and cultural, we try to create a sense of order around us as we fight the seemingly chaotic nature of our precarious existence. That existence can be knocked out of whack easily by death or illness, loss of job or spouse -- any number of things positive and negative change our trajectory, and we're often slow to adapt. The more constants we surround ourselves with, the more anchored we may feel and able to adapt.

But similarly, being anchored can mean being stuck and implacable. I think one of the benefits of gardening with natural turbulence -- plants coming and going -- is that we may be better equipped to go with the flow, becoming more malleable and farsighted as we let nature guide us, or as we let the plants guide us. If you keep using a certain plant species and it keeps vanishing, what are you doing? Creating a destabilization willfully and fostering despair within you. For many, this is what gardening is -- opening yourself up to frustration and loss, something we work hard against every day in our lives. "I just don't have a green thumb, so I stick with lawn" could be an entire book bridging sociology, psychology, philosophy, history, culture....

So yes, this post has strayed a bit from the lawn conversation, but can you see why? At play in the great lawn debate isn't grass vs flowers, it's animal brain vs enlightenment brain, emotion vs culture. Ultimately, lawns also represent our victory over nature, a status of dominance that we will persevere over all threats looming in the shadows of trees and prairies. We emerged from forest into grasslands long ago, which allowed us to see predators and other threats coming from a greater distance. There is no greater threat in the suburban landscape, both practical and psychological, then a landscape dominated by unkempt flowers deciding their own trajectory free from our say. Wildness can lead us into unknown territory, even though we come from and were created by such wildness. The more distance we try to place between us and the planet, the more we set ourselves up for the fear, loss, and uncertainty we think a monoculture will alleviate. Just look at your local farm field.

Are lawns easier to maintain? Or are they simply a vain attempt at creating an illusion that, ultimately, causes more environmental, health, and psychological problems?
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10 Comments
Ann English
9/27/2021 08:43:45 pm

“Lawn is easy” is said because it has a clear goal… uniform grassy stuff that gets mowed weekly. Gardens are a whole ‘nuther world of possibility and decisions… intimidating to most. Gardens imply you need to have knowledge. Lawns imply you just need to follow the maintenance prescription and anyone can have a lawn. Early native enthusiasts said, give me wild and free! And their former lawns looked as untended as they were. The nonconforming wildness upset the neat lawn crowd but often was often rejected by the garden crowd too. So the early nativists had some fervor like a religion. This approach deemed it was more pure to have native only and let nature have its space and they, the hands off nature native plant people group, showed themselves to be as intolerant of others as others were of them. But as it turns out, native alternatives to lawn take knowledge to do really well. Knowledge like, when to intervene and when to lay back. Knowledge like when to start from seed and when to start from plants. Knowledge like what plant goes with this soil? Which plants make a plant community? What makes this place “ look like itself”. But, that wasn’t the focus of the “nature ( and we, the keepers of this special information) know best” group. And then the neophyte has to contend with the “you’re not doing it “right” attitude. It can be exhausting vs. exciting! So yes, a major treatise is waiting to be written but likely would go unread 🙄😄. I think the focus on reserving the landscape tapestry that was around our settlement artifacts is probably a more beneficial tack to take. We have no time to waste. Plants sequester carbon. Bigger plants sequester more than lawn. And so much health and beauty can be reintroduced. The time is now.

Reply
Jake Rayson link
10/2/2021 05:44:34 am

> Gardens imply you need to have knowledge.

Absolutely. And /different/ knowledge to the knowledge you're used to (where to buy gas from, where to get the lawnmower fixed etc).

Resetting that mindset, making that change, that's the difficult bit. In the words of Prinzhorn Dance School, “I Do Not Like Change”!

Reply
Beth Goodnight
10/2/2021 12:30:18 pm

*DIFFERENT* knowledge is so true. It is just a shame that for generations we've chosen to educate about things mostly outside the realm of the natural world. There are reasons why. Passion for the natural world, it seems, evaporated somewhere along the way. It often seems that only us, 'kooks' hold this particular passion. And because there is no widespread passion for the natural world (as opposed to the passion for all things digital and video), there is no hunger to learn, and thus no desire to teach. It is hard to teach in absence of students. We have a few vocal advocates like Benjamin. But we need more. More knowledge. More DIFFERENT knowledge. To all of us: Spread/share the passion.

I'm trying to do my part by creating a meadow habitat on my neighborhood ⅓ acre lot. It is not fully embraced by my neighbors, and yeah, this summer my project took it in the shorts. And yes, I have a tiny bit of mowed 'lawn' that is just mowed meadow grass to create walking paths. And I'm buying myself a rechargable mower for xmas. But as people stop to comment on my… er… mess, I get a chance to share my passion. :)

This, of course, is just my opinion. Thanks Benjamin for all you do for the cause.

Beth Goodnight
10/2/2021 11:38:34 am

Amen Ann. Well said.

Reply
Todd
10/30/2021 06:26:27 am

I agree completely Ann. In my area at least, I’ve concluded that wild landscapes on residential lots in the end won’t be accepted and might ultimately do more harm than good. A managed garden bed, Roy Diblik style, (using lots of native plants and some well behaved exotics) allows homeowners to be connected to the land and can lead to a garden that is more diverse, productive and beneficial to the natural world than a situation where the most vigorous plants eventually dominate in a “wild” garden.

Reply
Kathleen Bradley
10/2/2021 08:23:50 am

The main struggle is a culture of the lawn encouraged by the companies who sell seed, fertilizer, lawn care, etc. Those brave enough to buck their HOA, local ordinances, and scorn of neighbors to have natural and native landscaping are pioneers and do a great service go the world. I live in an apartment so only try to educate and promote native plants.

Reply
Jessica Holtzapple
10/5/2021 07:50:30 am

It has certainly been difficult to try wilding my yard. It's the first house where I could do what I wanted and I learned quick how much LAND we have x.x and how expensive it is to go from lawn in front and back to even some modestly sized garden beds as money and time allow. I've had to fight off neighbors who kept calling the city. Now I have two certification signs, which were super easy to get (not sure if standards are that low or if my yard is already better than I give it credit) but they help and encourage conversation. There is still soooooo much left to do to get my plot of suburban land to be lawnless, especially working alone and bumbling through the process. So I can see why people stick to lawns, even if they're ugly 🙃

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Spell link
12/24/2021 01:04:56 am

Gardening and lawn are not the same thing. There is a lot of maintenance work in the garden. The cost is also higher. The cost of lawn is less than that of gardening.

Reply
Brent Harrel link
12/29/2021 09:52:09 am

Great post! It is easier to maintain, but only professionals can take care of lawn fertilization and weed control in Humboldt, TN.

Reply
Martha Clark Santo
4/23/2022 08:39:01 am

We just mow a path from the porch to the truck 🚒

Reply



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    Benjamin Vogt's thoughts on prairie gardening in Nebraska. With a healthy dose of landscape ethics, ecophilosophy, climate change,  and social justice.

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