The World’s Ugliest Lawn competition has announced its winner for 2025 and I’ve put away the lawn-mower to enter this year’s contest, with the support of the turbo-chooks who have moved into my yard.
My lawn and surrounding garden has all the qualities to put me in the running and join a previous winner of the global award who came from Sandford on the Eastern Shore. There’s knee-high grass in places, patches of dry, matted thatch and tangled vegetation at the edge of the lawn which most gardeners would term weeds.
The competition was launched on the Swedish island of Gotland three years ago as a stunt to promote water conservation and word of it immediately spread like invasive vegetation across the globe. The first three winners have, in fact, not been from Sweden at all but Australia and New Zealand. The 2025 champion was from Kyneton in Victoria whose garden was described by the judges as “like kids’ hair after a lice treatment has gone horribly wrong”.
My garden at the start of summer certainly fitted that criteria. I’ve tidied it up recently but I’ll still give the contest a go.
The ugly garden has benefits, though, for those gardeners uncomfortable with using the powerful herbicides on the market. It’s possible to phase out brands like Roundup and still have a garden that does not prompt passers-by to actually come in and pull up errant weeds, something that actually happened this summer. And instead of getting out the lawn-mower to give my lawn the appearance of a cricket ground, I now merely brush-cut it and anything else in the garden that looks like getting out of control.
This strategy follows on from efforts to slowly remove the exotic vegetation planted by the previous owner of my property and replace it with native plants, preferably Tasmanian endemic ones that grow in the wilder parts of my suburb, Dynnyrne.
The ugly garden contest draws on what is termed the anti-lawn movement, a landscaping trend supporting eco-friendly alternatives to grass. Although the movement has existed for decades it has gained momentum in recent years as homeowners have become more aware of sustainability. According to the National Wildlife Federation in the United States, the movement has particularly resonated with the younger generation on social media. On TikTok, no-lawn videos have more than six million views.
On the home front, the turbo-chooks – or Tasmanian native-hens – have found a happy home among the longer grass. I was delighted late last month to see five tiny, black chicks scurrying about with their parents. The wallabies and pademelons are happy, too. And I’m seeing a beautiful butterfly I’ve never seen before, the yellow admiral.
* To enter the competition share a picture of your ugly dry lawn on Instagram with the hashtag #worldsugliestlawn, or email the image to the Gotland municipality at uglylawn@gotland.se