[cmrdporcupine]

Unless you live in an arid area... if it's not grass ... something else is growing there. Something usually far more labour-intensive to maintain.

If humans displace natural grazing animals, something has to replace them. A lawnmower.

I live on 6 acres. Half of it I leave wooded. I have a small hobby vineyard. And the house and garage. The rest, well, it has to be mowed. Because I don't have sheep or goats to do it for me.

Even when I lived in Toronto on a 25'x100' property, I had to mow almost weekly to keep weeds down.

Yes, the lawn thing is a bit silly. But people who act like a native plant or whatever garden or landscaping is less labour intensive are fooling themselves. I've tried both. Around here, it'll fill with burrs and dandelions and pigweed and ticks and whatever in no time at all.

[thedougd]

Similar situation for me. The garden and natural areas of my yard take a lot of work to maintain. Much more than my lawn.

Invasive species can be a nightmare on their own but even the native ones can become impenetrable if you let it go too long.

Even if you have nice forest around your house you’ll pay for it with wood rot, termites, moss and mildew, and gutter cleanings. I loved living with trees over the house but ultimately decided I’d rather live with a bit more clearing.

[jonnycomputer]

It absolutely is more labor intensive. Partly because its a regularly disturbed area without a buffer zone to protect it from new weed intrusions. I get weeds I've never seen before each year on my lawn.

It's not just grazing animals btw. It's fire. Large parts of the US Southeast, for example, used to be savanna, basically grasslands interspersed by trees. Fire is necessary to maintain that, to beat back woody growth.

[cmrdporcupine]

There's good evidence that indigenous people along the whole east all the way up from the SE to the NE were managing forests with deliberate fire, too. For the purpose of maize agriculture, but also by keeping underbrush at bay they encouraged open grazing areas for the deer they hunted.

Also long before that, there were now-extinct species like mastodon that cleared forest floor, etc.

Anyways, all that is side-ramble. The reality is that in humid temperate areas the things you replace a lawn with end up being just as much or more work.

Nature is not the self-maintaining self-balancing paradise that it is often sold as. It is a world of constant intense competition (Say this in a Werner Herzog tone). If you leave ground bare, and there's water, something will grow there. That's fine in the woods. In the city, it's usually something you don't want that takes root.