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There's a concerted effort to get people to rip out their grass, especially in drought-prone areas like this, where the various cities and water providers dangle cash incentives for replacing it with xeriscaping, aim their watering restrictions primarily at lawn irrigation, and sometimes suggest letting lawns brown out over summer.
I understand many of the arguments. Unfortunately the suburban lawn doesn't consist of the native grasses that blanket the hills and I presume also originally covered this valley; those do go "gold" every summer and grow back with the winter rain, and they look lovely with the dark oaks strung and dotted among them, but they are tall, clumpy grasses that don't make a tractable lawn. The grasses in lawn mixes don't come back, or come back only patchily, if starved of water in summer. But grass doesn't need as much water as many sprinkler systems are set up to give it. It certainly doesn't need as much water as a vegetable bed; water per square inch over the year, I wouldn't be surprised if the lawn is one of the thriftiest sections of most gardens. And the lawn in front of a suburban house, let alone behind it, is rarely even intended to be a monoculture like the greensward in front of a stately home or the grass on a putting green or a cricket pitch. (Of course, there are some climates in which a golf course is really swanky precisely because it's a crime against nature. But those arent the kind of lawn suburbanites are reaching for in the first place; I don't think I've seen a roller since I left the UK.) It's almost always planted with a mix of grasses variously tolerant of cooler and warmer weather (and in theory some more shade-tolerant types), and even if it's assiduoulsy kept free of plantains, clover, weeds that get tall, and native tall-grasses, it will develop little wildflowers that can be seen if you get down on your knees, and that the bees welcome just as much as the flowers in the flower bed.
A large part of the problem is how people tend their lawns. Such as the over-watering; we used to walk the housemate's dog on a set route, past a small apartment building with a little strip of grass outside that got watered every single day, all year round. We saw the sprinkler going in the rain. I nearly broke my leg on the concrete surround when the pooled water had frozen overnight. And there are people using weed-killer on their lawns; that's what it's advertised for. And all those smoke-belching power mowers ... Then after all that, either the real estate agent has the lawn ripped out and replaced with new sod, or the home-owners do. (There's one in the neighborhood that's now shin-high with seed stalks; either it will get ripped out, or someone will power-mow it hard, damaging the grass.)
I admit, the aesthetic of the grand sweep of uninterrupted lawn in front of every house on a street, no shrubs, no fences, no play, is not one I rate highly. But one thing it has going for it is separating the house from the street, while giving passers-by something pleasant to look at (which is more important now that more of us are working at home, keeping up the daily outside exercise habit, and/or exercising pandemic pets). It's not a rebuff like a big hedge or a serious fence, or an invitation to trespass or to watch the residents at work like a front vegetable garden, and those who have a flower garden in front, I hope they're able to enjoy it without being gawped at. A front lawn is also nice for little kids and four-footed neighbours to stray onto, even if it's festooned with "Respect my garden!" signs.
Front and back, houses developed lawns mostly because they're nice to walk on and to play on. An outdoor room is all very well if your thing is sitting around and barbecuing, but ideally you have places to sit around indoors, too. And I pity the kids and pets where the backyard has been all paved over for adults to sit around in. That groundcover stuff that's marketed as an alternative to grass is pretty and doesn't need as much maintenance, but it's not great to walk on and it doesn't like it when you do. It must be terrible for playing sports. I know some folks put in Astroturf ... not the same, especially not for Fido.
The other reason for the development of the lawn is that grass goes well with trees, all things being equal. Watering the grass when it doesn't rain keeps the tree from dying of thirst, the tree shades the house, and trees make people feel better, not to mention looking particularly nice beside or in a lawn. Touches some ancient memory, in me at least. Some people's ideal lawn is an evenly green rectangle, perfectly edged, that may as well be a rug. But even those people seem to have a sapling somewhere off to the side, or a towering evergreen, if only as a contrast to the rectitude of the lawn or a barrier to prying eyes.
