Você está na página 1de 2

Lawns Spawn Fawn Pawns: Next Summer’s Solution to Mowing?

Over all the weekends since springtime, 58 million humans have poured 270 billion gallons of water onto 23
million acres of ground, burning 800 million gallons of gas in the process. For many, the outcome of this cease-
less undertaking is a serious matter of personal esteem and identity.

What could possibly warrant such unnatural human toil and natural resource cost? Keeping our precious lawns
manicured and well fed week after week all season long, that’s what. Lawns are a recent historical obsession
whose future is far from certain.

LAWN GRASS is the most widely planted agricultural crop in this country. And return for investment, it is
among the most environmentally costly; the benefits of a perfect lawn are far more about satisfying our ac-
quired cultural tastes than about tangible returns.

For many reasons, how we manage the landscapes near us in the future--like so many other outdated fifty-year
habit patterns--will need to take into account the increasing costs of doing it the way we’ve always done it in the
past.

The solution in a nutshell: we’ll hope to increase the benefits from our municipal and residential landscapes and/
or reduce the environmental costs of maintaining them.

As with most change http://www.worldchanging.com/cityfarm.jpg,


lawn care abatement will be motivated first by the dollars and cents
wisdom of the choice. Some cities are already projecting up to a 90%
reduction in dollar cost per acre for municipal maintenance by re-
placing lawn-type grasses in parks and other public places with more
naturalized plantings or tall grass zones that are drought resistant and
otherwise self-sustaining.

The fact has not been ignored even in urban settings that much of the
land now in grass or otherwise unproductive could be growing a much
richer diversity of more useful edibles. City garden allotments are ap-
pearing from what was once aba http://www.worldchanging.com/city-
farm.jpg ndoned parking lots or empty rectangles of weeds.

Mulched boxwoods and hostas in suburban foundation plantings are


giving way to rambling squash, herb gardens or colorful, bee-beneficial
mixed wildflowers.

Even so, we will continue to need some open spaces that let in the light, keep the trees and their droppings at
arms-length from our roofs, and give us grazing places for children and other small semi-domestic beasts. So
while mowing is not going away overnight, there are alternatives even now.

Some bad news: our mower’s two-cycle engines deserve a disproportionate blame for air pollution and CO2
production, accounting for up to 10% of urban smog. Your gas mower pumps out as much pollution per hour as
11 automobiles. By 2011, EPA will require a 35% reduction in pollution from new lawn and garden equipment.
Of course you may chose to use an electric mower, at present costing about $5 a year to operate compared to far
higher costs for gasoline power. However, all is not sunshine and roses with an e-mower. True, gasoline-pow-
ered mowers in use result in as much as 1,500 times more carbon monoxide, 31 times more hydrocarbons and
nitrogen oxides and 18 times more carbon dioxide than the electric varieties.

But until we replace lead in mower batteries and eliminate coal for electricity, corded or cordless electric mow-
ers, all things considered and cradle to grave, are not much of an improvement for pollution compared to gas
power mowers. Wind or solar sources for electrical powered mowers may someday change that, and Saturday
mornings in town will be much cleaner and quieter then.

So let’s get to where the rubber meets the road: how can this change the way we do lawn care in Floyd County?
I’m glad you asked that, for I have a dream.

Let the county hire a “deer whisperer.” He or she will reprogram the behavior for a few dozen resident bucks
and does so that they prefer and only eat lawn grasses. BUT--they will become violently ill at the sight of gar-
den veggies, bedding plants or anything other than low-growing grasses within 100 yards of our homes.

Untrained woodland deer will pattern their behavior after their well-educated deer-peers, and then, if we can
only lure them close to where we live (?!) our lawns will become simultaneously pruned and fertilized, using
the resources we have in such awful abundance about us--Floyd Co’s four letter word with hooves--that will
work to our individual and collective good. You’re very welcome.

Você também pode gostar