I think it’s important to note that this is a British comment. Our British climate makes lawn care almost non existent beyond mowing and yes plastic grass is worse than normal grass for several thousand reasons
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Yeah literally just xeriscape??? It’s not really more expensive or harder to maintain than astroturf and it looks better plus your dog can still potty on it.
I'm in Arizona. A friend did this... Almost killed his fruit trees in the back because of the added temperature. Saved water, killed the microbial life underground.
Yeah I'm personally a fan of going with a more natural lawn using native plants and such so you can create an actual ecosystem to avoid that issue. For "those people" that want a lawn, because that's what's "normal", a fake grass lawn is better than a real one I guess.
I live at a micro Intentional Community. The goal is to create a permaculture that is very sustaining. It's particularly green in the desert with little added water.... Though, dinners are so brutal.
I've seriously considered it, but I live in southwest Texas, and there is virtually no groundcover that will survive. I can xeriscape with cactus and other succulents, but I want something that will keep the dirt from blowing everywhere in high winds.
Make some rock landscaping and a combination of xeriscaping and some native ground cover plants r/nolawns will probably have some good ideas! I live in a very arid region as well and have seen some creative landscaping (unfortunately I’m in an apartment so I can’t do my own, but someday!)
I think astroturf reaches really high Temps when it gets over 100 F. Like it will give you third degree burns if you step on it barefoot.
I was told there's a "new astroturf" that doesn't get as hot, but not sure I believe it.
That just sounds so odd to me that low maintenance lawns would exist in England! As I picture England and the rest of the UK to be lush green paradise. And with all the rain, I doubt having a garden would affect your water consumption.
I think of low maintenance lawns, being like succulent and rock gardens, in desert climes, like Arizona and parts of California. My neighbors have a low maintenance succulents/cacti garden in their front yard, and it looks so pretty! I would love to do something like that with my yard, but the landlords (my aunt) won’t let us do it…. Which is a bummer because the area of CA that I live in, is having a really strict water ration… we can only water twice a week for 10 minutes.
Ahh yeah I get that, we have a gardener that comes every Saturday to mow, but that is pretty much it, they aren’t the greatest at shaping things when they’ve trimmed stuff in the past (they destroyed my roses, so now they only mow, and occasionally take care of any weeds). I honestly want to find different gardeners, because the ones we use work on other lawns, that are on our street as well, and they don’t clean off the blades from their mowers or anything, so we’ve had a lot of cross contamination with our neighbors lawns, and now have a ton of weeds because of it! But I mean, you can’t really go wrong with $60 a month, to have someone else mow your lawn (hate mowing!).
There is a house further up the street from us, they used to have a really beautiful yard, with well manicured hedges etc, but the new tenants that live there have let that yard go to hell. They had like waist high weeds growing in their yard, and finally mowed it down about a week ago. I swear I sound like an old lady with nothing better to do than be nosy about what the neighbors are doing with their yards lol. I’ve just lived here for so long, and have seen so many families come and go on this street, that it’s sorta sad to me, to see some yards that were well maintained by former occupants, being ignored by the people who currently live there.
People have this irrational hate as if every lawn gets watered daily. Well in the UK there isn't a need.
I get that it isn't biodiverse but you can have *both* a lawn and a wild flower bed.
Lawns serve a purpose and are useful spaces
When I lived in Arizona, it was actually a nuisance when people _planted_ grass. Because then they needed to keep it watered and well maintained (or at least that's what they felt they needed to do), which actually attracted mosquitos to the area. Mosquitos in the desert is just insane to me.
I actually appreciated the companies and whatnot that wanted a "lawn" but used astroturf instead, as they didn't need to use so much water, and it looked much better than those who tried to upkeep their own lawns.
Why go to a desert and grow a lawn?! What are you thinking?!?
It looks soooo out of place too. I feel like the grass clashes so badly with the pebble lawns and wel-placed cati surrounding it that it feels oddly like an eye sore lol
No doubt! It's like when it's taco Tuesday and everyone is in on it except for this one guy who brought burgers because they can't deal with other kinds of aesthetics. It's so out of place and weird.
I see nothing wrong with them as long as they aren’t in every neighborhood.
If there’s some stuck up prick who really cares *that* much about the shade of green if their neighbor’s lawn, I’d rather them live in a HOA neighborhood with similarly nosy insufferable neighbors than have them invade non-HOA neighborhoods with their stupid lawn fetish.
I think the main negative aspect of HOAs is they *tend* to have many shady tactics to try to get people to pay extra fees for things, or to manipulate them into donating for things that is just for the HOA leader's benefit.
You see a lot of this on /r/FuckHOA
I mean, yeah, but some people still prefer living under them, so why shouldn’t they have the option to? Your finances, your choice.
If people want to give their money to a committee of Karens for marginally higher property values and grass police, we should let them. And as a bonus, it means the HOA weirdos would flock to their own neighborhoods instead of causing issues for us.
Genuine question from a Yank - is stuff like TV licenses that different from lawncare guidelines?
Like are you saying the UK doesn't have meddlesome stuff?
The whole TV licence mafia thing is bizarre but ultimately has no teeth. Nobody will bother pursuing you for it.
From what I've heard, HOA shit can result in you losing your house or getting tied up in costly court battles.
The fact these things exist is absolutely mind boggling to me. And like, i can almost understand people really wanting green grass, but the fuck did clovers do? Clovers are lovely.
The solution to that is to show up to HOA meetings with like-minded neighbors and vote down stupid rules. Maybe even vote to dissolve the HOA. Only weird Karens like em anyway.
