In all seriousness, why do we plant grass instead of mint or other useful plants (details)?

Grass is very tough. You can run and play on it and even park cars on it.

However, when I was a suburban dweller, I often thought a cash crop like tobacco or soybeans would be a much better use for all my time, sweat and money.

You would have countless thieves (also known as neighbours) stibitzing your mint, then you have to replant all the time. Nobody steals grass (the non-pot kind)

I know what you mean @MyNewtBoobs.

It seems people place so much importance on having a “nice lawn”, like my neighbours, spending countless hours watering their grass every summer, cutting it when it really doesn’t have to be cut, fertilizing it, etc., and panicking at the very first sight of a dandelion! Lol.

Yet come autumn, all the lawns in our neighbourhood turn an ugly straw yellowish brown, and snow blankets the dead grass until May, then the crazy obsession starts all over again! Sheesh!

I hardly do much with my grass, aside from mowing it, and it still looks as good as the Jones’. What a waste of time and energy they make over their lawns every year!

I should do what my brother did to his lawn——convert it into a beautiful rock garden with hardy wildflowers and falling water. That is certainly more beautiful than an ordinary boring lawn.

I always said grass is like another weed——it’s tough to get rid of and grows rampant even if you left it all alone!

I like the mint idea. And mint repels most bugs too.

There are many people now who are planting ground cover and using decorative gravel, rocks and the odd small gnarled bush in stead of a lawn.

MInt will proliferate rapidly enough to afford your entire community a root cutting and some stem cuttings.

Partly a historic show of affluence, partly our culture’s obsession with monocrops (and ultimately, monocultures and death). It’s also really bad for the soil, which requires polycultures of grass and other plants like dandelions, plantain, clover, etc.

When I get home, I can find some great videos to post. Until then, check out Food Not Lawns.

@jaytkay Not around here. We have a desert, and have to baby it even in May and June.

@incendiary_dan Damn monocrops. I’ve recently discovered that while gardening is hard, it’s not actually as hard as my mother makes it look, because she is basically the Queen of making everything as hard as possible – planting things that don’t grow well here, using only chemicals to help them grow (or not), never ever using any kind of ground cover even though she has a full acre of land, etc. It’s actually a bit of a relief to know that if I just sit back for 15 minutes, things might actually grow on their own.

@gailcalled I want to see some pics of this! It sounds magical. My relationship with ground cover is like the one a seven year old has with Pop Rocks.

@MyNewtBoobs: If it ever stops raining, I will take some pix of my glorious spring shade garden, which is primarily ground cover.

Brunnera, pink lilies-of-the-valley, Jacob’s ladder, two species of bleeding heart, yellow and magenta violets, myrtle, annual forget-me-knot, wild columbine, blood root (past its bloom now), Virginia harebell, sweet woodruff, comfrey, ajuga, wild buttercups, and dandelions.

@gailcalled Be still, my beating heart.

I believe, but am not entirely certain, that the idea of lawns began, I don’t know when or where, as a status symbol that indicated that you were wealthy enough to have land that you could afford not to cultivate, that you didn’t need your land, or at least all of it to grow something useful to produce income, hence the lawn, a purely decorative use of arable land that passed into the general culture. I I took a trip to France, a long time ago, and I think I remember noticing that in the “suburbs”, in a lot of places, people used their yards, both front and back, to grow vegetables. In the U.S. in most places that would probably be some kind of violation of some code or a violation of your deed restrictions. I thought it was a great thing.

Why bother, why grow something that takes so much work and produces nothing? Why have all that energy and effort and in some cases, not mine though, all those pesticides and fertilizers let loose into the environment in order to get an entirely useless crop like grass to thrive, weed and pest free, only to have to mow it, to cut it down because it is thriving? It’s wasteful, polluting and pointless, IHMO. I live in the burbs so I keep my lawn, a nice mix of actual grass and a variety of common weeds mowed but that’s it. And when I see people watering their lawns during periods of dryness (during true droughts they can’t) and think are you people crazy? Watering your lawn just encourages it to grow and then you have to mow it. Me? I’m grateful for the dry because if it gets dry enough the grass will go dormant and stop growing and I don’t have to mow it leaving me more time for things that actually matter.

When I had to have my front lawn dug up to have my sewer line replaced, I replaced the grass with rocks, roses, bushes and perennials. It’s a work in progress but I love it when everything is flowering. I never saw the point in grass on our front lawns- no one lives there.

I had friends who built a house and decided to go with wild natural grasses for their lawn. They seeded the area and were surprised when all weeds came up: wild oats and their relations. I think we use grass because you can mow it and it’s relatively soft to the touch. Image wild oats stubble instead of a lawn. On the other hand, I’ve seen vegetables planted in spaces that were usually used for lawn. If you want to play croquet or little kids games like ring-a-round-the rosy, lawn grass is what you want. If you want ground cover that isn’t grass, check the height of the plants. You may find yourself knee-deep in mint or other herbs.

@Sunny2 Isn’t ring-around-the-rosy where you just dance while holding hands in a circle and then fall down? I’m not sure what grass has to do with that one.

You can also do what Ed Begley has done for whatever area he’s not using for veggies.

They have a faux grass made from recycled plastics which is soft to the touch, comfy to sit on, looks exactly like real grass and never requires watering nor uses any pesticides.

It was in one of the episodes of his show and looked really terrific.

Also, for watering his veggies, he has installed a large plastic rain barrel underneath one of the downspouts from his roof (which he shortened to accomodate the height of the barrel).

Check out his website. These items may be listed there with purchasing sources.

livingwithed.net

edbegley.com

Judging by land use in my country, lawn grass is a prime strategic crop. Yet with all that land planted in bluegrass, we still import food, either from out of the country or out of the house. This always struck me as almost a crime. As soon as I’m lucky enough to live in a place where I’m allowed to plant in the dirt, that lawn is going to be useful plants, herbs and vegetables. Why don’t more people do that, I wonder? Is it just the time factor, a lack of interest, or a worry about what the neighbors will think?

Douglas Tallamy’s plea to plant native species He has also written a book on the subject. I attended a lecture given by Tallamy, and since then I look at well manicured lawns as sterile wastelands.

I used to love rolling down slopes of mown grass sprinked with daisies like stars. Green night below blue day above…blurring. There is no need to be kill-joy about lawns. They can be lovely. Especially when they snake through borders of veg and are edged with wild flower abandon. Chamomile lawns are a tough-wearing alternative to grass-grown ones and release gorgeous fragrance when crushed by running feet and footballs.

Perhaps homogenous, straight ground covers are extant status symbols from 1950’s suburbia.

All I want is a healthy, green ground cover, so whatever grows in my yard is fine with me, be it grass, dandelions, oxalis, etc.

No chemically-synthesized fertilizers or herbicides for me, thank you. That way, when I toss out some walnuts for the squirrels or bread crumbs for my avian friends, they leave in good health.

If you had a manor, dacha, chateau or large estate and the requisite staff, you needed a lawn for tea parties, croquet, lawn tennis, badminton, boules, and gamboling.

A large, clipped maze was also a nice lagniappe. It also kept the under-gardeners busy pruning and clipping.

Oh boy. I love the smell of the regular grass when I’m mowing it, I’m imagining I’d be in ecstasy cutting a field of mint or lavender!

@MyNewtBoobs Grass is softer to fall on.

@Sunny2 Actually plants like mint and bedstraw are softer to land on.

@incendiary_dan

My front lawn is multicultural, and it feels like a firm sponge.

@Brian1946 Nice.

@incendiary_dan I’m glad to know that. I never had the opportunity to try landing in either. Mint would certainly smell nicer.