Edit: ugh, the creator made this with AI
Homie's thumb is on the wrong side.
this post was submitted on 10 Jul 2024
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No Lawns
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What is No Lawns?
A community devoted to alternatives to monoculture lawns, with an emphasis on native plants and conservation. Rain gardens, xeriscaping, strolling gardens, native plants, and much more! (from official Reddit r/NoLawns)
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Looking at the water hose it seems like AI to me
Lmao the whole ass hose is on the wrong side
Look at the kid's face
Remember we need left hands too donate yours today
Why an ai image
It's a way to counteract the environmental benefits of not maintaining a lawn by wasting electricity to generate an image instead of using one of the thousands of suitable pictures that already exist. Duh
I found this image online and now that I see it was created by AI, the hypocracy is obvious.
Why not? It's a meme not the Sistine chapel ceiling
Cause it looks shitty. A literal Ms paint scribble would be better.
Who cares? Like, I'm not defending ai images here, they suck. But are you really seeking a high quality vintage art style meme?
Pretty sure Michelangelo could figure out how a fucking hose works tho
Sure. Why couldn't he?
OP is too lazy to maintain a lawn do you think they’d put effort into this?
TONY! Love that man.
Join our goddamned cult. Kill Your Lawn. Create habitat and eradicate the bland. Create a native plant or a vegetable garden in your front yard. Killing your lawn and growing native plants is the best way to learn to identify the plants that USED to grow where you lived before the commercial automobile slum cesspool (trademark) was built. But most importantly, kill the lawn within yourself.
Even the video description is cool.
Dad: Jimmy the HOA evicted the last family that started growing vegetables in their front garden.
Jimmy: Let's mess up those fascists.
And they did...
I find it mad that hoa were allowed to be established. Sorry how much money did you pay for this land oh it's it 0 weird it's exactly the amount of fucks in my pocket.
It’s unfortunate because I actually think there is a need for a lower layer of governance below the municipality but the HOA is a terrible structure for that purpose for many reasons.
a need for a lower layer of governance below the municipality
Yeah it's called common decency in society. Yous probably call it goddamn communism or something
Nobody else needs HOAs
There was a thing a few months ago where some artist connected NYC and Dublin with a live video feed. It had to be shut down because a woman showed her breasts on the feed. This was legal in NYC, but not in Dublin. "Decency" in one culture can be oppression in another. We need some form of adjudication beyond village wisdom.
Lawns were grown to demonstrate social status by having land that was not needed for food production to fulfil one's immediate needs.
In the same time period, eating meat at every meal was a demonstration of social status - only the wealthy and powerful had enough livestock to slaughter and eat them routinely.
Like lawns, and meat, and college education, and a dozen other forms of conspicuous consumption - privileges of the wealthy during the Victorian era and earlier, when industrialized society made those privileges cheaper, the middle class seized on them to emulate the upper class, and after a hundred fifty years those privileges became expectations.
And conspicuous consumption as a status symbol, when universalized to the majority of society, led inevitably to unsustainable consumption and the world as it is now.
So like.... I'm agreeing with the things you're saying, but the way it's phrased makes it seem like you're saying "It's actually the poor people who are the problem"
Just struck me as kind of funny lol
In a way it is. Colonial empires maintain the support of the proletariat in the imperial cores by funneling wealth from colonized nations back to those people. If you're better off than your parents were, and your parents are better off than your grandparents were, why do you care that your ruling oligarchy is genociding its way across the planet and shoveling stolen profits into its insatiable maw?
English commoners forgave their empire's industrial scale genocide of African slaves on Haitian plantations because that genocide provided white sugar for their tea.
American commoners forgive the wholesale torture and murder of Latin American peasants because we can buy cheap bananas at the supermarket.
The top 20% of Americans control 80% of America's wealth. But they don't consume 80% of the resources America consumes. They don't burn 80% of the gas, they don't eat 80% of the food, they don't produce 80% of the pollution. What's killing the world is the bread and circuses - or rather the cars, cell phones, and factory farms - that give all but the very poorest Americans an artificially inflated standard of living at the cost of the world as a whole.
But telling poor Americans "your standard of living is too high" when the entire capitalist machine tells them they have the right to all the consumption they can buy and the best standard of living they can earn, it's a hard sell, you know?
What else can you put there to keep weeds away and also have an open space to enjoy? Concrete and paving is not an acceptable answer
It depends on what you need to enjoy the space.
If you're looking for a grass alternative and aren't running around on it all the time, roman chamomile can be a good, low-growing, pet-safe plant. We used this on my neighbor's postage stamp front lawn so he wouldn't have to mow but it would still look nice and intentional. There are also a handful of other low-growing plants which require much less maintenance and are more drought-tolerant than grass, but they tend to be best for low-traffic areas, so if you're out there playing catch or capture the flag with your kids most days they're probably not as good as grass.
If you're in a shady area, moss might be an option. It also prefers low traffic.
And the option abhored by HOAs and your fussiest neighbors: just don't bother maintaining a perfect lawn. A lot of the work and environmental damage comes from keeping a perfect monocrop of a specific grass cultivar. Fertilizer to keep the soil good enough (which gets washed into local waterways and causes algae blooms) pesticides (which kill bees and a slew of other insects) and herbicides to kill any plants that try to compete with the grass (which remain in the soil as well). Traps for rodents that try to exist in the yard. Not to mention the energy and person-hours spent on trimming it frequently. Just accepting that grass isn't really meant to form a thick lawn in most areas, and will look a bit patchy, multi-hued, and feature some other plants, will greatly reduce the effort and damage caused.