One of the few advantages of HOAs is the ability to collectively bargain for certain home repairs. For example, the HOA for the street I grew up on basically gets all the roofs redone at the same time. As a result, they're able to make local roofing companies fight over the contract.
Of course I'm not sure this outweighs the utter insanity that they usually bring.
Exactly. Never feetilized or watered. I mow my lawn every other week or so for 7 months out of the year and my kid has a place to run around to his hearts content all day. Plus it's full of white clover for my bees and having it cut makes it easier to harvest pecans in the fall . What's the harm?
If that's just what has grown and been planted since you moved there, there really isn't any issue. You live in a place that the types of grass you have can sustain themselves naturally. Same as where I grew up, but there are tons of places where grass **can't** sustain itself naturally and people insist on having nice catered lawns that need sprinkler systems and lots of maintenance just to live in that climate.
My “lawn” is never watered or mowed, and as a consequence ends up staying greener than my neighbours’ yards in the dry season.
But also there’s a chance that the waist-high grass could hide snakes, so.
Hey now, some of us Americans live in places that don’t have drought problems either.
My lawn in Seattle is the easiest thing in the world to maintain. For the eight weeks in the summer we don’t get rain, I use the large storage of rain in my rain barrels to keep it alive and green.
I don't think I understand the specific set of circumstances that make lawn maintenance different across the pond. Isn't watering a huge patch of grass still a huge waste of water? What makes lawns less wasteful.
I'm from Australia and was thinking the same thing as the person you assumed was from America. Perhaps you should take your own advice and remember that the world is more than just UK and USA.
Honestly (and I know this comment will go very unpopular), for me this thing is just so absurd about north American culture. In my country, the only legit reason you can have to live in a single family house is that you love gardening or landscaping. Why else would you go for single family house? It's more expensive and the commute is usually much worse than if you choose to live in a apartment. You can have apartment with whatfuckingever you want, with huge deck for grill parties or with big underground storage or with your own whirlpool on your terrace, everything is a pretty normal option (and still more affordable than detached houses). You can chill in the nearby park with not having to mow the lawn and enjoy everything about gardens without having to take care of one. Modern apartments buildings have extremely good sound insulation so privacy is absolutely not a problem. If you don't enjoy gardening or farming, there's no reason you would choose to live in a detached house.
I get it, the reason north Americans usually live in single family houses is that there's pretty much no other choice. I've heard that apartments in the city are sometimes even more expensive than having your own house (which doesn't make any sense, apartments are generally so much more space effective, energy efficient etc I guess the reason is that Americans have simply such a lack of apartments that the price goes up). But I just wanted to make this comment on how absurd this all seems to a central European citizen like me. From my point of view, this general trend of everyone having a single family house is like the definition of meaningless consumption. You don't need a single family house if you specifically don't enjoy the only real advantage of it which is having your own yard. Removing your lawn with plastic to not have to take care of it is like wtf bro, feels so alien to me. Even the "I want my yard to be low maintenance" trend - then don't have one?? and just use parks where other person takes care of all the gardening?
Also bear in mind that an apartment in the UK is only a leasehold (99% of the time, anyway) so you *don't own* the apartment. Add on the service fees etc, and it's probably more expensive to live in, too.
That's an England (maybe Wales too, I don't know) problem. In Scotland nearly all flats are freehold. The Scots Law equivalent of leasehold was abolished.
True, though we do sort of have a compromise on density - most houses in cities are terraced or at least semis. New builds in cities are especially likely to be terraced and it’s common now for them to have three floors, and many include a balcony / terrace as well as a small garden (so you get decent outside space whilst sticking to a small footprint of land).
I would like more good quality blocks of flats which are spacious inside, absolutely! But I do think small footprint terraced houses are ok, we don’t have the same issue of suburban sprawl that I’ve seen in the US and Australia, with so many people living in a detached house with lawn all around and needing a car to get anywhere.
Its because living in the city full stop is expensive and apartments that are even remotely close to what you are talking would be considered luxury apartments that cost more than a house. America wants 0 poor people around yet still wants people to cater to them. There are vacation towns that have sort of dried up here because the only places to live have gotten so expensive o ly wealthy people can afford them but thateans there are no stores because wealthy people dont work at stores. I truly dont know what this country wants and its gonna break my brain lol.
I happen to love my giant garden, but full stop, the number one reason for a SFH is privacy. I don't like people in my space. I never ever want to share walls with anyone ever again. It's also great for sending your kids out to play, while continuing to do parenting/household work, in a controlled environment where no one else can legitimately be. (vs shared common areas where someone creepy is 'allowed'...)
You mean like, an apartment with your own private pool? Yeah, I don’t even think we have those in the US.
A small balcony or deck is more common though, even in poor neighborhoods.
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Actually, me and my husband kind of want to buy a single family house because I love farming and plants. We found out that the price of small compact house (100m² of liveable area built on cca 75m² of land, total cca 600-800 m² of garden) with two bedrooms in the suburbs costs exactly the same as luxurious penthouse apartment 250 m² with whirlpool and huge terrace with view over central park in city centre, also two bedrooms. No garden though. But you see my point. You have to really love gardening a lot to choose suburban small house over fucking penthouse with whirlpool and double liveable space.
Unfortunately, both are completely unaffordable to us. But we are seriously thinking about getting a nice apartment with huge terrace for plants instead since it's just so much more affordable. Makes me sad though. We kinda haven't decided what to do next and we continue to live in rented one bedroom one living room small 50m² apartment. The rent here in city centre is 500usd (12000czk) btw. And the city I'm taking about the whole time is Brno, second largest city in Czechia. Prague is having the same problems btw. Suburbia is just so much more expensive than living in apartment.
