One of many vivid impressions I have from childhood visits to Cyprus, where my father grew up, is that no one there had a lawn. In retrospect I can see, of course, that in the hyper-arid, drought-prone climate of a place like Cyprus, widespread use of lawns would have seemed an absurdly extravagant use of scarce resources.
Did the cousins I played with on my visits suffer appreciably from lack of green? Not that I could tell. When we were there we played soccer on dirt lots and hide-and-seek between houses, and no one I know is worse for the wear. (As compensation, the children of Cyprus eat the best watermelon and drink the best fresh lemonade in the entire world.)
Still, my reaction and surprise was telling. In the United States, lawns are so ubiquitous that to my young eye (and many others) they seemed to be almost a basic human right. That’s a serious problem, given the enormous resources that our North American lawn-fetish consumes.
Historically, lawns first became popular among the gentry of Western Europe, where they were managed either as pasture or by labor-intensive hand sheering or scything. The modern lawn seems to be a deprecated form of the highly manicured English landscape gardens which became popular among the nobility in Britain in the 17th and 18th centuries. But wasn’t until the 19th century with the invention and mass production of the lawnmower that lawns really took off in North America.
Today, American lawns occupy some 30-40 million acres of land. Lawnmowers to maintain them account for some 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution – probably more in urban areas. Each year more than 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled during the refilling of lawn and garden equipment—more than the oil that the Exxon Valdez spilled.
Homeowners spend billions of dollars and typically use 10 times the amount of pesticide and fertilizers per acre on their lawns as farmers do on crops; the majority of these chemicals are wasted due to inappropriate timing and application. These chemicals then runoff and become a major source of water pollution.Last but not least, 30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used on lawns. Most of this water is also wasted due to poor timing and application.
Fortunately, there are many alternatives to conventional lawn care. The lawn care center at Purdue University suggests two paths: “evolutionary” and “revolutionary”. In the “evolutionary” approach, the homeowner makes some small, modest changes for a big effect. Such changes include getting an electric or hand lawnmower, planning for more efficient watering and applying less fertilizer and pesticide at more appropriate times. Of course organic fertilizer is preferable. The revolutionary approach includes changing the type of grass, interplanting with clover, native landscaping or xeriscaping.
Actually, once you get over the idea of high-maintenance lawn-for-lawn-sake, a whole world of low-maintenance landscaping possibilities opens up–from beautiful, low-maintenance groundcovers like creeping thyme, to trees, shrubs, native grasses, wildflowers or even patios and stone paths. Or—even more radically, why not grow some food?
—
Follow Columbia Water Center on Twitter
I grew up in America, and the few times I visited my family in Greece as a youth, I always missed green grass — it has always felt like a luxury to me!
That said, I think it’s important to consider climate here as well; I live in the Pacific Northwest now, a maritime climate quite similar to England. It would be hard to get grass not to grow out here as this climate is made for green leafy growth; if you were so inclined, you could skip watering July / August, and have a nice, totally un-irrigated lawn, something that could never happen in Greece, or most of America for that matter.
In the end,I believe that Americans won’t take care to conserve water unless it becomes very expensive, or hits their communities hard — even in arid places like Colorado, places with increasing water scarcity issues — most families keep a lawn.
Hi Peter,
Of course you have a point about climate. But in even in wet climates Americans put tremendous resources into their carefully manicured lawns.
A lot of people go to tremendous effort to kill off beneficial plants like clover and dandelion (nitrogen fixer and dynamic nutrient accumulator, respectively) and then dump fertilizer to make the grass grow. Meanwhile, clippings are sent off to the landfill, removing nutrients, which then must be replaced by . . . fertilizer.
It doesn’t have to be that way — my mother-in-law lives on two acres in the woods in Pennsylvania. She keeps some of her land as meadow — mowed occasionally, but never watered and without pesticide and fertilizer.
I think green grass and open space is beautiful. Home-grown vegetables are delicious! I also think that converting at least a portion of a yard to a patio or planting ground cover and trees is a great idea. My only concern with this idea is that people are only going to find more and more ways to use fertilizers on all the plants that they incorporate into their landscapes. And, of course, everything but the patio will still need to be watered.
Hi Stephanie,
You have good points — it won’t help much if people just dump as much fertilizer and waste as much water on their landscaping as they did on their lawn.
Nature, though, doesn’t need watering and fertilizing! It seems to me that if we can strive to design our landscapes with the beneficial relationships of nature in mind, we should be able, at the very least, to be far more efficient in our resource consumption.
Native plants do not need to be watered unless there is a severe drought. Native plants don’t get watered in the wild – except by nature! Also native plants do not require fertilizer, but when planting native, you should put a few cups of your compost in the bottom of the hole. Compost can also be put around plants in early spring and late fall. Native plants bring in beneficial insects such as bees and butterflies. Don’t be scared of bees – my husband I have never been stung in 30 years of our pollinator garden lawn, and my husband is something of an insect magnet!
[…] summer I wrote a post about the problem of lawns in America. To recap briefly: The landscapes we have created for most of our built environment in […]
[…] Earth Institute State of the Planet blog claims American homeowners allot 30-40 million acres of land to lawns, apply 10x the amount of […]
Your article says, “30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used on lawns.” This is incorrect.
