The Suburban Lawn by Bill Mollison
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The American Lawn uses more resources than any other agricultural industry in the world. It uses more phosphates than India, and puts on more poisons than any other form of agriculture. The American lawn could feed continents if people had more social responsibility. If we put the same amount of [people] power, fuel and energy into reforestation we could reforest the entire continent. A house with two cars, a dog, and a lawn uses more resources and energy than a village of 2000 Africans.
Often you will see a little house on a residential block, surrounded by flowers and lawn and perhaps a bit of shrubbery . Behind the house, way in the back and maybe hidden by a discreet trellis, will be a small vegetable garden. You recognize the pattern. It is so universal that to move a cabbage up on to this lawn is a cause for total neighborhood consternation. My favorite story is that of a man in Tasmania who dared plant cabbages in his “nature strip". That sacred and formal grassy area between sidewalk and street. Having thus demonstrated his total lack of the sense of fitness of things, he was sharply reminded of his error when the local council sent trucks and men to uproot the vegetables (which were merely useful, and therefore of no aesthetic value). I must, in all fairness, say this occurred in 1977 and by 1979 the council had tentatively begun to plant fruit and nut trees in their public parks.
Yet why should it be indecent to have anything useful in the front
half of your property or around the house where people can see it? Why is
it low-status to make that area productive? The condition is peculiar to
the British landscaping ethic; what we are really looking at here is a miniature
British country estate, designed for people who had servants. The tradition
has moved right into the cities, and right down to quarter acre patches.
It has become a status symbol to present a non-productive facade. The lawn
and it's shrubbery is a forcing of nature and landscape into a salute to
wealth and power, and has no other purpose or function.
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The only thing that such designs demonstrate is that power can force men and womyn to waste their energies in controlled, menial and meaningless toil. The lawn-gardener is a schizoid serf as well as the feudal lord, following her/his lawn mower and wielding her/his hedge clippers, and contorting roses and privet into fanciful and meaningless topiary.
If you have inherited a large lawn, never fear: help is at hand!
It is easily turned into productive space in a few hours by sheet mulching
with newspaper and straw (depending on family needs, a small space might
be saved as a children's play area), and can be designed to be both aesthetically-pleasing
and productive by planting:
Shrubs: Gooseberries, blueberries, currants, rhubarb.
Flowers for salads: borage, nasturtium, calendula, daylily.
Herbs: thyme, lavender, rosemary, oregano, marjoram.
Colorful vegetables: variegated kale, chili peppers, capsicum (red, green,
yellow), eggplant (elongated, black, yellow), yard long cucumbers, watermelons,
squash on trellis, scarlet runner beans (beautiful flowers), cherry tomatoes,
pumpkin.
Carpeting plants: chamomile, alpine strawberries.
Trees: citrus, persimmon (orange fruits hang off leafless trees in autumn),
almond and apricot (pink and white flowers in spring).
Thus, an energy-consuming, unproductive lawn is turned into a large food-producing area containing 100-200 plant species in less than six months. If all suburban lawns were so transformed, urban food needs could be cut by at least 20%.
[This essay was taken from Introduction to Permaculture]