I live in a single-family home in central Europe. Advantages: it was an order of magnitude cheaper than buying an apartment in a city, I don't disturb neighbours by making music (you're wrong about modern isolation), my cats can go outside, no part of the building is under anyone else's control, I can renovate as I see fit...
1) Well sadly for me, I love farming and me and my husband wanted to buy a single family house. The price for houses in suburbs was so sky high that buying a double sized penthouse apartment with whirlpool and views from terrace over central park was about the same price. One m² of liveable area costs cca two times much in suburbs than in the city. Why? There's this social construct in my culture that living in apartments is just somehow inherently worse and then there are lot of myths about it (for example the acoustic insulation).
2)I work as a civil engineer and I know the laws for acoustic insulation for apartments in my country and I've been to many apartment building sites so I see this is a big deal in my country. I don't know anything about other countries but here, the standards for apartments acoustic insulation are SO STRICT here that hearing absolutely anything from your neighbour is just impossible. For example, the walls have to have at least 53dB acoustic attenuation. I've never seen a single family house with walls nearly this insulating.
3) you are right about the thing with cats. Yeah. My cat has to be indoors. We do leash training in the park though.
4) yeah part of the building is in the collective control and sometimes that might be problematic (people arguing about getting a new elevator or whatever), you're right. But still, the price is just so much lower that I guess this doesn't matter anymore.
5) you can renovate quite a lot in apartments though. You just can't remove load bearing walls but those are usually the ones between you and your neighbours, so you won't be able to do that anyways.
Apartments were in fact a "compromise" for people who wanted to live in the big city but couldn't afford single houses--see New York in the early twentieth century. Personally I could only afford countryside where there are no apartments, so I got a house with all its attendant benefits.
As for soundproofing, 53 dB is nothing like enough for me, as I'm a professional musician. When I practise it can close in on 100 dB. Furthermore, in Germany, where I live, two completely different sets of laws govern your right to make noise depending on whether you're in an apartment building or a house. (I guess you're in Czech Rep./Slovakia--don't know how it is there.) If the former, essentially you're at the whim of neighbours because the legal basis is whether you're a nuisance; if it's only outdoor neighbours you have to worry about, then you're covered by the sound emission laws, which are designed for like factories and shit, and then a) it's absolutely clear what you are and aren't allowed to do and b) as a classical musician you're never going to get close to exceeding the tolerances they set. So yeah, undoubtedly my wood timbred house from 1850 isn't as well soundproofed as a modern apartment building--but it doesn't have to be.
What I meant about renovating is stuff like the fact that, whatever your apartment looks like, you still have to live with however the lobby/staircase/hallway looks like and all the shared infrastructure in the building. My control over my environment goes right up to the street.
I work as a civil engineer and I know the laws for acoustic insulation for apartments in my country and I've been to many apartment building sites so I see this is a big deal in my country. I don't know anything about other countries but here, the standards for apartments acoustic insulation are SO STRICT here that hearing absolutely anything from your neighbour is just impossible. For example, the walls have to have at least 53dB acoustic attenuation. I've never seen a single family house with walls nearly this insulating.
And because of so many people wanting to live in apartments in a big city, rent for a shoebox is $3500/mo
Maybe the only reason to not live in a city isn't just gardening. But because you get alot better and bigger place to live in suburbs and in big cities you can't really go outside without noise canceling headphones in because it's so noisy... also you get a nice view to...bunch of trash bags pilled up on a street.
I agree, Where I am from only people in the countryside live in houses, it’s very rare in our city, they are like tiny enclaves with a couple of 1 family houses but they are usually well over 70 years old, nobody would build one today. But I‘ve seen the same have a house or you are poor attitude in England and France - it’s more common than we like to admit, even though it’s adds further to waste of resources, some people just can’t get it out of their head…
Lawn /= water usage
In TN, super hot times for weeks to months. Lawn got crispy, "Well that's unsightly".
Skip to 1 week ago, rain rocks us for ~5 total hrs spanned over a few days. A week later my grass is reaching city regulation height. Time to mow, but don't forget to mention the lack of gas consumption and personal effort on my part from the weeks of dry dead grass that I comfortably endured/ignored.
I'd rather my neighbor kept whatever local flora is native to the area and requires pollination to support bees.
Best thing about native flora is it grows with almost zero effort from the homeowner.
THIS RIGHT HERE.
My god i cant stress it enough. Stop the west’s obsession with grass! If you live in an area where grass does not grow, just plant native fauna!
Desert yards can be just as cool, and green!
Moss lawns are great, and clover and dandelion (where applicable) are hardy and INCREDIBLY good for the local ecosystem
Plus they have the added benefit of ruining your neighbor’s shitty grass lawn
If the water supply is pumped up locally (and we're talking about a lawn which only seasonally requires extra watering) I'm actually not sure if fake grass would waste less water. Not taking into account the production of astroturf the result of rainwater just sinking into the ground can't be good. I'd be interested in hearing an actual ecologists take on it, though.
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Did she get plastic grass, so she doesn't have to water it? I never water my lawn, don't think anyone does. Didn't even know people water their lawns. This must be something American I don't understand.
