Why grass? A different perspective on lawns

Imagine a perfect lawn of fescue grass. The owner of it pays every fall to aerate it, lime it, fertilize it, and overseed. Then in the spring they treat it again with fertilizer and a pre-emergent herbicide to stifle the growth of weeds, for a cost of course. Through the growing season it is repeatably mown, and then treated with selective post emergent herbicides, and of course, fungicides to stifle brown patch which commonly plagues fescue in the summer. If you play on it too hard, or walk through the same area regularly, it suffers, so it’s best to keep off it. Also, if any dog pee makes contact with the fescue, it will leave a dead patch so a sign might be up to discourage this. The care of the grass is arduous, and expensive. The story for bermuda and zoysia require less inputs, but the result is not that different. At Marble Botanics, we believe that our connection and care for the part of the Earth around us is one of the most important and beneficial things we can do with our lives. Which raises the question, what do lawns do for the land? What do they do for us?

Lawns provide open space in a garden, or places to play sports or for dogs to run around. There are wonderful things to be said about open areas that are used for laying, playing, gathering, and creating space to frame other plants and trees, but why does it have to be grass? My own backyard is a hill dominated by what most people would initially think is a lawn, but the investment in it is chalked up to a few targeted passes with a lawn mower each year. It is filled with low growing plants and fern moss that form what I consider a beautiful and dynamic mosaic. In the spring it teems with flowers popping just a few inches above the ground with pollinators darting between them in the warm sunlight. In the fall it is partly covered with leaves and flocks of migrating robins peck beneath them, looking for insects. It is full of what many people would call weeds, and put a lot of time, money, and poison into getting rid of but I wouldn’t have it any other way. It is what it naturally wants to be, prevented from being enveloped by the surrounding forest only by the few visits from the mower blades. It is healthy, it is organic, it is mana of the land rising to meet my bare feet upon it’s soft dew.

We are rebranding these clover and violet clade spaces. We do not dare to call them lawns, unless you say ‘weed lawn’ which I embrace more endearingly. These low growing mown spaces are “foot meadows.” A rejection of perfect turf grass and a plea of forgiveness to earth for our adulterated use of it. Humans have been living in communion with nature, and in many instances in history, helping life thrive more abundantly, why divorce from that in the name of have a “nice” lawn? What if we were competitive with having the richest, healthiest most biodiverse and floriferous foot meadows? What nature permits to grow there naturally doesn’t require pH adjustments, synthetic fertilizer or chemicals designed to kill other versions of life that try to grow there. In other words, foot meadows are cheap. They may be filled with summer crabgrass but they are lush and pure.

There is much to be said as well for keeping even beautifully diverse foot meadows to a minimum because taller prairie plants, shrubs and trees are even more serving to you and the Earth. It is important to consider where open space is most valuable for the needs and design of the space, and concentrate foot meadows there. At JC Raulston Arboretum in Raleigh there is a wonderful example of a large foot meadow in the center of the heavily planted diverse garden filled with beautiful plants. It is there so they can use the space for large gatherings and events, but no resources are wasted, the area is not a perfect turf lawn. It is filled with white clover, crabgrass, spots of bermuda, and all manner of other weeds that can put up with the mowing. They don’t colonize the rest of the garden though because of the layers of leaf mulch that are laid in the beds that prevent them from moving in.

When I see a perfect lawn surrounding a house with minimal landscaping of a few shrubs against a foundation, candidly I cringe to think of the waste of money put into it to maintain while doing little to nothing for the Earth. The potential for nature to shine in that area and thrive has been stifled, and furth poisoned by the herbicides, fungicides, synthetic fertilizers put onto the land that inevitably runs off it into water ways as well. It is time we see lawns for the waste they are and begin cultivating nature or food based gardens in their stead, and where and when we need them for the practical aspect they serve: foot meadows.

Foot meadow in early summer

Lyre Leaf Sage, Salvia lyrata, coming up in foot meadow in March

My son Henry, laying down on our all natural and organic foot meadow