Do you judge people who don't mow or weed their lawn?

[Tobythecat]

Do you? Mine was overgrown for a little while and everyone else's was freshly cut, I felt a bit scruffy

Is this a thing that people judge their neighbours on?

I would just as I would judge if the inside of a house was messy! Only mowing though and borders- weeding a lawn is excessive

I worry about this.

Our neighbours are landscape gardeners as a job and have a beautfiul garden.

DP and I never even mow the lawn. We are out of the house 12 hours a day in the week and never really at home at the weekend so just don't have time.

I have lots of butterflies bees and many other flying creatures too... it doesn't stop my grass from being mowed... the bees etc are attracted to the trees and flowers and shrubbery surrounding my lawn areas.. there's no need to choose one or the other.. choose both

I also have lots of bees, too many, and butterflies etc, my grass being mowed doesn't change that lots of different shrubbery attracts them.

Kind of, as in why have a lawn if you are not going to mow it? Plant a maintenance free space instead, like paving and big shrubs, or plant chamomile or clover.

Struggling, I'd've gone ballistic if I'd done all that and a neighbour had opted to "weed" what I'd planted!

A weed is just a plant that's in the wrong place imo. I have campion and valerian that have seeded themselves and I've left them, because I like them. I'd be furious if some fuckwit busybody took it upon themselves to "weed" them. I also have a bay tree that seeded itself some years ago and it's now about 5' tall. That would cost a fortune in a garden centre.

I have to admit though, the grass in the front is very long atm. My back's been pretty bad and DP has been too lazy busy. It's about knee high, and in a minute I'm going to get out there with the strimmer. Part of the back is even worse, I did half of it and then it rained for a few days, then my back got bad and now it's really overgrown.

The bit of the back that is level and easy to mow is fine though!

I'm proud of my lawn- I get DH to cut it though but I do pull out any dandelions and put a dose of moss killer on it once a year which it keeps it relatively weed free. We have so many shrubs and flowers and trees that we don't need dandelions for the bees- there's hundreds of bees in the house every time I open my door so they are thriving here without the dandelions!

My front is awful. past my knees and now has brambles/stinging nettles. Gone past the capabilities of my lawn mower. Waiting for BIL to have time to come over with his petrol strimmer to tackle it for me.

Please leave some nettles! Nettles provide a great habitat for the larvae of peacock and tortoiseshell butterflies (among others). I always leave a small patch at the very top of the garden, and we get a huge variety of butterflies as a result.

A friend who used to be in charge of the kitchen garden at an NT property is also a massive advocate of nettles. He says that they are so attractive to aphids that they keep them off your flowers and veg.

And a garden with good number of aphids is also a great food source for ladybirds.

Yes id judge them. A lot of it is laziness.

If they were physically unable id offer to cut it for them.

Ive actually spent 4 hours today cutting a friends lawn in a town 20 miles away because her mower blew up.

You can present a tidy garden and have plants that help wild life. I actually have a wild area at the top of the garden which i sowed wildflowers and different grasses but it is tastefully partitioned.

Is this a thing that people judge their neighbours on?

No, it’s a thing judgemental idiots judge people on.

No I wouldn't. We didn't mow ours for most of last year because we had ragwort in our lawns that were covered in cinnabar moth caterpillars. They went and I thought it was safe to mow but found that there were a second batch of caterpillars.

Then it was too wet (the soil is clay, turns into a bog) so they didn't get done until last weekend.

I did vaguely feel we were making the street look scruffy, but the caterpillars were more important.

It depends on how bad it looked. If it was the front garden and was horrific I would inwardly judge, but I wouldn't care that much about the back garden unless there was ivy infiltrating our garden (hate the stuff).

It would have to be quite overgrown for me to judge though - just a bit scruffy wouldn't bother me. You may find what your call scruffy the neighbours don't mind.

Our front garden gets longer this time of year as it is completely filled with daffodils, snowdrops, primroses crocuses etc. They just pop up and DH was saying to the neighbour the grass was a bit long and he wanted to cut it but it would cut down the flowers and NDN told him to leave it as she loves the wildflowers growing.

@SoupDragon Exactly! Have I stumbled into the Daily Mail reader's group....?

Long grass with a diversity of other plants is a haven for insects and therefore also for birds. So no weeding at all in this house. I do mow though - not to croquet lawn standards but regularly. I wouldn't judge anyone for the state of their lawn though.

I'm so bad that because I haven't weeded my concrete front driveway since I moved in (8 years ago) , I can now mow it 😂

I would love it if my neighbours just had an unmowed lawn but it's a jungle overgrowing a rubbish dump

Not only do I not judge, I intentionally imported weeds to make the boring green sward more interesting. So now I have a lawn with red clover, vetch, speedwell, daisies, dandelions....

We live in mediocre suburbia. All of the neighbours wash their cars and mow their lawns every weekend. Their gardens are sterile looking rectangles of flat green. Ours in full of wildflowers, fruit trees, nut trees and raised veg beds. We have lots of wildlife. We stand out like a sore thumb.

I don't judge my neighbour below me who doesn't mow her lawn (we're in flats) but I do get jealous that she has it but doesn't ever use it. I'd love to have her little garden for my DS to crawl about in or to have BBQs in and drinks/dinner out there now the weather is warm but she just leaves it to get overgrown.

No I wouldn't as I'd be a horrendous hypocrite. Mine was pretty much a wildflower meadow up until a couple of weeks ago when my lovely FIL came and sorted it for me. I'm disabled, and cannot cope with gardening alongside work and general life.

If someone has a weedy/overgrown lawn I would assume:

1. They don’t have the equipment or physical health to deal with it

2. They have better things to do with their time and it doesn’t bother them

Neither of these apply to me, so my lawn is like a bowling green. It has taken a huge amount of work and requires a lot of upkeep. Three years ago the lawn was made entirely of moss and daisies. Now it is grass. If I turn my back for 10 seconds it will be back to moss and daisies again.

I don't really understand the desire / fashion for a short trimmed lawn.

Grass is a plant just like other plants and flowers we grow, it's supposed to grow long! I love it when the council don't cut the local grass verges and everything looks meadowy and billowy and natural.

Short grass is weird and unnatural.

It's not really a fashion for short grass, folks have been cutting their grass for decades, Becayse it looks tidier 🤣

To be honest though if I see a messy garden, as much as I wouldn't judge the owner as lazy, more think something is maybe wrong to prevent them doing it, I'd probably assume the inside of the house was also unkempt.

I don't care about people's garden but I absolutely hate to see weed sticking out of flagged paths/around the driveway etc at the front. I just want to rip it all off! It just irritates me, it's such an easy job (assuming no disabilities). Quite a few of my neighbours don't seem to care incl one who actually has a gardener who comes for their back garden for some reason (it's a fairly small, flat and boring lawn, very easy to mow) but he never does that.

I do keep my grass as short as possible but that is because I have a dog and it's easier to see any mishaps. Pick it up and wash it down.