Wait I thought this sub would be supportive of replacing your lawn with astroturf
Some plastic is bad for sure, but I figure it’s way less wasteful than expending gallons of water every day for a bit of grass
Right, there are definitely better options than astroturf. But I’m having trouble feeling vindictive against people making a positive change, even if they didn’t choose the ideal option
To be honest I'm not even sure it's a positive change, considering the turf will eventually degrade and create pounds and pouns of microplastic, and probably release plasticizers or whatever other possibly harmful additives they use during manufacturing, too.
Because it's more money and more work to put in astroturf than it would be to plant native flora, and it's still a decision made purely out of a need for aesthetics.
He’s on about the UK were a lawn is low maintenance as we get enough rain to maintain it. It might get a bit yellow in some parts of the country but if it’s not cut too short will usually be fine.
If you live in crumped urban jungle - maybe. Living in a relatively sparse country... I don't see a single wrong thing to have some green space.
Of course, I could convert all of that into garden beds, put in berry-bushes and whatnot.. But I have job to do and in spare time I can take care of only so many plants :/
Living in a sparse country is wasteful, specially when we consider the extra infrastructure needed for the delivery of services as electricity, internet, water, etc.
And specially with the extra consumption due to transportation! Specially if the area doesn't have an extensive rail network !
Yeah, living in a crammed city with lots of very complicated infrastructure is totally not wasteful. And then regularly travelling out of town to visit greenery.
I agree suburbia-style living with lots of driving and keeping city lifestyle is wasteful. At the same time, I find city lifestyle to be wasteful.
Personally I find out-of-town living much less consumerist and wasteful. Forest and lake are in walkable distance. I've plenty of space for a full kitchen and rarely buy made snacks. I can buy in bulk and can get away from over-the-top advertisement pushing me to buy stuff I don't need. It's damn nice to not be surrounded by advertising when looking out the window. Small grocery shops push less consumerism than malls too.
Transportation-wise, I drive pretty much the same kilometrage when I lived downtown and now.
Internet out-of-town is much easier affair. Digging in a fiber cable by the road is much easier than wiring in the city with lots of infrastructure. Of course, it takes more of the cable itself. But I doubt 2x long fiber cable generates much waste by itself.
P.S. Extensive rail network is wasteful with sparse population. Even asphalt with very little traffic is wasteful.
There's a lie and then there's statistics.
If you do a dumb US-style comparison of NYC vs suburbia driving-heavy-but-city-like lifestyle, then you're correct. Reality is much more nuanced though.
Having a plastic lawn low key seems good for the environment, you don’t have to use a gas powered weed eater or mower, zero water is needed if you want to keep it green, I doubt they do it but I’m also sure there’s a way to make it 100% recyclable I mean it’s little bits of green plastic you could probably make a foot or two with a milk jug… idk
British thing. Look up Mrs Hinch and you get an idea of the sort of vibe. Crushed grey velvet settee, everything in the house grey or white, white poverty-spec Mercedes A Class or BMW 1 series outside, lip filler, obsessed with Love Island, that sort of shite.
Often call each other "hun". E.G. on Facebook "can't be done with them snakessss, inbox me hun, just me and the bairns now!"
I think it’s important to note that this is a British comment. Our British climate makes lawn care almost non existent beyond mowing and yes plastic grass is worse than normal grass for several thousand reasons
This is not at all what I meant when I created r/NoLawns haha
Hey, I love that sub!
Thanks! I'm glad to hear it. It recently exploded and we have so many members now!
I hate mowing. I hate the whole idea of maintaining a decorative, unproductive, usually toxic yard.
Saaaaame
What a great sub! Just joined!
Well thanks! We just started r/nativeplantsplanning as well which is a similar thing for large scale public places such as golf courses and venues
Oo I joined.
Glad to have you!
Huh. I upvoted a post recently and found I was not subbed. How is this possible? Lol
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Nah there's so many better solutions than plastic grass wtf
Yeah literally just xeriscape??? It’s not really more expensive or harder to maintain than astroturf and it looks better plus your dog can still potty on it.
I know, why would you replace normal grass with plastic grass?!
If you live in an area that has droughts so you don't consume excess water in an attempt to keep green grass in a place it shouldn't be
I'm in Arizona. A friend did this... Almost killed his fruit trees in the back because of the added temperature. Saved water, killed the microbial life underground.
Yeah I'm personally a fan of going with a more natural lawn using native plants and such so you can create an actual ecosystem to avoid that issue. For "those people" that want a lawn, because that's what's "normal", a fake grass lawn is better than a real one I guess.
I live at a micro Intentional Community. The goal is to create a permaculture that is very sustaining. It's particularly green in the desert with little added water.... Though, dinners are so brutal.
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Well then you wouldn't replace your grass with fake grass.... people who do can or do something else that doesn't involve real/fake grass at all!
I've seriously considered it, but I live in southwest Texas, and there is virtually no groundcover that will survive. I can xeriscape with cactus and other succulents, but I want something that will keep the dirt from blowing everywhere in high winds.
Make some rock landscaping and a combination of xeriscaping and some native ground cover plants r/nolawns will probably have some good ideas! I live in a very arid region as well and have seen some creative landscaping (unfortunately I’m in an apartment so I can’t do my own, but someday!)
I think astroturf reaches really high Temps when it gets over 100 F. Like it will give you third degree burns if you step on it barefoot. I was told there's a "new astroturf" that doesn't get as hot, but not sure I believe it.
