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Aesthetically pleasing my ass.
It’s not even aesthetically pleasing.
Fun fact, naturally growing grass in Midwest is generally of the phalaris species, you can extract a very powerful hallucinogenic drug called DMT from it in three very simple steps. All you need is a lawnmower with a mulch bag and some pool cleaning supplies.
We replaced about 60-70% of our backyard with native plants, trees, and shrubs. It was a shit ton of work but I saw a hummingbird for the first time in my life! And moths mimicking hummingbirds. And friendly bees. And weird beetles. And other birds galore. I rarely have to water.
Now our preschooler has room to roam and so so much to explore (and weird bugs to chase mom around with).
Such a heartwarming story. Thank you. Reminds me of my grandfather and his garden when he was alive.
What all did you do to replace it? I’m starting to reclaim my yards in my new place (finally getting dandelions!!) and my initial attempt at clover didn’t take as much as I wanted it to. Really want to get my yard to as close as native and wildlife friendly as my city will allow.
Not op but I grow pollinator gardens in my community garden which typically attracts bees, hummingbirds etc.; check with your local nursery because there should be a native plant seed mix you can buy.
You may be a little late in the season (assuming northern hemisphere) for most seed mixes because I’ve mostly seen suggested sowing in fall or late spring
For what it’s worth, it’s perfect planting time where I am, still another week of potential frost in southern Alberta, Canada.
Depending on where you live the common dandelion may not be a native plant. They were introduced to North America from Europe.
For better or worse, my local/state government doesn’t consider them noxious weeds because they’re so firmly established that we can never get rid of them.
More not worth the cost to fight, so embrace it. Our city stoped spraying for broadleaf maybe 5 years back.
I might have anger issues because any time someone tells me to touch grass I want to just violently make them eat the said touching grass.
…touch grass, you internet tough guy
Bugs don’t care what type of green you have in your lawn. You can even mow.
Just don’t spray insecticide on your lawn.
Edit: also, why the fuck would you remove existing lawn to replace it with new growth? That’s like indiscriminately bulldozing every home in a city to rebuild them with whatever is the current trend in sustainable housing. Where do people live in the mean time? Please don’t let this person, or me for that matter, inform your opinion.
That’s just simply vastly and easily proved to be untrue.
Insecticide is a lot of it but lack of variety, lack of height, lack of pollinators, lack of pollinating plants and light pollution are all compound factors.
I’ve seen a lot of opinion pieces about the matter, but they never cite any research that definitely pins substantive loss of biodiversity on lawns. It’s an issue globally, but as usual the individual is the scape goat instead of the exponentially greater impact of corporations.
Because there doesn’t need to be a study. We know reduction of habitat has a direct relation to population, it would be exceptionally weird if it weren’t.
We knew dinosaurs were scaly, too. Everything deserves further study, and it’s foolhardy to advise everyone to rip up their lawns and plant…what, exactly? White clover, another invasive species.
I’m sure I can find a study but do you need a study for common sense?
Ed:
Oh, you didn’t need to do that. You won’t find a study supporting your argument, I’ve looked thoroughly before. Case in point, the study you shared. It actually opposes your argument, by finding suburban lawns support a diverse and abundant bee community. Of the three mowing frequencies they studied (one, two, and three week intervals), they actually found every two weeks was optimal for the bees.
Like I said to begin with, I just don’t think what species of green you plant in your lawn matters nearly as much as not using insecticide.
It doesn’t but do go on.
We suggest a ‘lazy lawnmower’ approach as an additional option for managing yards for wildlife. The recommendation to mow lawns less frequently to help promote bee conservation might garner broad public support (potentially compared with lawn reduction or replacement) because it more closely aligns with current single-family homeowner motivations for adopting lawn-dominated yardscapes. A New England study on lawn care attitudes and behaviors found that householders were concerned about water quality and thus were willing to try al- ternative lawn care approaches that were more environmentally friendly (e.g., higher mowing height, reduced fertilizer application). However, the authors also noted significant barriers to changing be- haviors including concerns that the alternative lawn care would not be as aesthetically pleasing, would incur additional financial burdens, and would require more time for upkeep (Eisenhauer et al., 2016). Likewise, in a multi-city survey, respondents ranked various landscaping deci- sions in which aesthetically pleasing, weed-free, and ease of main- tenance topped the list, while provisioning for wildlife ranked fifth out of eight choices (Larson et al., 2015). These studies suggest that wild- life-friendly landscaping has some support, but the acceptance of weeds and the inclusion of more native plants (which are not as showy as their non-native congeners; Frankie et al., 2005) might be at odds with more preferred management goals of aesthetics and ease of maintenance (Lerman et al., 2012b; van Heezik et al., 2012). Based on our interac- tions with participating households and their neighbors, our treatment of a three-week mowing frequency appeared unkempt and exceeded the tolerance of many homeowners and their neighbors, and thus the two- week regime might reconcile homeowner ideals with pollinator habitat. Moving towards a mechanistic approach when studying urban biodiversity (Shochat et al., 2006) increases our ability to directly link management with ecological outcomes, and ultimately lead to effective action. Our experimental approach demonstrated how altering lawn management decisions influences bee abundance despite the inherent variability present in suburban yards. Manipulating lawn mowing be- haviors also demonstrates a new and creative approach for supporting urban biodiversity by rethinking the role lawns play towards enriching urban areas. Mowing less frequently is practical, economical, environ- mental and a timesaving alternative to lawn replacement or even planting pollinator gardens, that has the potential to be widely adopted if it can overcome barriers to social acceptance. Most importantly, our research shows that individual households can contribute to urban conservation.
