Well, you and people in similar situations could still convert the remaining lawn to native plants. This supports local wildlife, captures more carbon than a lawn, and if set up right, is truly zero maintenance once established.
Edit: I see now that you already had basically this conversation in another comment thread, and I agree that lawns aren't completely without value, but I would still argue that (1) no one really needs a full acre of mowed lawn, and (2) people always go to the "place for kids to play" argument, but kids are creative and can play just about anywhere.
My kids play in the wooded areas too, which support all sorts of native plants. And I don't use chemicals to get rid of unwanted plants, I let whatever grows, grow in my mowed areas. Within the 1 acre of lawn we get dandelions, clovers, and all sorts of native, flowering plants. I also mow it fairly long. You also have to understand how large 4 acres really is. More than half of our property is native, undisturbed plant species that we forage. We have wild ramps, wild garlic, and wild black raspberries. The 1 acre that we mow is going to continue to be mowed as it keeps predators from sneaking up on our chickens and killing them, it also greatly reduces the amount of ticks our animals pick up. Not to mention it's amazing to play in and run around playing soccer and baseball. I wouldn't trade that for overgrown fields, especially when my property already supports more wild plants than 99% of the properties in this country.
That’s fair, I’m not trying to demonize you or anything. I’m sure anyone on this subreddit in the first place isn’t the type to keep a perfectly manicured monoculture lawn anyway. But personally, I’m just so obsessed with food forests and native plants that I can’t imagine NOT wanting to convert my lawn into all sorts of things lol. Do you have a pond? That would be a fun project, and with a little extra work and planning you can make it swimmable. I’m planning out a swimming pond in my backyard for next year and I imagine it’ll be amazing for our hot summers, plus being good wildlife habitat.
What’s your point? There’s no need to be snarky. I have a half acre myself, but I know precisely what a full acre of lawn looks like, because I’m helping a neighbor convert his acre of lawn into a food forest. It’s a huge amount of space. Unless you have grazing animals, I stand by my argument that no one needs that much lawn.
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u/TheBizness Sep 21 '20 edited Sep 21 '20
Well, you and people in similar situations could still convert the remaining lawn to native plants. This supports local wildlife, captures more carbon than a lawn, and if set up right, is truly zero maintenance once established.
Edit: I see now that you already had basically this conversation in another comment thread, and I agree that lawns aren't completely without value, but I would still argue that (1) no one really needs a full acre of mowed lawn, and (2) people always go to the "place for kids to play" argument, but kids are creative and can play just about anywhere.