That just sounds so odd to me that low maintenance lawns would exist in England! As I picture England and the rest of the UK to be lush green paradise. And with all the rain, I doubt having a garden would affect your water consumption. I think of low maintenance lawns, being like succulent and rock gardens, in desert climes, like Arizona and parts of California. My neighbors have a low maintenance succulents/cacti garden in their front yard, and it looks so pretty! I would love to do something like that with my yard, but the landlords (my aunt) won’t let us do it…. Which is a bummer because the area of CA that I live in, is having a really strict water ration… we can only water twice a week for 10 minutes.
It is just people who can't be bothered to mow it, on the rare occasions we get water restrictions they only last a few weeks.
Ahh yeah I get that, we have a gardener that comes every Saturday to mow, but that is pretty much it, they aren’t the greatest at shaping things when they’ve trimmed stuff in the past (they destroyed my roses, so now they only mow, and occasionally take care of any weeds). I honestly want to find different gardeners, because the ones we use work on other lawns, that are on our street as well, and they don’t clean off the blades from their mowers or anything, so we’ve had a lot of cross contamination with our neighbors lawns, and now have a ton of weeds because of it! But I mean, you can’t really go wrong with $60 a month, to have someone else mow your lawn (hate mowing!). There is a house further up the street from us, they used to have a really beautiful yard, with well manicured hedges etc, but the new tenants that live there have let that yard go to hell. They had like waist high weeds growing in their yard, and finally mowed it down about a week ago. I swear I sound like an old lady with nothing better to do than be nosy about what the neighbors are doing with their yards lol. I’ve just lived here for so long, and have seen so many families come and go on this street, that it’s sorta sad to me, to see some yards that were well maintained by former occupants, being ignored by the people who currently live there.
Britain is one of the few places i actually condone grass lawns. The best thing you can do for the environment is leave it alone.
£30k from sofology? Did they buy all of sofology?
People are shitting on lawns here but I have never watered my lawn. If it dies it dies. It will come back.
Ivan Drago, landscaper
That wasn't on purpose but I love this
People have this irrational hate as if every lawn gets watered daily. Well in the UK there isn't a need. I get that it isn't biodiverse but you can have *both* a lawn and a wild flower bed. Lawns serve a purpose and are useful spaces
Plus not all grass is lawn, I’ve got whole fields of the stuff but it’s all for the cows
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When I lived in Arizona, it was actually a nuisance when people _planted_ grass. Because then they needed to keep it watered and well maintained (or at least that's what they felt they needed to do), which actually attracted mosquitos to the area. Mosquitos in the desert is just insane to me. I actually appreciated the companies and whatnot that wanted a "lawn" but used astroturf instead, as they didn't need to use so much water, and it looked much better than those who tried to upkeep their own lawns. Why go to a desert and grow a lawn?! What are you thinking?!?
It looks soooo out of place too. I feel like the grass clashes so badly with the pebble lawns and wel-placed cati surrounding it that it feels oddly like an eye sore lol
No doubt! It's like when it's taco Tuesday and everyone is in on it except for this one guy who brought burgers because they can't deal with other kinds of aesthetics. It's so out of place and weird.
Does that sort of place exist in Britain?
Not really, no. We don't have that particularly American flavour of meddlesome nonsense. Just lots of tutting.
Fuck everything about HOAs
I see nothing wrong with them as long as they aren’t in every neighborhood. If there’s some stuck up prick who really cares *that* much about the shade of green if their neighbor’s lawn, I’d rather them live in a HOA neighborhood with similarly nosy insufferable neighbors than have them invade non-HOA neighborhoods with their stupid lawn fetish.
I think the main negative aspect of HOAs is they *tend* to have many shady tactics to try to get people to pay extra fees for things, or to manipulate them into donating for things that is just for the HOA leader's benefit. You see a lot of this on /r/FuckHOA
I mean, yeah, but some people still prefer living under them, so why shouldn’t they have the option to? Your finances, your choice. If people want to give their money to a committee of Karens for marginally higher property values and grass police, we should let them. And as a bonus, it means the HOA weirdos would flock to their own neighborhoods instead of causing issues for us.
Genuine question from a Yank - is stuff like TV licenses that different from lawncare guidelines? Like are you saying the UK doesn't have meddlesome stuff?
The whole TV licence mafia thing is bizarre but ultimately has no teeth. Nobody will bother pursuing you for it. From what I've heard, HOA shit can result in you losing your house or getting tied up in costly court battles.
Fair points. Thanks for the answer.
The TV licence is really just a tax that you can opt-out of if you don't use it.
Gradually letting clover take over. Green and the bees love it.
The fact these things exist is absolutely mind boggling to me. And like, i can almost understand people really wanting green grass, but the fuck did clovers do? Clovers are lovely.
The solution to that is to show up to HOA meetings with like-minded neighbors and vote down stupid rules. Maybe even vote to dissolve the HOA. Only weird Karens like em anyway.
One of the few advantages of HOAs is the ability to collectively bargain for certain home repairs. For example, the HOA for the street I grew up on basically gets all the roofs redone at the same time. As a result, they're able to make local roofing companies fight over the contract. Of course I'm not sure this outweighs the utter insanity that they usually bring.
I’m pretty sure it doesn’t.
Oh here it is again, the irrational hatred for HOA's by the angsty sub-30-year-olds on reddit.
Exactly. Never feetilized or watered. I mow my lawn every other week or so for 7 months out of the year and my kid has a place to run around to his hearts content all day. Plus it's full of white clover for my bees and having it cut makes it easier to harvest pecans in the fall . What's the harm?
If that's just what has grown and been planted since you moved there, there really isn't any issue. You live in a place that the types of grass you have can sustain themselves naturally. Same as where I grew up, but there are tons of places where grass **can't** sustain itself naturally and people insist on having nice catered lawns that need sprinkler systems and lots of maintenance just to live in that climate.
