Reminder that every time you see “rip up your lawn” or “kill your lawn” you’re listening to hot garbage from people who don’t know anything about plants, and you will walk away from their advice having actually lost knowledge.
I mean, you’ll still be a happier person than someone who cares too much about fan fiction! But you would’ve destroyed biomass and stripped topsoil for no fucking reason, and released carbon, and killed off a whole root system for being unfashionable.
Repeat after Elodie what we do with lawns that we don’t want:
1. We compost them down, with cardboard and green mulch, and build a bed on top of them - especially if we are converting to vegetable gardening/food production/ flower production where we NEED soil quality and nutrients preserved. We NEED every scrap of carbon to go into our damn nutrients, and we won’t get there by ripping back to dead clay. Or,
2. If the turf is terraformed in a different environmental type i.e. an arid setting and you’re planning to xeriscape, it’s less important to keep nutrients but we still want to lock in what can be preserved and ensure that your actions aren’t REMOVING the soil you need or EXPOSING IT TO INSTANT EROSION WHILE YOUR PLANTINGS ARE ESTABLISHED OH MY GOD. We might section and flip the turf over and expose the roots to kill it off, while preserving the structure and any native soil, and giving native microorganisms the chance to build a new life without being shoved into sacks and taken to landfill. Or,
3. We grow them out and see what components are in them, then style them pleasingly; often the much-derided turf grass actually contains an interesting mixture of plants that are maintaining themselves beautifully with absolutely no inputs, and therefore could make a wonderfully dreamy, low-maintenance step towards a “wildlife corner” if left to flower and seed. Or,
4. We plant over and through them; for example, converting a lawn space into an orchard meadow with successional bulbs and wildflowers is such a delightful choice that produces fruit, flowers, picnic opportunities, forage for pollinators, a pleasant multi-use space and requires so few inputs. Just a few fruit trees provide shade, habitat, carbon sinks, and copious food. Leaving long grass to grow under them brings all the benefits of groundcover (nature abhors bare earth, and so should we, the poor bastards trying to save it) and management can nudge it from a charming burst of crocuses at the end of winter through to a very nice wildflower space in summer, which will do nothing but replenish your soil and soul. Or,
5. If you’re actually rewilding , rather than just throwing sunflower seeds around and patting yourself on the back for it, you’re in touch with local knowledge-keepers who are advising you much better on your specific situation, right? Right? So you’re doing what they advised you, right.
I haven’t even touched on soil health or the carbon cycle.
It isn’t as punchy and REBELLIOUS AGAINST YOUR DAD as ripping/killing language! but DO YOU SEE HOW EVEN AS A JOKE YOU WALK AWAY FROM IT KNOWING LESS ABOUT PLANTS?
Seriously, if you guys can do one thing of utility on social media it could be to mock the “ripping/killing grass is so good and eco” thing until it falls apart. It has no value, it’s just Americans scolding their dads at a safe distance. And even if we just make it more fashionable to replace it with “composting” at least that’s a more valuable word to shove between your ears.
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