Thought this was an interesting read on a law in MD that prevents HOAs from enforcing a turfgrass monoculture. HOAs are anathema to my sensibilities so I got a kick out of it.
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A win for the little folks. But they did estimate it cost them 60K to get there!
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I’ve seen that being shared around in permaculture circles today, too. I’d say it’s a wonderful development personally.
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I hate lawns. I bought my house 14 years ago and I’ve been on a mission to eliminate my lawn since. My property is about 5 acres. When I bought the house I said to myself, there is no f!@#ing way I’m going to mow 5 acres of grass every week. So far, I’ve converted about 3 acres of it to wildflower meadow, about an acre to my orchard. I’m working on the rest.
Lately, I’ve been trying to convince my neighbors to do the same.
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I’m glad I dont live in an HOA. One of my neighbors has complained (gently though) about my yard. But countless others that walk by compliment me on it.
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Perfect title!
Couldn’t help but retrieve this 1966 wording likeness. We sure were out there then!
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same here. my lawns a well diversified food forest. i kept everything growing strait rows mulched with woodchips so it looks neat. only lawn left is between the rows and as the tress and bushes mature that should get shaded more and more, needing less mowing or hopefully none at all.
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While I’m a big proponent of natural landscaping, I struggle to sympathize with someone who voluntarily signed into an HOA contract then had buyer’s remorse. I would never join an HOA for this very reason. I guess the devil is in the details. Some people’s natural landscaping method is “Jesus, take the wheel,” while others put a great deal of tone and effort to make it attractive, sustainable, and natural.
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I agree that I’d personally never buy a home with an HOA, but that’s mostly because I know it would take up way too much of my time and energy trying to destroy it and undermine it. I fully support other people who decide to expend their energy on the destruction of their HOAs.
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I actually like my lawn. But I do agree one should be able to do whatever they want.
My dogs like the lawn, and I like it between my plants. It keeps weeds down if maintained correctly. I see it as a protective barrier for my food plants. It’s amazing what one can produce on a 1/4 acre. I’m into edible landscapes and a yard looking decent. I’m more into artistic landscapes, I think the human touch is beautiful. The natural areas around here are not particularly attractive, at least to me. It looks more like a war zone. As the wild grapes choke out trees, it’s plant versus plant as to whom is going to dominate the resources. Not a pretty picture to me. I want rainbows and unicorns so I can ignore the reality of the natural killing fields of nature. Where the only thing that matters is survival of the fittest. Plants to me are a medium to express my art. Well some are! Others are tasty! 
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my wife let me do what i wanted with the lawn but asked i keep a spot of it to entertain where the firepit is. i also dont allow my plants to just take over. i keep everything in good order and not let it look like a overgrown abandoned lot. even my animal enclosures look nice. ive havent heard a complaint yet.
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They’re fighting a heroic fight.
I’ve been slowly converting my grass to microclover (I still have a kiddo young enough to use it for playing). We had a drought this summer that finally did in a stubborn bit of grass, and the clover seed had a chance.
It looks so much nicer in the winter, and without much intervention at all, it’s the same shade of green the rest of the year as the heavily-irrigated and ecosystem-destroying chemical-treated grass had been. Occasionally when it’s hot I spray some water on it with a hose, that’s it.
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Anyone have any experience and insight as to why a mown lawn may be less friendly to mice, voles, woodchucks and other forest creatures that can be destructive of fruit trees?
I have all of those problems, so I mow the lawn in the orchard.
A lawn doesn’t have to look like a putting green, but there may be technical reasons that cutting the grass could be a Good Thing ™.
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Pretty basic in my orchards… everything is supposed to have a predator. Any areas that are not mowed are homes and hiding places to creatures, bugs, insects etc.
Put up a nice brushy pile at the far far end of your orchard and let those things have a safe place…that will bring in birds of prey if you have taller trees. Mow an area between the pile and the orchard and let the predators and prey do what they do.
I started something new this year no idea if it will work or not…but i wrapped the base of the trunks in aluminum foil. Should keep critters from munching…plus i dont want to paint my trunks… plus it supresses buds that i dont want to fool with later anyways…
"If you’re planting a new tree this winter, I would absolutely use Aluminum Foil. It’s cheap, widely available, and works! "
Not my pic but close.
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One thing I learned as a child, developments with rows and rows of homes of similar appearance on equal lots placed in a grid encourages social conformity in the same way villages do. My family moved from one when I was 11 to a place in S. CA called Topanga Canyon where homes had almost all been built individually with lots of open space between because of the rugged topography of the Santa Monica mountains (foothills) where the “town” (community) is located. Suddenly I was amongst kids that didn’t all dress alike and it was cool to be a bit eccentric- utopia! There were even a couple of sisters that refused to wear shoes to school… before hippie was a word.
Unfortunately, the community only had an elementary school and after sixth grade we were bussed to a school that sat amid residential developments in the San Fernando Valley, much like what my family had left behind in Scottsdale Ariz. It was like being inserted into a different tribe, one I was never really suited for.
Maybe this article offers hope that things have changed in America, and there is a place in these kinds of neighborhoods for cultural diversity, including landscape diversity.
Thanks for the link- I had missed the article.
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I had assumed that was what the title was taken from the moment I read it. Maybe that is just a boomer’s presumption.
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Evocative poem by a botanist I wished I had learned about in school
On Improving the Property
by May Theilgaard Watts (1893-1975)
They laid the trilliums low,
And where drifted anemones and wild sweet phlox
Were wont to follow April’s hepaticas —
They planted grass.
There was a corner
That held a tangled copse of hawthorne
And young wild crabs,
Bridal in May above yellow violets,
Purple-twigged in November.
They needed that place for Lombardy poplars
— And grass.
Last June the elderberry was fragrant here.
And in October the viburnum poured its wine
Beneath the moon-yellow wisps of the witch-hazel blossoms.
They piled them in the alley
And made a burnt offering
— To grass.
There was a slope
That a wild grapevine had captured long ago.
At its brink a colony of mandrakes
Held green umbrellas close,
Like a crowd along the path of a parade.
This job almost baffled them,
Showers washed off the seed
And made gullies in the naked clay.
They gritted their teeth,
And planted grass.
At the base of the slope there was a hollow,
So lush with hundreds of years of fallen leaves,
That maiden-hair swirled above the trout-lilies,
And even a few blood-roots
Lifted frosty blossoms there.
Clay from the ravaged slope
Washed down and filled the hollow
With a yellow hump.
They noticed the hump
And planted grass.
There was a linden
That the bees loved.
A smug catalpa has taken its place,
But the wood ashes were used
To fertilize the grass.
People pass by
And say, “Just look at that grass —
Not a weed in it!
It’s like velvet!”
One could say as much
For any other grave.
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Thanks for sharing.
I have a few friends who share photos of the “beautiful lines” they carve with their lawnmowers. It just makes me sad to think about what could be growing in the acres they pointlessly mow, sad to think about the amount of time they waste mowing, and sad to think about the pointless waste of resources and money spent.
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Three in a row giving the reasons why we still have some grass at our place. I’m slowly still chipping away at the remaining fringe areas 
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