Dig up your lawn. Go on, I dare you. Grab a spade and start slicing into that turf. Cut out great big chunks, turn the sods over and beat them to bits with a garden fork. Then, when the thing is finally eviscerated, thrust the implement of its destruction skywords and proudly cry: “Freedom!”
Many of you are now feeling quite uncomfortable because we’re so brainwashed that even the suggestion of damaging turf creates a sub-skin disturbance in us. I might as well suggest juggling kittens or taking a bet on the outcome of a toddler fight. Destroying a lawn is such a taboo that breaking it might just generate a thrill akin to streaking, because the pressure to maintain an al fresco rug manicured to the consistency of snooker beize has been drummed into us for generations.
I know people who spent a lifetime obsessed with their lawns, devoting hours each week to raking, spiking, watering and fertilising them and finding new ways to stop people walking on them and hounds defiling them.
Our parents start us off as children with that “don’t ruin the grass” thing — and soon that becomes “don’t forget to mow the grass.” Even the movies drill it into us. Witness Clint Eastwood’s gnarly pensioner in Gran Torino pointedly thrusting a cranky push mower across his tabletop-sized square of grass — just to show the new neighbours that he’s got standards. Call it lawn order.
There are “Keep Off the Grass” signs everywhere. And was it the General’s digging up of the gardai’s pristine golf green that finally fired them up to snuff out his career of crime? We shrugged when he nailed people to floors but we were shocked when he sliced up a putting green.
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I’ve just destroyed the ridiculously small patch in my back garden. The front survives for now only because it’s reverted to moss and nothing else will grow there. But gravel is planned.
Here are eight good reasons why you too should cut out the grass:
1 A lawn equals a lifetime of servitude. You’ll spend up to two months of your life mowing it. That’s more than the 21 minutes per week you’ll spend having sex (according to Paul Bloom, author of How Pleasure Works).
2 Lawns ruin the environment. Completely dispelling the notion that urban green spaces help to counteract greenhouse gas emissions, American research published last year demonstrated that total carbon emissions would be far lower if lawns did not exist.
The study, by University of California, Irvine, showed that nitrous oxide emissions from lawns were comparable to those from farms, which are among the largest global emitters. Nitrous oxide is a greenhouse gas that is 300% more damaging than carbon dioxide.
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Another American study showed that a petrol lawnmower using a two-stroke engine releases more carbon emissions in an hour than a new car running for 340 miles. In the USA the Environmental Protection Agency estimated that Americans use 800m gallons of petrol per year mowing their lawns. The klutzes also spill another 17m gallons per year filling up their mowers — more than the Exxon Valdez spilled off Alaska.
Lawns also require a constant diet of artifical fertilisers, and toxic chemicals to keep the weeds down.
3 Lawns waste a whole lot of water. In the middle of a drought when we need to conserve water most, what’s that sound in the middle of the night? It’s your neighbour watering his lawn. Water shortages are brought on by millions of people hosing down their lawns.
4 Lawns cost you cash. Keeping that grass costs you about €125 per year if you have small urban lawns front and back. That’s a new €200 lawnmower every four years. Plus €25 apiece per year for weedkiller, fertiliser and then petrol to run the mower. That’s not including the massive metered water charge you’ll receive once such charges begin.
5 Lawns create refuse problems. Bags of grass cuttings clog up your composter with slabs of slimy gunk that refuse to break down. So unless you can balance it out in the composter with woody waste, you’ve got to dump it somewhere in the garden, causing a slimy mess. Otherwise it goes in your bin, which you pay to have taken away.
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6 Lawns are of no use to nature. Plants (grasses) that are never allowed to flower by virtue of being cropped weekly and having all other plants removed are no use for birds or bees and actually make life more difficult for them.
7 You can make better use of the space. Perhaps most beneficially of all, you can use the space for vegetable patches or raised beds to grow healthy food for your table. In a small garden, the time you put into getting your mower out of the garage, setting it up, cutting your grass and distributing the cuttings could be spent tending a few patches of carrots, spuds and salads for your table.
8 We’ve enough green in Ireland. Football pitches and parkland are already everywhere in a land where it rains all the time, so we’ve enough grass around the place without fencing off some more and obsessing over it.
In truth, once they’re over four your children won’t use the garden to play in. And even for the littlies, gravel is quite safe. So get out there and rip it up. Save money, save the earth, save your valuable time and go kill a lawn today.
Plot 34: Blood, Sweat and Allotmenteers is published by Brandon Books