[goda90]

> Your lawn is trying to tell you something.

It's saying "I'm an unnatural, non-native monoculture that does little to support biodiversity but will gladly suck up your time and money."

Sorry to speak negatively of the thing you're working on Andrew, but the subject matter is one I feel strongly about. Having a short cut lawn area has many recreational uses, but most people don't do anything except maintain most of their lawn. On top of that, many people become focused on a particular aesthetic that usually requires non-native grasses and harmful pesticides. In some places, scarse water supplies are used just to maintain a certain color.

I encourage everyone to look into replacing grass lawns with native plant landscapes, and where you do want it short cut, look into a mix of plants like clover that require far less work to keep alive than most grass monocultures.

[Carrok]

I agree, broadly, with your statement. I am removing my entire front yard to xeriscape. I compost and am otherwise environmentally active and conscious.

That said, plenty of people _do_ actually use their lawns, especially those of us with children. My actual grass lawn is surrounded by native and low water use plants, but my small patch of green (around 2k sqft), will stay green until my kids move out.

I think it's much more useful to target the endless industrial and commercial parks that have far more grass than a normal size neighborhood. Let people have some joy in their lives.

[goda90]

I don't disagree at all. I have a fairly large area I keep cut short for playing with my dog and having campfires. But I'm converting my front yard to native fruit bushes and flowers. And the parts I do cut short(either for recreation or just for code compliance until I get the time to convert it) never get sprayed or fertilized besides from the natural falling of leaves and the clover fixing nitrogen. It's a mix of various grasses, clover, creeping charlie, wood violets, dandelions and other plants that all survive a few mowings per month. I do manually pull out things like thistle since I like to walk barefoot sometimes, and aggressive invasives like garlic mustard.

[andrewbr]

I appreciate the sentiment, perhaps it would be wise to include some lawn alternatives or eco-friendly lawn techniques, or even drought tolerant landscaping. Though my site is not likely to change peoples' behavior around traditional lawns, perhaps we can eliminate needless application of pesticides and fertilizers by focusing on the right applications at the right time, rather than via guesswork. I also appreciate the irony of a lawn site using AI which itself uses a lot of water. Seriously though, this is helpful in that I can also be considering ways of encouraging users to seek alternatives. Maybe they don't even want the pressure of trying to keep a short cut, green lawn.

[1shooner]

If you were able to translate chronic problems like drainage/poor soil/etc into broader alternatives like landscaping or LA/engineering, that could increase your market on the service provider side.

[andrewbr]

Great insight. Never would have thought of it. Thank you

[customguy]

> Maybe they don't even want the pressure of trying to keep a short cut, green lawn.

I think offering a range of options and leaving it up to people could go a long way. Especially since people could just try out all options to see what it would involved, how they might imagine (and like) the results, before committing to anything.

As in, here's the lawn, I want it to a.) keep it trim and green, b.) keep it decent looking and still human friendly, but also make it low maintenance and better for biodiversity c.) turn it into a jungle of flowers.

[yboris]

I have gone full "pocket forest" / Miyawaki Forest - planted 100 trees in my tiny back yard.

Technique developed by the Japanese botanist Akira Miyawaki: planting seedlings close together makes them compete for sunlight, thus growing tall quickly. Get a forest in under a decade!

https://www.creatingtomorrowsforests.co.uk/blog/the-miyawaki...

[Defenestresque]

Huh! Seems quite obvious in retrospect, but the forced competition for limited resources that encourages growth, while fairly dystopian* if applied to humans, is an interesting idea in terms of forests, as long as you don't believe trees can experience qualia such as grief, a fear of death, unhappiness, etc.

[0] I was thinking of this kind of human dystopia: "overpopulation could never be a problem: if people run out of food they'll either invent a better alternative to farms or simply arrange themselves in groups where people who can achieve the highest metric that the head/quorum of their society wants the fastest will be fed and the new growth that can't be supported and can't reach that level will simply "select themselves put of existence", increasing our evolution by >10x"

P.S. ..that being said, if a confirmed traveller from the future tells me that in 100 years we discover that trees have feelings (just like we discovered that plants communicate about threats and exhibit behaviour that is definitely anthropomorphized by a tiny, but loud portion of people as selflessness), I would not be at all surprised. I mean I would be surprised, but about as surprised as I was when I learned that a captive octopus that lived in a tank kept shorting out the electrical system in his room at night. No one had any idea wtf was happening until they put cameras and found out that when it wanted to go to sleep at night, it would turn off the lights by spraying salt water into electrical outlets until the breakers tripped so he could get some nice dark sleep.

It seems to be a trait from the time we became _the_ apex predator that we are way too overconfident about our understanding of our environment, especially the other creatures that share this rock with us. Are we the baddies?

I'd add more but this already went on a huge tangent. Thanks for the link.

[kuerbel]

>Are we the baddies?

As a like minded person wrt the environment I'd like to ask what makes you think that this should be a question (I know the skit)?

[jdswain]

I tried clover. Eventually it just got replaced more and more with grass, now there's not much there. It was meant to be more drought tolerant than grass, but it didn't work out that way. I probably need to do more research.

[pryelluw]

I did look into it but neither the state, the county, the city, nor the HOA allow for that to happen. It’s gotta be Bermuda and it’s gotta be green.

[valleyer]

What (U.S., I assume) state do you live in that has a state law requiring green grass? I've never heard of that.

[pryelluw]

Georgia, but doesn’t require green, just doesn’t allow for wild grass to grow. The HOA can set any kind of rule it wants grass wise. Please prove wrong!

[andrewbr]

While in some ways I am against HOAs, I've also lived in neighborhoods without them and inevitably someone always ends up with a rusted out old Buick covered in a tattered blue tarp in their front yard for 400 years

[amanaplanacanal]

One of a whole list of reasons I would never buy into an HOA.

I do realize that in some localities you don't have a lot of choice, though.

[jna_sh]

Kill your lawn!

[swingboy]

*Advice only applies to neighborhoods without an HOA.