lawns take up more space in the US than even corn, says NASA

[moominmolly]

Whoa. From bitterlawngnome:

The map shows how common lawns are across the country, despite a wide variability of climate and soils. Indeed, the scientists who produced the map estimate that more surface area is devoted to lawns than to any other single irrigated crop in the country. For example, lawns appear to cover more than three times the number of acres that irrigated corn covers. The large image shows a more detailed look at fractional lawn surface area in urban areas. In many cities, the urban core—where buildings, parking lots, and roads are densest—appears paler green.

From here, more information available on how they got this data (interesting!) and the ecological impact of lawns here.

I like having an open space that I own, on which I can practice stilt tricks and play with kids and lay in the sun on warm days, but even I have to admit that our national lawn fetish is really kind of creepy.

Comments

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Fucking lawns.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

I totally thought of you when I was reading this.

[miss-chance.livejournal.com]

Does ours count as a "fucking lawn"? By which I'm asking, does it have to have been intentionally planted with grass or grass-seed within the last decade, or have had any maintenance besides cutting it back a few times a season when it's over-grown to be a lawn? Or do we have something more like a Personal Meadow (tm)?

Does my occasionally planting bulbs and even sometimes annuals change the answer?

[nex0s.livejournal.com]

I understand lawns in rainy areas (though I think most people's lawns should be smaller) - but I do NOT understand them in the desert. WTF Texas, CA, UT, NV, NM? WTF?

[khedron.livejournal.com]

Not that many green grass lawns in the part of NM I was from (southwest Albuquerque), to the extent that my Iowan wife said, "Wait, no, rocks are not a front yard."

On the eastern side of Albuquerque, where the mountains help corral moisture and it actually rains, they're more likely to have standard suburban grass lawns -- but like I said, it rains there! So it's a lot easier to manage.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I've been told that the spread of irrigated lawns in the Southwest has actually changed the local climate of such places as Phoenix--ironically undermining the conditions (e.g. dry air, low pollen) that attracted a lot of Northerners there in the first place.

[keyne.livejournal.com]

Are you under the impression that all of Texas is "desert"? East Texas gets more rain each year than Boston!

[redjo.livejournal.com]

I am allowing myself a brief moment to feel smug about turning my front lawn into a vegetable garden ...

And now I'm thinking of the back lawn. Thank you, carry on.

[jadia.livejournal.com]

Wait, why are lawn bad? Green growing things, plants and trees, etc.?

[vizsludraugas.livejournal.com]

In a lot of places, they are maintained by practices that waste resources and damage the local ecosystem -fertilizer overuse, way too much water use, grasses that are basically an invasive species.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

Lawns tend to take a lot of resources (water, pesticides, mowing [gas, machinery] and other grooming, person-hours) without providing native habitat for local fauna, or providing food for the people who maintain them.

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

So does music. Maybe not a lot of pesticides, but gas going to concerts, water that people drink, and to wash the clothes they got dirty, and the endless endless endless time spent listening to music and learning to play it, and none of it provides any native habitat for local fauna, or food for people.

...

I'm all for exploring options and making sure the costs are paid fairly (eg not subsidized by tax payers), but I think nice lawns are just like having nice food, nice clothes, nice music, nice stories, and way better than having a nice car.

[aroraborealis.livejournal.com]

I agree with your larger point, if I understand it correctly, which is that there are things that are good in the world for the pleasure people get out of them, even if they're resource-intensive. But I disagree that lawns are a good example of that for most people, and I think there's a great deal of social pressure to a) have a lawn and b) maintain it to a certain degree that puts it in a different category from pleasure goods like music, nice food, nice clothing, etc.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

The discussion in Bill's journal (http://bitterlawngnome.livejournal.com/749607.html?style=mine) brings up the vital point that many communities require property owners to have turf lawns. That definitely puts lawns in an entirely different class than these other goods. (At least, if there's a residential community out there which bans jeans and requires residents to buy only name-brand groceries, I probably don't want to know about it.)

Fortunately the conservationists have made some changes to the law in Missouri so my father's been able to plant a native garden on one side of the house. But, as you say, legality is one thing, social pressure another. He's gotten one nasty anonymous note about it and he can tell that most of the other neighbours aren't happy, but they're too passive-aggressively Midwestern to say anything to his face, even after he's invited them to.

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

Okay, the peer pressure bit is awkward, because yeah, to the extent we feel good being surrounded by lawns (a point I make elsewhere), we have a free-rider problem.

Still, that's a lot like hygiene and styles and clothing. We want to be surrounded by people who look a certain way, so we pressure them to modify their looks and in some cases use vast resources to look that way.

