“Turf wars” are being waged across the western world as conservationists question the value of these green adornments to our gardens.
In Britain some local councils declared last month as “No Mow May” and in Australia and New Zealand the lawn is increasingly being seen in some quarters as an unwelcome throw-back to our colonial past.
The traditional lawn has been under fire for years because of its lack of biodiversity and voracious appetite for fertiliser, herbicides and mowing
Researchers have urged gardeners to dig up their “imperial” lawns and replant them with trees to combat the climate crisis after the latest study to expose the emissions cost of maintaining that pleasant greensward.
If a third of the world’s city lawns were planted with trees, more than a gigatonne of carbon could be removed from the atmosphere over two decades, researchers from Auckland University of Technology found. The problem is not the grass itself, but the mowing, fertilisation and irrigation required.
The researchers reviewed 65 studies of emissions and sequestration of carbon by turf or lawn compared with trees. They concluded that, globally, the equivalent of 157 tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions per hectare could be avoided, and up to 1,630m tonnes of carbon absorbed from the atmosphere over 20 years if a third of mown grass in cities were planted with trees.
As climate breakdown drives more extreme weather, droughts have highlighted the irrigation demands of the velvety turf of rye grass.
The anti-lawn and “rewilding” movement has seeded across Britain, with advocates pushing to replace the lawn with trees, shrubs or a more diverse mixture of wildflowers and native grasses. Thirty council in Britain adopted “No Mow May” to encourage wildflower growth and natural pollinators.
The research’s lead author, Professor Len Gillman, said that while abandoning the mower and letting a lawn go wild to cut down on the emissions, it would not go far enough.
“In terms of climate change we need to absorb as much carbon as we possibly can from the atmosphere. The biggest difference is that shrubs and trees will store vastly more carbon than a lawn,” he said, expanding on his research published in the January edition of the journal Global Sustainability.
He said in countries such as Australia, New Zealand and the United States, the lawn represented a throwback to the colonial era, when lawns were strongly associated with affluence and nostalgia for English landscapes.
Previous studies have found that lawns occupy 50-70 per cent of green open spaces in the world’s cities.
After reading of the research, I looked long and hard at my own lawn. But I can’t bring myself to dig it up. It represents not a throwback to colonialism but a communal feeding ground – aided by apples tossed from my kitchen window – for grey currawongs, Bennett’s wallabies and pademelons.