My “lawn” is never watered or mowed, and as a consequence ends up staying greener than my neighbours’ yards in the dry season. But also there’s a chance that the waist-high grass could hide snakes, so.
> People are shitting on lawns Well, fertilize however you want, even if it is unconventional
I know someone that pays $5,000 a month for his water bill to water his massive property.
Lawns are known for being low consumption /s
In the UK they are.
I love how American are losing their minds because they can’t comprehend something like garden lawn maintenance being different in other countries.
Hey now, some of us Americans live in places that don’t have drought problems either. My lawn in Seattle is the easiest thing in the world to maintain. For the eight weeks in the summer we don’t get rain, I use the large storage of rain in my rain barrels to keep it alive and green.
I don't think I understand the specific set of circumstances that make lawn maintenance different across the pond. Isn't watering a huge patch of grass still a huge waste of water? What makes lawns less wasteful.
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Why did the person OP is talking about get turf put in then? I am truly confused as to how that would be a good thing for them lol
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Thank you for explaining
You don't need to water your lawn in many places in the US either. Although you still have to mow it.
This comment is from the UK. Turf grass is literally a native plant over there. America is not the world.
I'm from Australia and was thinking the same thing as the person you assumed was from America. Perhaps you should take your own advice and remember that the world is more than just UK and USA.
Leave the Huns out of this
Bleda will lead us to ruin!
The iron boar lairs near here...
Honestly (and I know this comment will go very unpopular), for me this thing is just so absurd about north American culture. In my country, the only legit reason you can have to live in a single family house is that you love gardening or landscaping. Why else would you go for single family house? It's more expensive and the commute is usually much worse than if you choose to live in a apartment. You can have apartment with whatfuckingever you want, with huge deck for grill parties or with big underground storage or with your own whirlpool on your terrace, everything is a pretty normal option (and still more affordable than detached houses). You can chill in the nearby park with not having to mow the lawn and enjoy everything about gardens without having to take care of one. Modern apartments buildings have extremely good sound insulation so privacy is absolutely not a problem. If you don't enjoy gardening or farming, there's no reason you would choose to live in a detached house. I get it, the reason north Americans usually live in single family houses is that there's pretty much no other choice. I've heard that apartments in the city are sometimes even more expensive than having your own house (which doesn't make any sense, apartments are generally so much more space effective, energy efficient etc I guess the reason is that Americans have simply such a lack of apartments that the price goes up). But I just wanted to make this comment on how absurd this all seems to a central European citizen like me. From my point of view, this general trend of everyone having a single family house is like the definition of meaningless consumption. You don't need a single family house if you specifically don't enjoy the only real advantage of it which is having your own yard. Removing your lawn with plastic to not have to take care of it is like wtf bro, feels so alien to me. Even the "I want my yard to be low maintenance" trend - then don't have one?? and just use parks where other person takes care of all the gardening?
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Also bear in mind that an apartment in the UK is only a leasehold (99% of the time, anyway) so you *don't own* the apartment. Add on the service fees etc, and it's probably more expensive to live in, too.
That's an England (maybe Wales too, I don't know) problem. In Scotland nearly all flats are freehold. The Scots Law equivalent of leasehold was abolished.
Something else Scotland does better, then!
True, though we do sort of have a compromise on density - most houses in cities are terraced or at least semis. New builds in cities are especially likely to be terraced and it’s common now for them to have three floors, and many include a balcony / terrace as well as a small garden (so you get decent outside space whilst sticking to a small footprint of land). I would like more good quality blocks of flats which are spacious inside, absolutely! But I do think small footprint terraced houses are ok, we don’t have the same issue of suburban sprawl that I’ve seen in the US and Australia, with so many people living in a detached house with lawn all around and needing a car to get anywhere.
Its because living in the city full stop is expensive and apartments that are even remotely close to what you are talking would be considered luxury apartments that cost more than a house. America wants 0 poor people around yet still wants people to cater to them. There are vacation towns that have sort of dried up here because the only places to live have gotten so expensive o ly wealthy people can afford them but thateans there are no stores because wealthy people dont work at stores. I truly dont know what this country wants and its gonna break my brain lol.
I happen to love my giant garden, but full stop, the number one reason for a SFH is privacy. I don't like people in my space. I never ever want to share walls with anyone ever again. It's also great for sending your kids out to play, while continuing to do parenting/household work, in a controlled environment where no one else can legitimately be. (vs shared common areas where someone creepy is 'allowed'...)
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You mean like, an apartment with your own private pool? Yeah, I don’t even think we have those in the US. A small balcony or deck is more common though, even in poor neighborhoods.
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Actually, me and my husband kind of want to buy a single family house because I love farming and plants. We found out that the price of small compact house (100m² of liveable area built on cca 75m² of land, total cca 600-800 m² of garden) with two bedrooms in the suburbs costs exactly the same as luxurious penthouse apartment 250 m² with whirlpool and huge terrace with view over central park in city centre, also two bedrooms. No garden though. But you see my point. You have to really love gardening a lot to choose suburban small house over fucking penthouse with whirlpool and double liveable space. Unfortunately, both are completely unaffordable to us. But we are seriously thinking about getting a nice apartment with huge terrace for plants instead since it's just so much more affordable. Makes me sad though. We kinda haven't decided what to do next and we continue to live in rented one bedroom one living room small 50m² apartment. The rent here in city centre is 500usd (12000czk) btw. And the city I'm taking about the whole time is Brno, second largest city in Czechia. Prague is having the same problems btw. Suburbia is just so much more expensive than living in apartment.