For those who don't like that kind of lawn, or the work involved (whether or not they do it themselves; an increasing number of the houses in this neighbourhood use gardening services), and who aren't subject to HOA or local regulations that forbid it, there's a lot to be said for a shortgrass meadow. I think the housemate genuinely likes dandelions; I know butterflies do. And the birds find more grubs and seeds in benevolently untidy grass. That's what we effectively had in the attached vacant lot in Duluth; since we didn't have a sheep to graze it, we ran the rotary mower on a loooong extension cord maybe every 10 days in summer. It would have been prettier if I'd scattered wildflower seeds, but it was a rent house.
Finally ... I have a rather extreme methodology. I don't use a push mower any longer, because I'd rather accept the native grasses and the creeping grasses (which make a wonderfully springy surface and colonise bare patches very effectively) and not try to eradicate the clover completely, and all of those are hard to cut with a push mower. So I use a rotary mower that was a hand-me-down from a neighbour moving away; I run the extension cord out the front door. I behead dandelions on sight and extract them with a dandelion pick. I pick up a few hundred privet leaves off the front lawn every few days (the bending is good for the arthritis in my back), pull out toadstools in the spring and fall, and rake in back when I have to (I hate raking, gives me blisters if I forget to wear gloves). I don't bother edging; once in a while I clip the long grass away from the brick surrounds of the flower beds and the front wall of the back porch room, and I stomp on and tear off the long seedstalks that stray onto the pavement (sidewalk). I hand pull the more obnoxious things that grow in the crack next to the kerb, and all but stray bits of the clover after it starts to form burrs; our grass only has the yellow burr clover, though they have white clover at the park, and daisies too; presumably the grass originally came from somewhere else. I run a hose sprinkler 10 minutes in each position, twice a week (I go up to the legally permitted 15 minutes when it's regularly topping 90) after 6 pm as per regulations. I get a little exercise most days of the year, and although our front lawn looks a bit odd because of the corner the sprinkler can't reach without also watering the sidewalk, it looks cheerful, is popular with the four-footeds, and our dogs have all loved our back yard with the cool grass and the trees. We get butterflies, birds despite the cats, the occasional lizard, and sometimes big flashy dragonflies. I don't think I'm committing many offenses against environmental rectitude.
I understand many of the arguments. Unfortunately the suburban lawn doesn't consist of the native grasses that blanket the hills and I presume also originally covered this valley; those do go "gold" every summer and grow back with the winter rain, and they look lovely with the dark oaks strung and dotted among them, but they are tall, clumpy grasses that don't make a tractable lawn. The grasses in lawn mixes don't come back, or come back only patchily, if starved of water in summer. But grass doesn't need as much water as many sprinkler systems are set up to give it. It certainly doesn't need as much water as a vegetable bed; water per square inch over the year, I wouldn't be surprised if the lawn is one of the thriftiest sections of most gardens. And the lawn in front of a suburban house, let alone behind it, is rarely even intended to be a monoculture like the greensward in front of a stately home or the grass on a putting green or a cricket pitch. (Of course, there are some climates in which a golf course is really swanky precisely because it's a crime against nature. But those arent the kind of lawn suburbanites are reaching for in the first place; I don't think I've seen a roller since I left the UK.) It's almost always planted with a mix of grasses variously tolerant of cooler and warmer weather (and in theory some more shade-tolerant types), and even if it's assiduoulsy kept free of plantains, clover, weeds that get tall, and native tall-grasses, it will develop little wildflowers that can be seen if you get down on your knees, and that the bees welcome just as much as the flowers in the flower bed.
A large part of the problem is how people tend their lawns. Such as the over-watering; we used to walk the housemate's dog on a set route, past a small apartment building with a little strip of grass outside that got watered every single day, all year round. We saw the sprinkler going in the rain. I nearly broke my leg on the concrete surround when the pooled water had frozen overnight. And there are people using weed-killer on their lawns; that's what it's advertised for. And all those smoke-belching power mowers ... Then after all that, either the real estate agent has the lawn ripped out and replaced with new sod, or the home-owners do. (There's one in the neighborhood that's now shin-high with seed stalks; either it will get ripped out, or someone will power-mow it hard, damaging the grass.)
