this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2026
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Lawns are fine. Having lawns and nothing else is a problem. Filling your lawn with chemicals is a problem. Most people I know who have lawns don't do that. They also have rich borders and beds and planters and wild areas. I post a different pic everyday here of bugs I find in my garden; the grass and clover and soil itself is full of life. Most people need an open space to play or entertain or whatever, and a lawn - though not a wildflower meadow - beats decking or concrete.
most lawns are monoculture, water hungry and non native
the native focused setups being the few alternatives but those are not really lawns
I don't think your first statement is true. Most people I know or places I've lived in or been have a mixed, lived‑in garden where the lawn is one component of a wider ecosystem. Most don't look like the green on a golf course.
A lawn with clover, moss, daisies, micro‑wild patches, little plants I can't even name that drift in on the wind, and healthy soil full of ants and worms and beetles and spiders and things I need to photograph and identify is not a monoculture. It’s a low meadow kept short that hosts plenty of life.
Go take a look in any real garden or lawn for 10 minutes. You'll find life.
this is just based off of info i’ve read on the internet so i can’t say i’ve tested it myself but most ‘nice’ lawns i’ve seen with people i’ve actually talked with do at least weekly watering outside of normal rainfall
i know for a fact none of the lawns here are native because this area used to be a swamp
as to the mono culture all the lawns here are even, maybe two types of grass sometimes
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1618866724002589
I water my lawn once or twice a week when it's dry. Nothing crazy, just a misting for 10-15 mins. I don't think it's wasting water to help an ecosystem blossom. The vast majority of grass seed we see in the UK would be native grasses. Mine is mixed hardy horse paddock grass. Grows like wildfire, and the bugs love it.
I still think even monoculture grass lawn is a good middle ground between nothing living at all and a wildflower meadow or the like. Not everyone cares about the plants around them, but grass and soil beats concrete or bare earth.
Monoculture lawns create massive gaps for various bugs that can’t transverse those gaps to eat, hide, breed, lay eggs/reproduce, hibernate for winter - and that impacts all the other species up and down the chain, from birds to microbial life. Mono culture lawns also limit the fungal life, which limits microbial life. Both those being limited along with introducing gaps where there once were highways for life means species dwindle, and that causes other species of plants and animals to dwindle. It’s a fucking massacre of life just to be “fine”. That hardly seems reasonable and fine to me.
As I said, a monoculture lawn is better than concrete or bare earth. I'm by no means a fan. I agree with you that they're shit, but most I know simply aren't that at all. They're healthy and host a variety of life.
Edit: disregard this comment, I mistranslated lawn in to garden/backyard, i am not native english
~~Nile~~ Mr. Green sweating in the corner
They really aren't. Even without the chemicals, they're still incredibly water-hungry and require intensive irrigation in most climates. And even if you have some garden beds around the edges, the lawn itself is still mostly an ecological dead zone when it comes to biodiversity and habitat. Not to mention that it also requires a lot of work (often assisted by fossil-fuel-powered machinery) to maintain.
And all just for aesthetics? Or -- at most -- used as a dog bathroom? Lawns are still incredibly wasteful, even in the most ideal circumstances.
Do people... water lawns? Well obviously don't grow them there then. You leave a patch of ground completely alone around here and much of what ends up growing there is still various types of grass, some of which we also use in our lawn seed mixes.
And what's a natural alternative that's nice to walk on barefoot in the summer?
Strong disagree for all aforesaid reasons. I'd say we're likely talking about different types of lawns when it comes down to it. Most lawns I know are a damp green rectangle that grows whether you want it to or not. It’s not an ecological villain. It’s just grass and 'weeds'.And culturally, British gardens have always mixed lawns with borders, hedges, trees, and beds. I've no doubt perfect lawns are sterile and water hungry but that's the extreme, and most aren't that. They're a space that people use. An outside room.