As I’ve told my neighbors, I feel bad about lowering the value of their property. I mean, it isn’t my goal to have a front yard that, by standard reckoning, is unattractive. The unkept look of my lawn is just a byproduct of a conclusion I reached a few years ago: the war on weeds, though not unwinnable, isn’t winnable at a morally acceptable cost. I hope you’ll agree with me. As the spring lawn-care season unfolds, I’d like to enlist you in the war on the war on weeds. I want you to aspire to make your yard look like my yard, which looks like the photo. I know the idea takes some getting used to. But once you set your sights on this goal, reaching it is easy. All you have to do is nothing; Nature takes over from there.
When I first bought a house, back in 1993, I was under the naïve impression that the Wimbledonlike lawns in my neighborhood were more or less natural. At most, I figured, I’d have to pull the occasional weed and sometimes toss grass seed onto a barren patch before a spring rain. I soon learned that the carpets of green in suburbia are the product of assiduously applied chemicals. “Pre-emergent” herbicides are laid down more than once in the spring (mixed in with the fertilizer) to sabotage the germination of crabgrass, dandelions and other undesirables. If this fails, post-emergents may be applied en masse. And as the summer wears on, local pockets of resistance can be wiped out with a spray canister of poison.
At this point you’re probably expecting to hear an indictment of herbicides; a list of damning data that ranges from human respiratory ailments to tumors in laboratory rats. Hate to disappoint you, but one reason I decided to go AWOL in the war on weeds is that I don’t have time to figure this stuff out. Sure, I’ve done enough Googling to conclude that if you deploy the standard arsenal of lawn-care chemicals, you may well pose a threat to grass-eating pets or dirt-eating toddlers or, further downstream, water drinkers in general. (Certainly some of the most common herbicide ingredients, such as glyphosate and atrazine, aren’t exactly mother’s milk.) But my anti-herbicide database consists mainly of spending a few decades on this planet. When people use chemicals, I’ve noticed, unanticipated downsides are more likely than unanticipated upsides, and the downsides often aren’t evident for a long time. I’m playing it safe.
As I’ve already suggested, my eco-friendly ethos dovetails suspiciously with my laziness. Waging a war on weeds takes more time and energy (or money, if you outsource it) than just mowing the lawn every once in awhile. (I’m not so radical as to oppose lawn mowing, though I recommend push or electric mowers over gas guzzlers.)
I certainly applaud less lazy people who craft eco-friendly carpets of green in labor-intensive ways: researching and implementing elaborate “organic” weed-suppressant strategies. And I have nothing against people who can hire a battalion of weed pullers. But for me, the practical way to have an eco-friendly lawn is to have a weedy lawn.
The problem is that this approach doesn’t leave me with a wholly clear conscience. Sure, I can tell myself that I’m helping neighborhood pets and any straying toddlers, and maybe water drinkers in general. But then there’s the aforementioned effect on local property values.
The preference for Wimbledonlike lawns is not, I submit, a law of nature.
An economist might frame my dilemma in terms of “negative externalities”: unwelcome effects that my behavior has on people other than me. Polluting the environment is a negative externality, but so is lowering the value of my neighbor’s home. How to choose between dueling externalities? In the long run, I hope, I won’t have to.
The first of the two externalities— releasing dubious chemicals into the environment— is the inevitable result of using them on your lawn; you can’t negate this negative externality without rewriting the laws of nature. But the second externality— the depressing effect on local property values— results from something that may be mutable: prevailing opinion about what makes for an attractive lawn. The preference for Wimbledonlike lawns is not, I submit, a law of nature.
I mean, sure, an expanse of green probably does appeal to the typical human’s sense of beauty. But so does a snowcapped Alpine peak, and I’m definitely not putting one of those in my front yard. The question isn’t whether carpets of green are intrinsically attractive, but whether the more natural alternative— my front yard— is intrinsically unattractive.
I think not. If it were, why would hikers pause, look out on an unruly expanse of earth, and reflect on how great it feels to escape civilization for the great outdoors? Moreover, given our species’ long history of traversing various unkept landscapes, how could natural selection have imbued us with an intense aversion to them?
So I think it’s possible, in principle, to engineer a new ethos that allows us to fight chemical negative externalities without creating aesthetic, and hence financial, ones. Maybe, some day, suburban neighborhoods will consist of lawns that look like mine, and everyone will admire them.
The first step is for you to look at your neighborhood anew. Next time you see an unblemished expanse of grass, think about the chemicals that probably got dumped in your vicinity to create it. Are you grateful for that?
And next time you see a yardful of sprouting dandelions, note that they look remarkably like things we call “flowers”. And, later, when the flowers turn into fluff balls, look closely at one of those fluff balls and ask yourself whether it’s really so unattractive. Meanwhile, absorb the fact that the lawn you’re looking at is doing nothing to harm pets, toddlers, or people in general.
Wouldn’t you like to live next to a yard like that? How much would that be worth to you?
Rico says no, that's his lawn... (He definitely needs to get a goat. But, if it was a nice, frisky miniature goat, the local fox would eat it when it was sleeping and, if it was a big enough goat to intimidate the fox, it would intimidate everyone else, too...)
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