Lawns are lovely to look at, but you really need one? Reading an article in Reader's Digest, the March-April 2023 issue, I found myself wondering about all the transplants from the Mid-West who find that the “perfect” lawn in California is hard to come by.

These folks come from areas where it rains reliably in the late spring and throughout the summer.  No sprinkler systems or city water needed!

Here are a few very good reasons why not to have a lawn:

1.  Lawns, which are grassy weed plants when not growing where they are NOT wanted, are very THIRSTY plants.  Did you know that when you run sprinklers or other watering devices for one hour, you use 1,000 gallons of water?  True, no one runs water on a lawn for that length of time all at once BUT add up all the time spent watering here and there – you ‘ll be shocked at the amount of water you are using!  Turfgrass is our country's single largest irrigated crop, especially when most of the country is in a drought.
2. Most folks are still using gas-powered mowers to care for their lawns; that equals almost 3 BILLION gallons of gas.  That's almost equal to 6 MILLION cars driven in 1 year!  And gas isn't very cheap this year.  Some people will argue that using battery and electrical driven equipment isn't a great cost, BUT how is the electricity to power up the batteries and running the electrical mowers being generated?
3. Gas mowers emit the same amount of pollution per hour as a car being driven for 45 miles.  Gas-powered lawn and garden equipment accounts for 5% of our country's air pollution.
4. Lawns use 10 times (!) more fertilizer which can release nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas, than do our agricultural crops; this can lead to fertilizers leaching into our waterways and oceans, causing algae blooms that take oxygen from the water and causing fish to die.
5. And lastly, we use 80 MILLION pounds of pesticides and herbicides on our lawns which disrupts the natural food chain for the “good” insects and the plant life which feed them.

What to do to help:  remove the lawn, landscape with ground cover plants and shrubs and trees to help the pollinators which help to make our fruits and food crops grow while you save a little money and enjoy the outdoors!