- cross-posted to:
- textsfromsolarpunk@slrpnk.net
- cross-posted to:
- textsfromsolarpunk@slrpnk.net
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aesthetically pleasing
???
Putting green lawns are boring.
So… there’s now a trend, at least in the city… of people putting out astroturf or… even cheaper… forms of fake grass. like. EWW.
At least they aren’t mowing the grass weekly? It’s something, though I’m not sure if that’s a net positive in the end.
Sure, if you care about propagating the local fauna in an urban area you have many beautiful visitors. Rats and the native insects on their back. The feral street cat is next to populate this urban green space, oh and lets not forget the cockroach. Native to all densely populated towns, they can be placed on full display for the urbanites to appreciate the aesthetic that their host provides.
“wasteland” is a bit strong. Non-native grass is not ideal, but we could do far worse. Good on you for improving your land. Let’s not force everyone to be perfect, as many will just give up.
I think the focus on perfection leads to poor mental models and outcomes.
You’re correct, but the north American concept of a “well kept yard” being two random trees and a bunch of freshly trimmed grass is absolutely horrendous. Beats an actual wasteland, but when most of your neighborhoods have rules that enforce this way of doing things it’s a lot of wasted potential and does bring ecological consequences.
Again, while not ideal, actually living backyards with several native species could act as a local metapopulation model, with sources and sinks across the different houses.
This is something that people could and should take seriously and make active efforts to change. You already have the space, you’re just not using it correctly.
How do you mean sources and sinks?
Imagine you have a large circular area of native forest. All the populations living there are essentially homogenous, some species might form small groups but overall they can all interact directly, share the same resources, and mix genetic information.
Now humans come in, and instead of one continuous piece of land, you have segments of native forest surrounded by roads or semi-urban pathways. You can then imagine the populations as segmented bubbles.
This model of bubbles of native land surrounded by human landmarks is a tool ecology can use to predict how populations develop and interact. There are a lot of different permutations depending on size, biome, types of obstacles, and so on. But one of the most basic analysis you can do is detect bubbles that act as “sources” and bubbles that act as “drains” or “sinks”. A source is a bubble with an excess of individuals, those are likely to cross the obstacles in their way and find themselves into other bubbles, supplying new individuals. Drains are bubbles where due to insufficient numbers, human activity or other factors, a species can’t sustain a good number of individuals by themselves - they need immigrants from other bubbles.
This dynamic between sources providing new individuals and drains is fundamental for a metapopulation to exist even when the area is severely degraded by human activity. Imagine your well kept backyard providing bees to your neighbor with a sub-optimal one, for instance. This new metapopulation of bees is stable, even though the environment isn’t ideal.
Focus on perfection? It’s harder to maintain an ugly cut grass lawn than to just let it go wild and plant some native grasses/plants to overtake it.
I really hard to play ball or have other activities on a non grass surface and many people particularly enjoy the look of a nice cut lawn. Both can coexist.
Ya, grass isn’t inherently a bad thing. A lawn where I live in some serious desert is grotesquely wasteful, an appreciated lawn in other regions not so bad.
It’s not the grass, it’s capitalism. It’s the eradication of native species for profit, and the spreading of fossil fuel derived fertilizers and poisons to support conspicuous consumption (real-estate values, golf, keeping up with the Joness, etc) that is problematic.
Except most grass, especially border areas like front lawns and street medians as well as corporate-owned lawns like around a drive-thru or suburban offices, gets zero use. It’s one thing to have a dedicated play area in a yard or park that’s cut grass; it’s another thing to have the entire property as cut grass.
Everyone in my neighborhood has large cut grass lawns. There’s mostly retired folks here are very few children. I spend a lot of time outside yet can literally count on one hand the number of times I have seen people out in those yards for a purpose other than cutting the grass. If you’re not going to use it at least let the dandelions grow so the bees have something to eat!
And the fucking noise from lawnmowers and whipper snippers all day long.
I’d like to relax and read a book outside, on my messy lawn but all my neighbours do is come outside, make noise for a couple of hours and once they have a ‘perfect’ lawn they fucking go back inside.
Nah, manicured lawns can’t coexist with healthy ecosystems. They’re hugely wasteful in general. There are alternatives that are equally nice to run on like clover and many areas have their own soft ground cover that’s native. The best thing about native plants is that they’re almost always lower maintenance. It just doesn’t make sense to keep wasting water and other resources on lawns imo.
I recently let my garden grow wild and it’s crazy how many flowers came up on their own. Now I’ve got all kinds of little critters and birds I hardly ever see elsewhere. The only thing I pull are goat head weeds because fuck those things lmao
Really hard to play ball. Really is this the best defence for manicured lawns?
Have a picnic, play ball, participate in activities, or a plethora of other things. Pick one. If you don’t want a lawn, don’t have one. If you like play fetch with your dogs in weeds and flowers, you do you. As mentioned, both can exist. It happens all of the time.
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In my area, ticks and rodents would move in. Not great for the things I do in my yard.
Native Grass are great, in general and in some areas of my yard, but not everywhere.
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Some internet group just up and took issue with agriculture. I mean yeah we gotta improve our future and society, but I always go back to a simple sentiment. It’s only a relavant issue if it can show up in a video game. So basically the character mechanics we’re looking for is a -12 Agility score combined with a religous zeal for unteathering from technology while on life support.
I planted a bunch of native prairie on my property just yesterday ☺️ feels good!
Is there a way to have more native plants growing without increasing ticks? I just bought a house and have a couple areas it would be great to not have to maintain, but I have dogs and don’t wanna have to worry about ticks.
You’ll have to decide which plants are native to your area, but there are certainly plants that ticks don’t like.
While ticks are not insects, the whole point is to make the area more liveable for many local animals. I don’t think you can exclude ticks from that.
Maybe you can lightly fence off some areas so the dogs don’t go there.
Watch me
Fighting for equal rights, also for my tick brothers!!!
Good thing I didn’t call them insects then. Unfortunately fences won’t stop ticks as they jump and ticks won’t respect the boundary.
So you put up a fence to keep dogs out? Or to keep mother nature in?
Get more native plants. Take rid of dogs. Get chickens.
I live in a small unit that had dusty ultra-compacted dirt around the house that was called a lawn. I broke the soil with a hoe, threw a few bags of soil mix down and planted some moss I harvested growing wild down the laneway. 2 years later the ground is mostly covered in a spongey moss. Give it a few more years it’ll be completely covered and thick.
It requires virtually no mowing and needs little water. Apparently growing moss is even good for air and ground water purification. Not sure how much purifying it’s doing but it’s good to know I’m doing my little part.
If you have a small yard, grow moss.
That’s cool!
I’m seeding an empty lot with native perennials but it’s pretty clear that two or three invasive species are beating them out.
Please, don’t forget about the local native grasses. Not every grass is evil grass!
This issue of wild growth lawns really has to dissolve down two points. Geography being one. Arid grassland terrain where, (guess what) grass grows would make ideal space for this experiment; but, the nightmarish undergrowth that natively springs forth from swampy or forested climes would need to be cultivated out anyways or else you would create blight. Vines can be rustic and cute, but they will swallow a house where I’m at whole. And my second point is the area that these people would seed with natural grass would need to be very large and spaced away from neighboring grass. Herb next door in your cul-de-sac doesn’t appreciate the encroachment on his turf.