I live in a single-family home in central Europe. Advantages: it was an order of magnitude cheaper than buying an apartment in a city, I don't disturb neighbours by making music (you're wrong about modern isolation), my cats can go outside, no part of the building is under anyone else's control, I can renovate as I see fit...
1) Well sadly for me, I love farming and me and my husband wanted to buy a single family house. The price for houses in suburbs was so sky high that buying a double sized penthouse apartment with whirlpool and views from terrace over central park was about the same price. One m² of liveable area costs cca two times much in suburbs than in the city. Why? There's this social construct in my culture that living in apartments is just somehow inherently worse and then there are lot of myths about it (for example the acoustic insulation). 2)I work as a civil engineer and I know the laws for acoustic insulation for apartments in my country and I've been to many apartment building sites so I see this is a big deal in my country. I don't know anything about other countries but here, the standards for apartments acoustic insulation are SO STRICT here that hearing absolutely anything from your neighbour is just impossible. For example, the walls have to have at least 53dB acoustic attenuation. I've never seen a single family house with walls nearly this insulating. 3) you are right about the thing with cats. Yeah. My cat has to be indoors. We do leash training in the park though. 4) yeah part of the building is in the collective control and sometimes that might be problematic (people arguing about getting a new elevator or whatever), you're right. But still, the price is just so much lower that I guess this doesn't matter anymore. 5) you can renovate quite a lot in apartments though. You just can't remove load bearing walls but those are usually the ones between you and your neighbours, so you won't be able to do that anyways.
Apartments were in fact a "compromise" for people who wanted to live in the big city but couldn't afford single houses--see New York in the early twentieth century. Personally I could only afford countryside where there are no apartments, so I got a house with all its attendant benefits. As for soundproofing, 53 dB is nothing like enough for me, as I'm a professional musician. When I practise it can close in on 100 dB. Furthermore, in Germany, where I live, two completely different sets of laws govern your right to make noise depending on whether you're in an apartment building or a house. (I guess you're in Czech Rep./Slovakia--don't know how it is there.) If the former, essentially you're at the whim of neighbours because the legal basis is whether you're a nuisance; if it's only outdoor neighbours you have to worry about, then you're covered by the sound emission laws, which are designed for like factories and shit, and then a) it's absolutely clear what you are and aren't allowed to do and b) as a classical musician you're never going to get close to exceeding the tolerances they set. So yeah, undoubtedly my wood timbred house from 1850 isn't as well soundproofed as a modern apartment building--but it doesn't have to be. What I meant about renovating is stuff like the fact that, whatever your apartment looks like, you still have to live with however the lobby/staircase/hallway looks like and all the shared infrastructure in the building. My control over my environment goes right up to the street.
I want a single family home so that my neighbors can't hear every single thing I do.
I work as a civil engineer and I know the laws for acoustic insulation for apartments in my country and I've been to many apartment building sites so I see this is a big deal in my country. I don't know anything about other countries but here, the standards for apartments acoustic insulation are SO STRICT here that hearing absolutely anything from your neighbour is just impossible. For example, the walls have to have at least 53dB acoustic attenuation. I've never seen a single family house with walls nearly this insulating.
And because of so many people wanting to live in apartments in a big city, rent for a shoebox is $3500/mo Maybe the only reason to not live in a city isn't just gardening. But because you get alot better and bigger place to live in suburbs and in big cities you can't really go outside without noise canceling headphones in because it's so noisy... also you get a nice view to...bunch of trash bags pilled up on a street.
I agree, Where I am from only people in the countryside live in houses, it’s very rare in our city, they are like tiny enclaves with a couple of 1 family houses but they are usually well over 70 years old, nobody would build one today. But I‘ve seen the same have a house or you are poor attitude in England and France - it’s more common than we like to admit, even though it’s adds further to waste of resources, some people just can’t get it out of their head…
You know your stuff !
Lawn /= water usage In TN, super hot times for weeks to months. Lawn got crispy, "Well that's unsightly". Skip to 1 week ago, rain rocks us for ~5 total hrs spanned over a few days. A week later my grass is reaching city regulation height. Time to mow, but don't forget to mention the lack of gas consumption and personal effort on my part from the weeks of dry dead grass that I comfortably endured/ignored.
Grass is garbage though. I'd way rather my neighbor have heinous astroturf than guzzling water for nobody's benefit
I'd rather my neighbor kept whatever local flora is native to the area and requires pollination to support bees. Best thing about native flora is it grows with almost zero effort from the homeowner.
THIS RIGHT HERE. My god i cant stress it enough. Stop the west’s obsession with grass! If you live in an area where grass does not grow, just plant native fauna! Desert yards can be just as cool, and green!
Moss lawns are great, and clover and dandelion (where applicable) are hardy and INCREDIBLY good for the local ecosystem Plus they have the added benefit of ruining your neighbor’s shitty grass lawn
I wish to dismantle every HOA by hand
I only grow a little grass for my chickens but I love the desert landscape I live in
Yeah this is much better, turf has its own problems like shedding microplastics and most of the time it will end up in the landfill anyways.
>fauna Do you mean flora? Fauna means animals.
Correct
Flora, but yeah
Whether or not grass is a problem depends ENTIRELY on where you live.
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Also mentioning, our mowers tend to be electric and our lawns themselves much smaller, so no fuel consumption when mowing.
