[culi]

In the 1930s American lawn care guides would tout volunteer herbs as a benefit of lawns. Today we call them "weeds" and spend a crazy amount of effort, money, and chemicals into eradicating them

If we had always had this attitude towards "weeds", we wouldn't have turned the weedy Brassica oleracea into cabbage, broccoli, kale, collard greens, etc.

[jdblair]

In the 90s my dad turned into an organic lawn grower. He was always suspicious of Chemlawn but he used the standard recommended treatment of granulated fertilizer and herbicides. Then he had a revelation about root and soil health, and phosphorus pollution, and he never looked back. The result isn’t the “golf course” monoculture of his neighbors, but its good.

[red-iron-pine]

lawns are a disaster from an environmental, cultural, and water-use sense.