I personnally think that the lawns people create when they get rid of the cookie cutter grass look so much better. I don't know why we all think a square section of monochromatic 1/2 in high grass is so great.

N.

http://badhuman.wordpress.com

Cool, now I have all this inspiration. :) I've been really wanting to do this! (now all I need is the house)

When we bought our house we ripped out the front lawn and planted succulents and low water plants. The hummingbirds come for the kangaroo paws and a couple of wonderfully vocal frogs have taken up residence. (Who knew there was so much wildlife in the SF Bay Area?) We rarely water, there's almost *no* maintenance, and it looks really great year round. At least half of it came from clippings from other people's succulents, so it can be cheap too!

We ripped out our back lawn the summer after we bought our house. It was a small lawn, but it was such a pain to water and it was expensive. We've replaced it with gravel and three big planters boxes for growing vegetables. Even with the planters boxes full, it's about 1/4 the cost of what it would have been to water the lawn and we get lots of fresh veggies.

When I bought my house (Arizona), I dug up the invasive bermuda grass, enlarged the tree wells, and planted veggies and flowers beneath them. The trees get water, the plants get filtered sun, and the yard is abuzz with bees, butterflies (well, almost here) and hummingbirds. Worth the backgreaking digging!

Last summer in Georgia, we withstood the worst drought in over a century and finally decided to rip up our grass. Sans tiller, we shoveled our way to a drought tolerant shangri-la of jasmine, succulent and herb gardens, after which we received several friendly comments and very generous, unsolicited offers on our house. Apparently, even Georgians can make money on a non-lawn.

When I was a kid, my dad ran over part of his foot with a lawnmower. He still has a huge ugly scar on his big toe and a weird looking toenail that grew back in.

Of course, accidents like this are very rare and most lawnmowers have more safety features these days but you can still add it to your reasons not to have a lawn.

Chemical fertilizers and herbicides used to achieve lush green lawns destroy aquatic wildlife habitat, pollute groundwater, and have been linked to non-Hodgkins lymphoma in humans.

In the city where I live, pesticides and other chemical fertilizers have been banned. After a few years, you can see the changes clearly - more "weeds" or variety of plants. More variety of birds and insects too. I'm definitely in support of the ban on pesticides and the like - thousands of people (not to mention animals!) die from poisoning each year. With the ban in place, you don't have to worry about sitting in the park or whether you should wash your dog's feet after a walk. It's easier to just enjoy being outdoors.

Some people hire companies to hand-weed their lawns to maintain appearances (or do the upkeep themselves if they can), others switch to alternatives (native woodland plants mostly), or just let the lawn go wild and mow it down periodically.

Things look green and lush in the spring, but when the heat of summer comes, it's evident who is conserving water and who is wasting it on their patch of grass in the front. The water issue is less of an immediate concern for people here (being on the great lakes) but a lack of fresh drinking water is a global concern and I consider it immoral to use drinking water to keep a lawn green. If you're using rain barrels and/or grey water, fine, but most people in the city use a hose and waste litres and litres every week.

As renters, we dug up half our small front lawn and planted hardy native plants. We used free compost and mulch from the city. Now that the plants are established, they do fine with rain water. We give them a bit of help if we get a heat wave that drags on, but mostly they're self-sufficient. As for the rest of the "lawn", I seeded white clover over the grass. It's cheap, more drought resistant than grass (stays green), pulls nitrogen into the poor soil, and is an attractive low ground cover that flowers and attracts bees (yay!). It's not what I would choose if we owned, but for now it's a good compromise.

Well, that's just the whole point, isn't it, of being in a democracy? That you do what is right for your beliefs and are only told what to do when you violate social norms. If I believe in a lawn, and the city has not outlawed lawns, then I can have a lawn. If I believe it is immoral to use water for anything else than sustenance, then I have the right not to use it to water a lawn. It seems to me that telling my neighbor not to use water to grow a lawn does violate another social norm.

I can see both sides to comments posted here. Sure, if you love your lawn, I wouldn't be so zealous to suggest you have no right to have it..
I also think it is no bad thing to promote water saving alternatives, in ways that look attractive, and to put forward some ideas that people who are used to one sort of garden might not have thought about before.

One hundred square feet of green grass roughly equals one ton of air-conditioning. Gravel, rocks, and cactus may save money on maintenance, and conserve water (and I am a huge fan of xeriscaping) but if you want as much natural cooling as possible for your house, nothing beats grass to absorb heat and pull it away from your house. A careful landscaper will balance both.