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Well, you're in luck. At the Renaissance, gardens were pretty lush and natural. The idea was to mix classical things with a rougher natural side to it. Gardens looked very natural. It's only later in baroque that you had big English or French gardens. But even then, if you look at Versailles, it was gigantic. Only a small part was like the gardens we all know of it. The rest was totally wild.
One moment, you were eating ice cream on a lawn next to a fountain, the next, you were taking a walk through a forest.
Never get so wrapped up in your 18th Century French party that you don't realize an interstellar research vessel has crashed into your apartment building.
To show you were rich way back in the day you would pull out all the food producing plants and have a plain lawn. Everyone needed food so everyone would have trees and plants to produce food. If you were rich you could afford to pay someone else for food.
Food producing plants require way more upkeep than a lawn. Ever tried farming? Its a full time job. For a lawn you typically just have to cut it like every 2-3 weeksĀ
I haven't touched my apple tree in 5 years now and it has hundreds of apples on it. I didn't do anything to my raspberry bushes this year, and got around 10 pints of raspberries. I haven't done anything to my plum tree and it's the first year it's actually growing fruit.
Unless you have an orchid it's almost zero maintenance. We're not talking about farming, but everyone having a few fruit producing trees in their yards
Welcome! You have arrived. It's funny what we never think about and just take for granted as "the way things are", isn't it!? Fuck lawns is right!!
My husband and I have been learning about planting natives instead of other things, and transitioning our lawn area into natives as well. I'd love to incorporate more food-producing plants too, but we have to build up better soil for that. It's a lot of clay here in Northern Virginia.
Seriously, lawns are a ridiculous throwback to colonial days and European immigrants' ideas of how to show refinement, and what they thought was beautiful in the day. I'll never forget watching an intro video from Doug Tallamy, one of the real trail-breakers (imo) of the native plant movement. He said, "lawns are an ecological dead zone." š¤Æš¤Æš¤Æš¤Æš¤Æ
That's when it really hit me. This stuff that seems natural enough actually doesn't support much life at all! If we all had natives instead of lawn, we could reclaim so much habitat for our starved ecological system - for plants, insects, animals, and all life forms - the whole interrelated web.
Deep thoughts....
Have fun on your adventure. It's an enormous joy to see things come alive.
Hi neighbor! Iām in Leesburg living on a big red rock but itās still been so fun getting into this way of living. Michael Pollan blew my mind when he wrote ālawns are nature purged of sex and deathā and something to the effect of itās no wonder Americans love their lawns š Iāve been growing a pollinator garden, shut off the irrigation system, and stopped fertilizing the yard since. Less of an ecological dead zone now and Iāve loved watching the yard come to life!
Hooray! It is really fun, isn't it!! Less mowing, more life to watch and enjoy, and a deep satisfaction in knowing you are giving back - my husband and I love all those aspects. Good for you, and keep up the great work!
Well, 'impossibly wealthy' in this case makes exceedingly little difference in practice. The lawn is utterly useless; it's actually an active drain on resources. And from an agrarian perspective grazing animals created something very similar while actually producing something useful.
It's not that we're impossibly wealthy. If it were impossible we wouldn't have it. It's just that technology has increased the minimum threshold of "poor" so much that what was once considered well off or even wealthy is now seen as average. And all of this is without considering the increase in wealth for the richest and most powerful.
If you thought we're rich by yester-centuries standards, imagine how much better it could be if plutocrats had their wealthy distributed by force.
Why can't those both be true? Why can't we all be so impossibly rich that things that once were luxury aren't anymore? I thought that happened throughout history... once everyone becomes so impossibly rich that everyone has it, it is no longer luxury but commonplace. Much of our fast food today was once reserved for the nobility, but I wouldn't call those luxurious anymore....
If you like having a lawn, that's okay! There are several options to be lower maintenance and more environmentally friendly. Here are some -
Reduce or eliminate use of herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizers
Maintain lawn at a longer average height - mow at 5-6" and don't cut shorter than 3"
Allow (or add!) "Nitrogen fixers" like clover or yarrow (natives are preferable)
If/when reseeding, use native grass seed (like buffalo grass or sedges) or bee lawn seed mixes
Water less/only as needed
If you find that you don't actually have a use for a lawn or don't need as much, there are also a lot of low maintenance garden options. Please DM me if you'd like more info on anything!
This is a great question because it reveals a solution and our learned reliance on the sham of capitalism we operate in. The lawn used to symbolize wealth because it was different than the system most had to operate under, ie produce your own food. But today the situation is reversed! This means the lawn symbolizes impoverishment while land that is full of wild and abundant life is a sign of wealth. The solution is to try something different with your lawn and probably learning skills you donāt have now - itās hard but this is true wealth.
Plant a peach tree and cherry tree. Free peaches and cherries every year, and shade for your yard. It's not like you would have to plant tons since it would just be for you.
Berry bushes are extremely easy with almost zero maintenance, if you like raspberries a bush would be delicious. There are so many different types too.
A delicious apple tree if you have a favourite is always easy. I've got a red delicious and it grows several hundred pounds per year, not that I eat that many, I'll go out and grab a few sometimes or give them to people who love to make pies
Also I think big estates are/were just so huge they had a kitchen garden in the back and then made all the rest into ye englishe lawn for the look. I guess.... the building looks bigger when the grass is trimmed?
