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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

Aibu to think people in the UK need to start accepting they can’t have green lawns all year?

156 replies

BuenaVistaAntisocialClub · 23/07/2022 16:42

We’re in southern England, it’s been very hot and dry for the last few weeks. Unsurprisingly our lawn is now a yellowy brown colour. I expect when it rains enough later in the year it will return to being more green. But to me this is just how things are at the moment due to the changing climate.

Yet our neighbours on both sides seem to be in a panic about their yellowy brown lawns, and are spending hours each day watering their lawns with hosepipes in an effort to make them more green.

This seems like such a massive waste of water (and of time and effort). Yes I know there’s no hosepipe ban so they’re not doing anything illegal, but it feels like their behaviour is really misguided. The world is heating and the UK’s climate is changing incredibly quickly. Surely everyone is going to have to adapt their mindset, and part of that is accepting that your garden won’t look like it did 40 years ago?

Water is such a scarce resource, some countries already have wars and conflict brewing due to shortages, and these are only going to worsen. To be using so much water to artificially turn lawns in the UK green when we no longer have a climate that naturally supports this seems madness to me.

OP posts:
TrashyPanda · 24/07/2022 22:50

crosstalk · 24/07/2022 13:06

@TrashyPanda Most cricket clubs have - and watering the outfield hasn't been a thing for a long time IMHO. There is usually more than one wicket so you move to the less damaged/less dangerous when you can. Not sure about football but the pitch looked dry for most of the women's quarter finals. Golf is potentially the greatest disaster since it has the biggest footprint, and course designers take out trees - and greens aren't called greens for nothing + they are made with smooth short grass. Bowling greens another - perhaps we should just go for petanque?

There is a golf course in Death Valley.
you know - the place in the desert with about 2 inches of rain a year and where the current temp is 47.

it’s watered every single night for hours.

the good thing is that the coyotes come out at dusk and lick up the water from the grass.

oh well, here in the home of golf it has been raining hard, so no need for sprinklers today. It looks like it’s going to rain more tonight too.

PinkWisteria · 24/07/2022 23:17

Rain yesterday and today and our yellowy brown lawn is greening up already.

bluenameblue · 24/07/2022 23:30

InChocolateWeTrust · 23/07/2022 16:48

We water ours with grey water... do you have a problem with that?

Well that's not drinking water so no?
in fact it's great.

womaninatightspot · 24/07/2022 23:37

Loads of rain here so ours is super green, I would say it's a good idea to have a water butt or two if you want to water the garden through the summer.

AchatAVendre · 24/07/2022 23:40

How English suburban OP.

Scottish, but currently at my house in Normandy. The grass is very green here. Its well known that grass, as a grazing crop, is reliable and good despite hot summers in the northern half of France. Only in the south do they really struggle to grow grass in summer. But then it does grow the rest of the year when its generally too cold in countries like England.

Perhaps there is some special narrow belt between Watford and Dover where there is an arid, desert like zone of climate peculiarity in which normal summer droughts will lead to the eradication of grass as a crop?

Just use drainage pipes to a water butt to maximise rainfall the rest of the year like people do here.

DixonD · 24/07/2022 23:58

We’ve had one (very hot) spell.

Lawns have always been brown in summer. It’s not due to climate change. This is not the first time it’s happened.

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