Confronting addictions: sprinklers
Growing up in Louisiana and North Carolina, I took for granted the fact that in some parts of the country, lush lawns grow without much effort—mowing, and perhaps a little fertilizer, but that’s about all it takes. Here in Fresno, on the other hand, nothing grows unless it’s in the spray path of a sprinkler or along in the runoff of a drip line.
Kim and I have learned that starting a lawn from the dirt up takes quite a bit of work, which is why our back yard is still spotted (at it’s best). We hired someone initially to install the sprinklers, grade and seed the soil. Just over a year later, we water two to three times a day (depending on the season), weed-n’-feed every month or so, and fertilize about as often (though not at the same time), but we’ve still got a lot to learn.
All of our efforts, however, are beside the point of this post.
With the social mind slowly shifting to efficient use of natural resources, I can’t help but wonder when we’ll start to confront the conformity of the American dream. You know the one: a house with a healthy, green lawn, bordered with a white picket fence. Can you see it?
Now, try picturing the scene without grass. Imagine, instead, that the lawn is a rock garden. Is the dream still desirable? I’m guessing not (unless you’re so socially conscious that this post comes years after your own thoughts on the subject). So why do we covet manicured grass?
I don’t have an answer, but my hope for the coming years is that there will be an upsurge in business for landscape architects who specialize in region-specific, sustainable designs. I don’t know what all that will encompasse, but surely we can learn to think beyond the maintenance and natural resource needs of grass. Right?
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“So why do we covert manicured grass?”
If you were a kid, would you rather play outside on relatively soft grass or a “rock garden”?
Fair enough.
So, as a kid growing up here, how much time do/have you spent playing outside in the grass? And how much of that is based on your cultural background (as in, could you have been “trained” as a child to spend that time at an area park)?
Not a lot recently, but about from the age of four to eight I did.
I probably could have been raised like that. At our house in Washington, the neighborhood had a few acres of grass in the middle so we spent most of our time there. There was no reason to stay on the grass in the front yard when that pseudo-park was there. In that environment, rock gardens or other non-lawn yard alternatives would have sufficed.
But I would be happy to have a rock garden now and not have to deal with our ever-breaking sprinkler system. I don’t think a rock garden would require much maintenance, if any.