gemini://ur.gs/blog/gardening/

Today in Geminispace, Lasse writes about the social pressure around lawns. For me, this coincided with an Observer article around the same topic. It reminded me that I wanted to write up my recent gardening exploits, but I can talk about lawns and weeds a little bit while doing that.

My own experience of lawns is one of unremitting frustration; up in Shetland, and at the house before that in Yorkshire, the gardens were unreasonably large - and almost all lawn. The amount of work required to maintain them was enough that I just... didn't. I'd go out a few times a year, at most, to cut, and each time it would be hellish enough to put me off doing it again for a long time.

Eventually, I got a robot lawn-mower - it worked very well, giving me 450m² or so of manicured lawn all year round. Shame about the weather, though - even when it got cut with no effort on my part, I still found myself not using it. I was much more focused on a few vegetable plots I'd managed to eke out at the margins. Reducing the lawn area somehow just never occurred to me.

The new house has a much smaller garden - no front at all, and "only" about 40% of the back is given over to lawn. The rest is decking, patio, pebbles, and what was formerly a shed but is now a raised bed.

The original plan was to keep the shed, but it was rotten throughout the roof, back wall, and floor. It was also being eaten away by mushrooms and wasps. "Not a problem", I thought. "I'll just put another shed where it sits".

"Oo-er", I thought. "No wonder the floor rotted. I suppose I can dig out the hole, lay fresh flagstones, then go back to plan A". About an hour of digging later, I realised that wasn't going to cut it either - the soil was very heavy clay. Not just, soil high in clay, but pure clay, pottery-grade clay. It even had that shiny grey look to it. It stuck to the shovel, was a bugger to move, and would have been a nightmare to dispose of.

Fine, fine, no flagstones, no shed. Let's just put a raised bed there. I ended up with a 2.6M x 1.5M bed made out of "WoodBlocX", a proprietary system that's a few standard sizes of pinewood "sleepers", held together with plastic dowels. Filled with reasonable soil, and a bunch of strawberry plants later, the hole is hidden and I get a sweet treat every time I visit the garden. Bliss.

Anyway, in this new place, keeping the lawn "nice" now takes ten minutes a week, tops, even without the robot. However, of all the areas in the garden, I only rate the pebbles lower in terms of enjoyment, so I'm thinking about ripping it up anyway.

(The new plan for a shed - or maybe greenhouse - is to plonk it where the pebbles are currently. I like to be barefoot in the garden, which doesn't mix at all well with flint).

When I'm out in the garden, I want one or both of two things: leisure, and food production. A lawn is alright for some kinds of leisure, but I'm not out there playing tennis, and the decking is much better for siting on than the lawn. In its classic form a lawn is, of course, completely bare of food.

(There are "meadow"-style turfs these days, which can have some tasty things mixed in. We did a lot of foraging when I was a kid and it's amazing what edible plants can nestle into your average patch of natural grassland - dandelions are tasty, of course, but sorrel and yarrow spring to mind immediately.)

Turning the whole thing into more raised beds would give me room to grow more food. I have a couple of fruit trees as well as the strawberries, and I've started a little planter of salad leaves, but in Shetland I managed to do a few amazing crops of beans and brassicas, and I miss that. I've put my name in for an allotment, but could be waiting years.

I've scattered a few old friends around the place, too - it makes for a much more engaging space when you're out reading.

The one thing the lawn *is* good for, is as a toilet for the dog. Somehow, though, that use decreases its appeal even further. Still, it may be a reason to keep (some of) it.

One of the houses we looked at in late 2020 had a very interesting "restrictive covenant" in the deeds. You were placed under a duty to keep your front garden neat and tidy, including mowing the lawn - and if you didn't, the "property management company" were authorised to do it and bill you for the privilege. It's not the only reason we decided not to go for that house in the end - the whole estate was set up in a neo-feudal sort of way - but it was certainly part of it. In the US, I believe "homeowners associations" are the equivalent structure.

Even this house comes with a covenant that forbids keeping "non-traditional" pets. It's pretty clearly aimed at preventing people from keeping chickens in their back gardens, but I have wondered how it would apply to a rabbit or guinea pig farm...

Sometimes landlords impose requirements in the tenancy agreements, too, explicitly or implicitly. The first house I rented in York was in a lovely area, and came with a nice hedge out front. We "failed" the landlord inspection after a couple of years because we didn't cut the hedge, bless their cotton socks. We didn't have the kit and ended up hiring someone who did to come out and give it a trim, to keep them happy. Surprisingly cheap, but it still rankled.

Outside of structures like this, "the west's" fetishisation of private property means neighbours are generally confined to making unpleasant noises. There are a few exceptions - invasive plants like japanese knotweed, say - but common or (ahahaha) garden-variety weeds are generally fine to grow, intentionally or not.

Back up in Shetland, there was one long, narrow spit of land the robot couldn't get to - and it ran along the length of the adjoining neighbour's garden. Fortunately (or perhaps, unfortunately), she was much less bothered about the state of gardens than I was. Lots of rose bushes from "her side" put out runners that completely took over this spit and turned it into a thicket. When I eventually got around to cutting it all down, it made a pile like this:

Questions? Comments? Criticisms? Contact the author by email: gemini@ur.gs

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