Some people spend hours each week on lawns - o raking, spiking, watering and fertilising them and finding new ways to stop people walking on them and pets fouling them.
Our parents start us off as children with that “don’t ruin the grass” thing — and soon that becomes “don’t forget to mow the grass.”
Here are somegood reasons why you too should get rid of the lawn.
1 You’ll spend up to two months of your life mowing it.
2 Lawns can ruin the environment - an American study showed that a petrol lawnmower using a two-stroke engine releases more carbon emissions in an hour than a new car running for 340 miles. In the USA the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans use 800m gallons of petrol per year mowing their lawns.Lawns also require a constant diet of artifical fertilisers, and toxic chemicals to keep the weeds down.
3 Lawns waste a lot of water. In the middle of a drought when we need to conserve water most, what’s that sound in the middle of the night? It’s your neighbour watering his lawn. Water shortages are brought on by millions of people hosing down their lawns.
4 Lawns cost you cash. Keeping that grass costs you about €125 per year if you have small urban lawns front and back. That’s a new €200 lawnmower every four years. Plus €25 a piece per year for weedkiller, fertiliser and then petrol to run the mower. That’s not including the massive metered water charge you’ll receive once such charges begin.
5 Lawns create refuse problems. Bags of grass cuttings clog up your composter with slabs of slimy gunk that refuse to break down. So unless you can balance it out in the composter with woody waste, you’ve got to dump it somewhere in the garden, causing a slimy mess. Otherwise it goes in your bin, which you pay to have taken away.
6 Lawns are of no use to nature. Plants (grasses) that are never allowed to flower by virtue of being cropped weekly and having all other plants removed are no use for birds or bees and actually make life more difficult for them.
7 You can make better use of the space. In a small garden, the time you put into getting your mower out of the garage, setting it up, cutting your grass and distributing the cuttings could be spent tending a few patches of carrots, spuds and salads for your table.
8 We’ve enough green in Ireland. Football pitches and parkland are already everywhere in a land where it rains all the time, so we’ve enough grass around the place without fencing off some more and obsessing over it.
4 Lawns cost you cash. Keeping that grass costs you about €125 per year if you have small urban lawns front and back. That’s a new €200 lawnmower every four years. Plus €25 a piece per year for weedkiller, fertiliser and then petrol to run the mower. That’s not including the massive metered water charge you’ll receive once such charges begin.
5 Lawns create refuse problems. Bags of grass cuttings clog up your composter with slabs of slimy gunk that refuse to break down. So unless you can balance it out in the composter with woody waste, you’ve got to dump it somewhere in the garden, causing a slimy mess. Otherwise it goes in your bin, which you pay to have taken away.
6 Lawns are of no use to nature. Plants (grasses) that are never allowed to flower by virtue of being cropped weekly and having all other plants removed are no use for birds or bees and actually make life more difficult for them.
7 You can make better use of the space. In a small garden, the time you put into getting your mower out of the garage, setting it up, cutting your grass and distributing the cuttings could be spent tending a few patches of carrots, spuds and salads for your table.
8 We’ve enough green in Ireland. Football pitches and parkland are already everywhere in a land where it rains all the time, so we’ve enough grass around the place without fencing off some more and obsessing over it.
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