I admit, the aesthetic of the grand sweep of uninterrupted lawn in front of every house on a street, no shrubs, no fences, no play, is not one I rate highly. But one thing it has going for it is separating the house from the street, while giving passers-by something pleasant to look at (which is more important now that more of us are working at home, keeping up the daily outside exercise habit, and/or exercising pandemic pets). It's not a rebuff like a big hedge or a serious fence, or an invitation to trespass or to watch the residents at work like a front vegetable garden, and those who have a flower garden in front, I hope they're able to enjoy it without being gawped at. A front lawn is also nice for little kids and four-footed neighbours to stray onto, even if it's festooned with "Respect my garden!" signs.
Front and back, houses developed lawns mostly because they're nice to walk on and to play on. An outdoor room is all very well if your thing is sitting around and barbecuing, but ideally you have places to sit around indoors, too. And I pity the kids and pets where the backyard has been all paved over for adults to sit around in. That groundcover stuff that's marketed as an alternative to grass is pretty and doesn't need as much maintenance, but it's not great to walk on and it doesn't like it when you do. It must be terrible for playing sports. I know some folks put in Astroturf ... not the same, especially not for Fido.
The other reason for the development of the lawn is that grass goes well with trees, all things being equal. Watering the grass when it doesn't rain keeps the tree from dying of thirst, the tree shades the house, and trees make people feel better, not to mention looking particularly nice beside or in a lawn. Touches some ancient memory, in me at least. Some people's ideal lawn is an evenly green rectangle, perfectly edged, that may as well be a rug. But even those people seem to have a sapling somewhere off to the side, or a towering evergreen, if only as a contrast to the rectitude of the lawn or a barrier to prying eyes.
For those who don't like that kind of lawn, or the work involved (whether or not they do it themselves; an increasing number of the houses in this neighbourhood use gardening services), and who aren't subject to HOA or local regulations that forbid it, there's a lot to be said for a shortgrass meadow. I think the housemate genuinely likes dandelions; I know butterflies do. And the birds find more grubs and seeds in benevolently untidy grass. That's what we effectively had in the attached vacant lot in Duluth; since we didn't have a sheep to graze it, we ran the rotary mower on a loooong extension cord maybe every 10 days in summer. It would have been prettier if I'd scattered wildflower seeds, but it was a rent house.
Finally ... I have a rather extreme methodology. I don't use a push mower any longer, because I'd rather accept the native grasses and the creeping grasses (which make a wonderfully springy surface and colonise bare patches very effectively) and not try to eradicate the clover completely, and all of those are hard to cut with a push mower. So I use a rotary mower that was a hand-me-down from a neighbour moving away; I run the extension cord out the front door. I behead dandelions on sight and extract them with a dandelion pick. I pick up a few hundred privet leaves off the front lawn every few days (the bending is good for the arthritis in my back), pull out toadstools in the spring and fall, and rake in back when I have to (I hate raking, gives me blisters if I forget to wear gloves). I don't bother edging; once in a while I clip the long grass away from the brick surrounds of the flower beds and the front wall of the back porch room, and I stomp on and tear off the long seedstalks that stray onto the pavement (sidewalk). I hand pull the more obnoxious things that grow in the crack next to the kerb, and all but stray bits of the clover after it starts to form burrs; our grass only has the yellow burr clover, though they have white clover at the park, and daisies too; presumably the grass originally came from somewhere else. I run a hose sprinkler 10 minutes in each position, twice a week (I go up to the legally permitted 15 minutes when it's regularly topping 90) after 6 pm as per regulations. I get a little exercise most days of the year, and although our front lawn looks a bit odd because of the corner the sprinkler can't reach without also watering the sidewalk, it looks cheerful, is popular with the four-footeds, and our dogs have all loved our back yard with the cool grass and the trees. We get butterflies, birds despite the cats, the occasional lizard, and sometimes big flashy dragonflies. I don't think I'm committing many offenses against environmental rectitude.
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