Or if you can't stand the thought of doing that (or will get in trouble) consider downsizing it a little - section off the least-used sections of your lawn, plant some cool native trees or shrubs, throw down some mulch so it looks intentional.
And the last option (where applicable): no grass.
When I was a kid our house was in the woods, with no clearing to speak of, so we mostly just played on the forest floor, which was mostly leaves and pine needles. If you pick up the sticks and keep it somewhat open, it can look really beautiful.
Currently already have a biodiverse lawn of what seems to be like 6 different species including clover, plus some different mosses where it's more shady. It's not super high traffic.
I have attached some images of the lawn from various seasons to give you an idea. I don't know what a HOA is but I don't need to fertilise the lawn (animals do that for me), or use any pesticides (animals do that for me too). I water it only in the summer. In terms of maintenance it really just gets mowed when it gets long. Starting to think the no lawn thing might not apply here? Let me know what you would do
Yeah I don't think they're talking about you
There's a long list in the pinned post at the top of this sub.
It's just a list of plants, I already have a garden that's too big haha
Astroturf!
Plastic desert! No thanks!
First thing we did when we moved into our house was rip up the astroturf.
It's funny, my yard is essentially the community play ground. When I don't maintain it, the clover gets destroyed and it turns into a mud pit the kids can't play on really. Natural grasses didn't stand a chance even after being given the time to establish.
I consulted with a landscape architect who I was partnered with on an elementary school I was building looking for what I could do naturally to keep the yard in tact while the kids played..... this was a nationwide firm, on a LEED Gold project. Their answer? Grass. Rye grass, KBG and red fescue was the recommendation.
I nuked the lawn, soil and seeded it and two years later it's held up wonderfully and is enjoyed by a handful of families.
I planted Milk weed for the pollinators. They don't want most of the crap people plant trying to be Eco friendly anyways or so the landscape architect told me.
This anti lawn tirade is kinda anti-kid to a degree. When my kids are older and not using it every day, I'll tear it all out and hardscape it. I don't wanna maintain things for no purpose.
This anti lawn tirade is kinda anti-kid to a degree.
I see where you're coming from, but I'd argue that more public parks with playgrounds and fields to play on is better than lawns. In some places that's not prioritised, possibly where you are, and so it sounds great what you have going on!
But if there are enough public parks for kids to play at, then lawns just end up being wasted space that could instead be a garden or have native plants that help the native wildlife, or something like that.
I don't know anyone that actually uses their lawn for anything... Some people might host BBQs or stuff like that, in which case I don't mind. In my view, if it gets used, great! But most of the time they don't and they just suck up water resources and petrol on mowing with no real benefit
The best lawn is one that serves a purpose for a reasonably sized group of people. Feeling or being compelled to maintain something you don't want, that's of no value to you, or nature, is the worst part of lawn culture to me. Nobody should be expected to have a lawn they don't want, if you have a better use for the space, do that instead if you want.
Sounds like their lawn is at least good for their community. Maybe it's suboptimal urban planning, but that's far less bad than wanton waste of resources in my book.
I've got a play structure on mine. There's usually a half dozen kids on it daily.
Hope you have great homeowner's insurance in case any of them gets injured.
They don’t want most of the crap people plant trying to be Eco friendly anyways or so the landscape architect told me.
The research of entomologist, Dr. Doug Tallamy, and his team at the University of Delaware have identified 14% of native plants (the keystones) support 90% of butterfly and moth lepidoptera species. The research of horticulturist Jarrod Fowler has shown that 15% to 60% of North American native bee species are pollen specialists who only eat pollen from 40% of native plants.
This anti lawn tirade is kinda anti-kid to a degree.
I see where you're coming from, but I'd argue that more public parks with playgrounds and fields to play on is better than lawns. In some places that's not prioritised, possibly where you are, and so it sounds great what you have going on!
But if there are enough public parks for kids to play at, then lawns just end up being wasted space that could instead be a garden or have native plants that help the native wildlife, or something like that.
I don't know anyone that actually uses their lawn for anything... Some people might host BBQs or stuff like that, in which case I don't mind. In my view, if it gets used, great! But most of the time they don't and they just suck up water resources and petrol on mowing with no real benefit
It's not anti-kid. Tons of people live in cities with no yards whatsoever and they still manage to raise children and to let those children play. Shared parks offer better play opportunities than private lawns do in an urban environment.
WEED EATER.
I'm a weed eater and proud of it.
Random fact - there is no sales tax (vat) on grass seed in the UK because you can, in a roundabout way, eat it. At least, your cow or your sheep can.
Food isn't taxed .
You know those little flowers that look like tiny pansies, the violets? Tasty as fuck, so also tax-free
Unless the law has changed very recently cakes are not taxed but biscuits are, in the UK. Jaffa Cakes baked a giant Jaffa cake when they went to court to prove they aren’t biscuits.
I love Tiny Adult Burt Reynolds.
So you can play sports at home, Timmy.
Mixed native ground covers could be just as good…
You aren't eating that (for the most part)
Edit I'm very pro alternative lawns, but the flat, consistent texture as seen on a sports field is specifically what I'm noting