According to the EPA site, “about 30 percent [of average household water]…is devoted to outdoor uses. More than half of that outdoor water is used for watering lawns and gardens.”
Thirty percent is used outdoors. HALF of that is used for lawns.
That’s more like 15-20%.
Here’s a link to the EPA site (your link to it is broken):
https://www3.epa.gov/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html
Great correction, that figure caught my eye as inherently implausible. Your link is now broken too, though. The EPA page in question is now at https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html .
lisa lemon, in Denver, Colorado 55% of water goes toward outdoor use, including lawns, as of 2012. Assumptions about the Eastern U.S., Midwest or Pacific Northwest, do not apply to the arid American West.
The EPA’s figures are the national average. “Outdoor use” includes filling pools, washing cars, everything. Of it, about 15% is for lawns.
Lisa Lemon, that is 55% of urban fresh water, more than 1/2 of each residential household’s use. Agricultural land in Colorado still accounts for the highest water use. It takes a lot of water to grow food, including beef, even with modern rain sensors, smart phone irrigation technology, drip systems, and center pivot irrigation. Still, agricultural land in Colorado is being returned to native grasslands at an alarming rate as growing municipalities purchase water supplies from agricultural land. And yes, more than 1/2 then goes to water city lawns.
What’s your source for “55% of urban fresh water, more than 1/2 of each residential household’s use” for lawns? According to EPA at https://19january2017snapshot.epa.gov/www3/watersense/pubs/outdoor.html , lawns and gardens together account for “over half” of about 30% of water use by the “average American family” — so lawns _and_ gardens a bit over 15% of average domestic use, which a far cry from “more than 1/2.”
Does it hurt anything to have lawns? Do lawns provide some benefit? Seems like a big waste to me.
i removed grass , tilted soil up and planted beneficial flowers , herbs on my front yard after we bought the house. i don’t like to waste water on useless grass. i don’t use chemicals either. for weeds such as thistles,i pull them by hands . then i got complaints by neighbors that my front yard isn’t green -.-“ neighbors around me love to have green grass which i see them dump tons of water and chemicals on . As for my backyard, i have chickens that loves dandelions and literally destroy all the grass for me. ^.^ i wish more people acknowledge how toxic herbicides are even witj the organic ones. located in CO and we have shortage of water this year.
Americans have been tricked by advertising telling us green lawns are the ideal. It doesn’t make sense how smart people fell for this when it is a waste of ones time, contaminates the air, soil and water and poisons animals, family and wildlife. Baffling.
I like grass/lawns, and I don’t like to see how Cyprus and climatically similar countries have large areas of dry rocky grounds unhospitable with no vegetation, those land areas become useless and are wasted. I wish that some organization develops by clever selective breeding a grass-type which can grow green even in those climates with no extra water requirement than what natures provides, this will help also other plants incluing trees (which give shade and protect the water in the plants beneath from drying out) to start growing on top of the grass, but the first step I think is to begin by covering the rocky dry land areas with soil which have to be transported from elsewhere. For example I wouldn’t want to live in a dry grass- and plantless area of Iraq even if I was paid for it, but with my suggestions above on how to make such places green and lush they will become hospitable. I think the governments in those countries have failed in making their countries’s natures more beautiful with plants.
I fill like all this is mostly made up and has nothing to actually support what’s being said to facts. If you put a water sprinkler system in your property that’s on you. But has anyone ever heard of rain. There are mass amounts of land all over the country that have no kind of watering systems that grow flush green and are full of natural vegetation. Also if your grass is growing and you have to mow it every week or two. Then why the he’ll are you watering it. Also why even try to landscape fresh water grass in your yards when you live on the salty coast line. And the pollution from lawn maintenance being so high is redirected from what’s actually causing it vehicles oil covered roads plans and basic human waste. More water is polluted by the cooling of nuclear power plants and then its dumped back in to our oceans. People use your brains and stop taking everything that’s forced in your face as facts. 30 to 60 percent of water wasted on watering lawns. LMFAO!. Think about how much water it takes to keep livestock alive each day. That alone would be more than what people use to water there lawns. If grass doesn’t already grow in your yards then it’s a side affect from the muddflood and the salt from the coast line. The Mudd that is what makes up the majority of the harshly heated desert landscape is rich in salt and hydration is not possible in its current condition. In areas where grass grows with ease isn’t from man watering it. It’s because the top surface of the landscape is covered in a moisture component called soil/dirt which comes about from the trees in the area shedding there leaves and branches shortly after remaining on the ground are soon broken down into fertilizer creating the layers of rich hydrating top soil where grass and vegetation will and dose grow effortlessly without being waterd by man. Naturally the rain takes care of such things. Anyways I could go on and on. People please wake up and ask yourselves what it is that I for sure know to be facts. And understand everything you and I even the generations before us and even before them have all been lied to about just about everything and I mean everything. History,Geology,Mathematics,solar systems,what the sun actually is and where it is and the moon. The old world and the new. And global warming lol. The ice perimeter that completely circles our know realm has been melting ever since the sol/sun which is the only actual star that exists. Giants are real dragons are real. We live on top of them. We have been flocked into control zones so we can be manipulated and blindly led to our own demise. The divine is real and its trying to wake you up.