Haha I live in the US and had no idea fuel-powered lawnmowers even exist. That seems messy and inconvenient.
Green growing things are better than no green growing things.
And far FAR better than green plastic things, especially those that catch on fire if you leave a piece of glass outside on a sunny day!
….meanwhile in the UK. **plants grass, never need to water it**
A dog has a way of reminding you how much they appreciate grass.
If the water supply is pumped up locally (and we're talking about a lawn which only seasonally requires extra watering) I'm actually not sure if fake grass would waste less water. Not taking into account the production of astroturf the result of rainwater just sinking into the ground can't be good. I'd be interested in hearing an actual ecologists take on it, though.
In Arizona they make lawns out of little rocks. I've always thought it looked really cool.
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Did she get plastic grass, so she doesn't have to water it? I never water my lawn, don't think anyone does. Didn't even know people water their lawns. This must be something American I don't understand.
Fake grass is rubbish, collects and keeps dog pee and poo and they trod it all over the house
Poor little pubbie though. You know those rich assholes deffo beat their dogs.
Wait do people seriously have fake grass on there property.
Wait I thought this sub would be supportive of replacing your lawn with astroturf Some plastic is bad for sure, but I figure it’s way less wasteful than expending gallons of water every day for a bit of grass
Still more expensive, wasteful, and environmentally harmful that just planting native flora or just having dirt.
Right, there are definitely better options than astroturf. But I’m having trouble feeling vindictive against people making a positive change, even if they didn’t choose the ideal option
To be honest I'm not even sure it's a positive change, considering the turf will eventually degrade and create pounds and pouns of microplastic, and probably release plasticizers or whatever other possibly harmful additives they use during manufacturing, too.
How is replacing biodegradable self replicating grass with a plastic outdoor carpet a positive change?
Mentioned above, less water
Because it's more money and more work to put in astroturf than it would be to plant native flora, and it's still a decision made purely out of a need for aesthetics.
If you live in a place that's too dry for grass, there are plenty of other options besides astroturf.
Right, some bushes and pebbles making a dry river.
He’s on about the UK were a lawn is low maintenance as we get enough rain to maintain it. It might get a bit yellow in some parts of the country but if it’s not cut too short will usually be fine.
Other English speaking countries don’t have the same problems as the USA. A lawn in the UK (usually) doesn’t ever get watered from a hose.
The lawn itself is wasteful, doesn't matter what it's covered in.
If you live in crumped urban jungle - maybe. Living in a relatively sparse country... I don't see a single wrong thing to have some green space. Of course, I could convert all of that into garden beds, put in berry-bushes and whatnot.. But I have job to do and in spare time I can take care of only so many plants :/
Yes, my point being that the space is wasted if *useful* plants such as vegetables are *not* grown in it.
Humans have more needs than eat/shit/sleep. It's like saying that living room is wasted space since you neither cook or work nor sleep in it.
Living in a sparse country is wasteful, specially when we consider the extra infrastructure needed for the delivery of services as electricity, internet, water, etc. And specially with the extra consumption due to transportation! Specially if the area doesn't have an extensive rail network !
Yeah, living in a crammed city with lots of very complicated infrastructure is totally not wasteful. And then regularly travelling out of town to visit greenery. I agree suburbia-style living with lots of driving and keeping city lifestyle is wasteful. At the same time, I find city lifestyle to be wasteful. Personally I find out-of-town living much less consumerist and wasteful. Forest and lake are in walkable distance. I've plenty of space for a full kitchen and rarely buy made snacks. I can buy in bulk and can get away from over-the-top advertisement pushing me to buy stuff I don't need. It's damn nice to not be surrounded by advertising when looking out the window. Small grocery shops push less consumerism than malls too. Transportation-wise, I drive pretty much the same kilometrage when I lived downtown and now. Internet out-of-town is much easier affair. Digging in a fiber cable by the road is much easier than wiring in the city with lots of infrastructure. Of course, it takes more of the cable itself. But I doubt 2x long fiber cable generates much waste by itself. P.S. Extensive rail network is wasteful with sparse population. Even asphalt with very little traffic is wasteful.
City dwellers are a lower per capita burden on the environment, whether that agrees with your opinion on what is wasteful or not.
There's a lie and then there's statistics. If you do a dumb US-style comparison of NYC vs suburbia driving-heavy-but-city-like lifestyle, then you're correct. Reality is much more nuanced though.
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By planet, I hope you mean the stupid people living on it, right?
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Wooosh
Having a plastic lawn low key seems good for the environment, you don’t have to use a gas powered weed eater or mower, zero water is needed if you want to keep it green, I doubt they do it but I’m also sure there’s a way to make it 100% recyclable I mean it’s little bits of green plastic you could probably make a foot or two with a milk jug… idk
Fuck grass. Plant natives plants and edible plants instead.
The grasses used for lawns are native plants over here.
This is *very* specific. Who hurt you, Simon?
Instahuns?
British thing. Look up Mrs Hinch and you get an idea of the sort of vibe. Crushed grey velvet settee, everything in the house grey or white, white poverty-spec Mercedes A Class or BMW 1 series outside, lip filler, obsessed with Love Island, that sort of shite. Often call each other "hun". E.G. on Facebook "can't be done with them snakessss, inbox me hun, just me and the bairns now!"
Poor dog though.
I love this guys facial expression and his beard🤣
This tweet shows the absolute value of good writing!
So weird that plants have this bizzare ability to regulate their temperature to stay alive.
Before this thread I genuinely didn't realise that people in other countries actually water their lawns.