The no-mow/low-mow movements are steadily growing.
More people are discussing the benefits of rejecting or reducing traditional lawns.
This seems especially useful during summer when grass is verdant and holidays leave gardens and road verges unattended.
The immaculate lawn has come to be seen as a thing of beauty. It’s smooth, expansive and a rich green.
To some gardeners — often the man’s special project — the lawn is a pride and joy.
Like a premier sports ground or golf course, the lawn might be shaded in parallel lighter and darker strips.
This cut-grass aesthetic has been challenged for several years, including around the South.
A Maori Hill woman in 2011 stopped mowing the council verge outside her place because of the environmental benefits of letting grass grow.
Her neighbours, however, would have none of it; the strip was cut against her wishes.
Recently, more councils around the country are leaving grassed areas to grow longer, ostensibly to provide a greater variety of habitats for wildlife, reduce fuel emissions, slow heavy rain runoff and cut mowing time.
Sometimes councils, like a few homeowners, will mow around the edges, leaving inner areas to grow wild.
The Auckland Botanic Gardens has run free no-mow/low-mow workshops.
The Dunedin City Council posted in March that it had cut its mowing schedules. It cited the benefits for bees and other pollinating critters and the money saved by reducing unnecessary mowing.
Any sensible efforts to cut costs are to be applauded, given the city’s soaring rates and debt.
It’s certainly handy for councils and individuals when self-interest coincides with righteousness.
RNZ’s Nine to Noon urban issues correspondent Bill McKay pitched in to the issue with gusto in October.
The senior lecturer in architecture and planning at the University of Auckland described lawns as ‘‘an insidious evil that [lurked] in every suburb’’. They looked clean and green and natural but were far from it.
‘‘It’s a green desert. Those are all monoculture English grasses alien to Aotearoa/New Zealand, our ecosystem. There’s no biodiversity. There’s nothing in terms of habitat for native species,’’ Mr McKay said.
He preferred the advantages of native grasses over the oft-adopted meadow approach.
Aucklanders, according to a study from about 2020, spent $131million a year on lawn care. Between 20% to 30% of most New Zealand urban areas are carpeted in lawns.
To think that lawns only became a thing after French and English aristocrats indulged in them in the 17th century. Otherwise, why waste productive land?
Whatever the trend today though, plenty of sport and recreation is played on such surfaces. And we’re still a long way from giving up on our patches of grass.
That neighbourhood’s unmown grass verge is unlikely to be because it was left deliberately to create a haven for bees and other creatures or to absorb more CO2.
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Civis didn’t have to wait long for feedback about last week’s ‘‘wait staff/waiters’’.
The irony that ‘‘waiting staff’’ are constantly on the move was not lost. ‘‘Table attendant’’ was suggested as a better term.
