Just Say Bye to Your Lawns

We've been talking for decades about greening L.A., so it doesn't make sense to put forth a policy that's going to make everyone's lawns go brown.

-          Matt Myerhoff, spokesman for LA City Councilman Greig Smith

Huh?

The Sunday LA Times had an article about a roving “water cop,” an LADWP employee who trolled around the city, giving warnings and citations to anyone who was watering their lawns (or driveway—don’t people know that concrete doesn’t grow?) around the city.  And Angelinos are not happy about it. 

Too bad.

 It’s funny how the drier the climate is, the greener the lawns are.  Cities like Fresno and Las Vegas are covered with green lawns, and meanwhile, in the Pacific Northwest, where they get rain, well, when there’s no rain, you just let the lawn go dry.

 We live in an area that was not meant to house 10 million people, let alone having large carpets of lawn.  When the Spaniards first came to the LA Basin a few centuries ago, they saw wildflowers, brush, oaks, and sycamores (oh, and haze—I guess some things never change).  As far as I can gather, they didn’t see lawns with plastic kiddie pools.

 Humans have done a fine job altering the landscape, only to find that they are causing more problems in the long run.  Rachel Carson wrote about ranchers’ determination to eliminate sagebrush in the West and replacing it with grass for cattle—only to find that they ended up poisoning groundwater and killing wildlife in the process (so much for hunting!).  No matter how hard you fight nature, nature will fight back—or just roll over and give up, which just makes us more miserable in the process.

Now, back to Councilman Smith and his whining constituents:  yes, it actually makes sense to make that lawn go brown.  You all live in the San Fernando Valley, which was once a land of wild trees and later, orchards.  You have summers that see temperatures over 100 degrees in the summer.  We’re talking too much water getting wasted.  Grass does nothing to provide shade, it doesn’t absorb enough carbon dioxide, and those pesticides and fertilizer you are all using to keep your lawn green is shifting all the “brown” somewhere else—into the bay or groundwater.

You don’t want a brown lawn?  How about no lawn!  Rip it out.  Replace it with native grasses.  Use gravel for groundcover.  Heck, even artificial turf is better at this point if you really want something green.  

Try an approach such as ours:  our home in Silver Lake used to have the typical East LA front yard:  a large concrete driveway.  It was great if you needed to park 5 cars in front of your house, but otherwise, it was ugly.  So, we had our landscapers rip out the concrete, reset it, stain it so it looked like flagstone, and planted grasses between them.  Meanwhile, we planted hedges around the perimeter of the yard, and now we have an outdoor living room.

And as for the parents who say, “Children need a lawn to play on,” I say, “no they don’t.”  Find me a kid who’s scarred because he didn’t have a lawn outside his home.  If you’re commuting 90 minutes to that home way out there because they need a lawn, ahem, maybe your kids need you more than a lawn, but I digress.

Plus, who in LA needs a lawn when they are always inside or in their car anyway?  Well, that’s another story . . .