So, are lawns any worse than clothing?

Possibly by degree -- I don't know the numbers -- but I think that's beside the point. (Which is that lawns make me feel good, so it's annoying to me that people who wear clothes for non-health reasons are telling me lawns are evil.)

Note that I'm a total free rider in my neighborhood, with the worst lawn on the block, because I'm bad that way.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

As I say below, lawns make a great deal of sense if you're going to play certain sports or games that require an even turf surface, or just lounge around on them. But I don't see most lawns being used in these ways. If they're just there to look at, then there are better options.

(This is why I've never understood "keep off the grass" signs. If it's not for people to tread upon, why plant grass in the first place?)

[sandhawke.livejournal.com]

What are the better options?

I don't know of any landscaping that makes me feel as good to look at. Lawns exude safety to my lizard brain, and probably a lot of other people's.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

I don't know why your brain would work that way unless your ancestors were still lizards in Jacobean times, when the modern turf lawn emerged. Before that, "lawns" were essentially cultivated meadows.

[moominmolly.livejournal.com]

We have a lawn (mostly clover) that I am attached to; nothing's quite as good for practicing stilt tricks that might make me fall. While much of our backyard has been turned by ceelove and starphire into productive & awesome garden space, I enjoy keeping that functional bit open because I love USING it. I can even understand why people keep mostly-unused lawns as a hedge against suddenly, oh, taking up bocce or whatever (though there are climates where that seems immensely wasteful). But, like you, I just viscerally don't GET lawns that aren't for using. They're not THAT pretty.

[goat.livejournal.com]

One thing our landlady really did right is our lawn. It's mostly just hard packed, and the landscaping is all drought-tolerant, such as cacti, kangaroo paws, etc. Living in the Bay Area, where we have a clear wet season and dry season, I think this is really important. Wheree I grew up in Westchester county, NY, we had a grassy lawn that we never needed to water and didn't care enough to fertilize, so this is a big change for me...but grass lawns that require too many resources are stupid here.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

lawns take up more space in the US than even corn

That depends: Is all corn in the USA irrigated? When I lived in corn country, most of the farmers seemed to rely on natural precipitation, abetted by low- or no-till farming to reduce surface evaporation.

Lawns have their place. Much as I love wildflowers, it's hard to play croquet over them. But, yeah, I never understood this fetish for huge swathes of grass that nobody ever plays on.

[pseydtonne.livejournal.com]

I had to look at the full zoom of the picture because something seemed odd. Then it made more sense: there are blastulae of cities with move lawns on the outside than in the city centers. It's more like a map of suburbia.

I expected more lawn in the rural parts of western New York, one of my easiest points of reference. You drive along and there are woods and fields and woods and fields.

Batavia (between Rochester and Buffalo) is where they grow the lawns for a lot of America. I could even see the turf farm as a small square on the map.

I guess there are enough other things growing in the east (trees, bushes) to outnumber the grass lawns.

[beloitst.livejournal.com]

I now have scientific proof to justify my distaste for lawns. I mean, yes, a little square of native grass in an area of the country where it rains is one thing. Watering, fertilizer, and other wasteful practices? Never understood them. Mowing? Are you kidding me? You water and fertilize your lawn so it will grow and then you cut it down? Never made sense to me...

[razil.livejournal.com]

The planner in me wonders what the relative proportion of that lawn surface area is golf courses...

[harimad.livejournal.com]

I have a front lawn and a back lawn. They get seeded once a year, aeriated once every other year, watered only when first established, and mowed every other week by - alas - a gas mower. We tried doing the mowing ourselves, with the push mower, but it just wasn't getting done and thus making us unhappy. So we help some nice people earn an honest living by paying them to do it.

I would not have a lawn that needed frequent watering or chemical fertilizers. To me that's a sign that there shouldn't be a lawn there. One of these days I'll redo the front yard, and then it will be local & low maintenance.

[dnereverri.livejournal.com]

I'm unlikely to ever own a place with a lawn... But if by some mischance it happens, I'm definitely planning on replacing the grass with something that doesn't require extra watering or significant labor. (I'll allow extra watering while, say, a tree is establishing itself... But beyond that...)

[deadwinter.livejournal.com]

My hatred for lawns is only exceeded by my hatred for golf.

[weegoddess.livejournal.com]

I'd tabbed this back when you posted it (I read it first) so that I could reply, then it got lost. Apologies! I am declaring it Unlost. And I'm glad I checked back; the post was fascinating and the comments were more so.

::continues to ignore the lawn we acquired with the house::