LAWN GONE

EVERYONE LOVES THEIR YARD... EXCEPT MOTHER NATURE

- Dan Zak

Lawns.

They're part of American life.

You throw a football on them, you picnic on them, you lounge and loaf on them.

In a blog post titled "Why the anti-lawn movement bugs me a little," landscaper Dave Marciniak reminds us that "Nothing holds up to foot traffic and hard use like turfgrass. Lawns also provide visual relief, a place for the eye to rest while it digests all the botanical awesomeness around it."

Sounds great! But the chemical-fed, water-gulping lawn has a seedier side, one that's not as nature-friendly as we might hope from all that green. And even as our planet accelerates its revolt against us, we tend our lawns, one part of Earth we can control. Society falters, resources dwindle, and, still, lawns.

Lawns: burned out, blond, and dead, in the air fryer of August. Lawns: emerald green-no, alien green-and kept that way by maniacal vigilance and an elaborate system of pipes and potions, organic and otherwise, in defiance of ecology.

And for what? To have, in this chaos, dominion over something? (Lawn and order?) To drape a veil of verdancy over a world gone to seed? To feel equal or superior to Ron, across the street, whose lawn always looks like the 18th at Pebble Beach?

5 REASONS TO KICK YOUR LAWN HABIT

Every week, Americans mow and maintain an area larger than the size of Florida. And all that fussing has consequences.

1 Lawns are thirsty.

Watering a lawn for an hour uses more than 1,000 gallons of water. That adds up to 9 billion gallons a day across the country and makes turfgrass our country's single largest irrigated crop-this, while more than half of the lower 48 states were in a drought at the end of last summer.

2 Running on fumes.