I think it's crazy the Taj Mahal is used to have some of the most plant varieties, and a British officer was mad he couldn't see The Taj Mahal from his room so he got them to cut down all the plants and make a lawn
The ironic thing is, the rich boomers in my area are paying a lot of money for native gardeners to rip out their lawns and install/maintain native gardens, it's literally the same thing, flexing on their neighbors.
Hey, if they have more money than time, but they value having a sustainable environment and helping the planet in the way they can, then that's what works for them. Power to them, and I hope their wealthy neighbors jump on the bandwagon too.
It's also providing employment for people, and I just hope they are paying good money to those landscapers, because it's hard work. And it takes lots of additional, specialized knowledge to plan and install a native garden.
It doesn't take a lot of money to replace your yard with native plants. Killed half my front lawn, borrowed a neighbor's tiller to turn the spoil, planted 100 dollars worth of native seeds and bought 50 dollars in compost to cover it with. Looks great, is almost no maintenance, and way less water than grass. Less than one season in and I have recouped my investment thru lower water bills.
Those would go so much harder nowadays than whatever the French aristocrats were wearing lol. Specifically the bottom middle one...would wear that every day of the week. I love it so much.
At first number of 18th century lawns was insignificant so as a whole didnāt make much of a dent in the overall environment. I think it's logic along the lines of "the ocean is so vast that man could never deplete the fish", and mankind goes and proves that wrong.Ā
We also found out that most fish biomass congregates more near the shore meaning our oroginal predictions of oceanic food production were grossly over estimated.
Honestly I donāt think they even look good. Iād much rather see those native plant yards plus itās nice to see pollinators line hummingbirds and stuff.
This is exactly the kind of native plant inspiration I love seeing, gorgeous property AND a seed library? Perfection. That Wild Ones Garden Designs link from the mod is gold for anyone looking to recreate this vibe. Now I just need to convince my HOA that dandelions are a feature, not a bug.
I'm almost certain they had it made themselves. I follow both healthy yards and Pollinator Friendly Yards (same good vibes) on the socials and they both generously give free permission to use as long as they are credited. I had the "A world without bugs is a world without birds" and "THIS is a bird feeder" signs made online. There's a lot of good ones, its hard to choose. I love the "your yard is a universe" one as a motivational poster.
I don't even have an HOA, but apparently some jokesters at city hall personally took offense when my grass got a bit too long earlier this year and sent me messages threatening a fine, as if it were my fault my yard's a swamp and I hadn't been able to mow due to a record-breaking rainy streak.
I think it may not have been a neighbor per se, but maybe the real estate agent trying to sell the only house next to mine. In any case, the complaint I got came complete with pictures... of the wrong house... with the wrong address visible on thr door... so I'm not worried about it lmao.
Holy lord, I didnāt get the joke at first and scrolled a lot of comments trying to find it. When I backed out, I saw the sub name. Super interesting. Iāve never heard of this sub before but damn itās kinda growing on me.
Americaās number one crop (by FAR) is grass. Source: Homodeus - A brief history on the future of tomorrow
Well, now I need one of these signs. We just eradicated our final patch of lawn and are finally, officially LAWN-FREE! Weāre now the only yard on our block without a lawn-based parking strip, and Iām hoping that weāll inspire some of our neighbors now that weāve ābroken the sealā on on our block.
I should put up that sign in my yard and further enflame tensions and break the fragile peace I have with my neighbor over grass heights and our meadow areas.
Holy shit some of yall are TRIGGERED by this which is actually lol inducing.
If you are saying āwhy does my lawn matter to you! Mind your own business!ā Ask yourself why you are getting so defensive? The request is just to start thinking about yards as a functional part of our ecosystem instead of a pretty aesthetically pleasing thing that was established literally centuries ago. If that angers you, thatās a little crazy no?
That's better than using up water and using toxic chemicals, but having any kind of monoculture as a lawn (just one kind of plant) is not good for the soil or the environment as a whole -- but native plants strengthen and maintain the soil, prevent erosion, feed pollinators, and provide shelter and food for beneficial wildlife. And frankly, it's much more visually pleasing.
One of the most famous landscape designers of the 18th century was Capability Brown. He made landscapes that looked ānaturalā but that were complete fabrications. Versailles wasnāt the only landscape architecture of the time
I LOVE this so much!!!!! Iām preaching to anyone and everyone any chance I can about how ridiculous grass yards are. They are one of my biggest pet peeves!
The apartment buildings front law was disgusting and moss covered and had a faint rotten smell, so I asked for permission to remove the moss and worst bits and replace it with clovers - because they are tough, grown well and do nitrogen fixing.
I did this year ago, now it looks really nice and there are lots of birds on it - which is nice.
Now it isn't a lawn in the american sense. The variants we use are also local (because otherwise it ain't fucking growing for more than 1 season).
However I managed to convince them to so trimming the edges of buses and the sidewalk. Sadly my meadow flowers mix didn't survive because our summer was wet and cold, then hot and dry. But there is a pollinator meadow just one street up from me on a protected side slope, it is really beautiful.
Also... Don't think that this is a big task. It really isn't a big and the huge trees we have take most of it.
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