Garden Lawns - Old fashioned?

[Fungkew]

I can’t help but think the lawn is primarily a waste of space.
Always strikes me as something people maintain to keep up appearances rather than something they actually want.
I hate seeing a ‘perfectly manicured’ lawn in the knowledge that it has most likely had no end of fertiliser, weed killer etc applied to achieve its perfect appearance. In my opinion they are very dated and the space could be put to far better use.
Hopefully younger generations will put this space to better use. Most people probably don’t even consider that grass seed is a plant that is supposed to grow tall, not have its head chopped off every couple of weeks. The clover that grows among it is natural. What’s with this horrendous human obsession with perfection. It’s just soulless and anti nature.
I hope that the younger generations replace it with something more useful and environmentally friendly, unlike their mindless predecessors.
Dont even get me started on artificial turf…

They're pretty handy if you have young kids.

I agree they shouldn't be perfect though. I love the moss on our lawn, it's always beautifully cool on hot days.

I agree that, to me, a lawn looks dated. We moved into a house with front and back lawns, and my dh is an excellent Gardener and has gradually crept into that space with so many better things. However, the green of a lawn is a wonderful colour and nice backdrop or frame for some things.

Our garden isn't huge, about 25 X 25 m but it's too big to have nothing but paving and flower beds. The grass is much lower maintenance than the flower beds and it's nice to sit on when the patio is too sunny.
We cut it regularly but it's not bowling green perfect. It doesn't get watered, it goes brown when it's dry but always recovers.

I think lawns are very practical when you have children - lots of running around space, ball games, paddling pools, tents, etc. Later on, revising on a blanket on the grass with friends.

Lawns are also easy - just mow once a fortnight and it looks quite tidy.

It’s possible to have a wildlife friendly, visually interesting garden as well as a lawn. I don’t see a reason to go either/or when you can have both.

I completely disagree @Fungkew . You try concreting over your lawn(s) or putting gravel down, and sticking a caravan - or cars on it - and you watch the price of your house drop.

It's a well documented fact (and people I know in the industry confirm this,) that people will be less attracted to a house that's had its lawns taken away - and just got flat concrete or paving or gravel all over the front.

I think lawns are beautiful. They're good for the environment and give a home kerb appeal, and it's an absolute travesty to take them away and replace them with concrete, paving, or gravel. Oh God, no. Don't do it! I can only surmise you have no driveway or a very tiny one to even suggest that lawns are a waste of space!

I mean, as for mowing the lawns; you only have to do it from April to October, and can easily get away with doing it twice a month and still have it look decent. If you CBA, then just get someone in to do it. Plenty of people outsource for jobs they don't like. Look at the amount of Mumsnetters who have cleaners! And who use nurseries and nannies and childminders.

And no, of course they are not 'old fashioned!' What an incredibly bizarre thing to suggest.

We have a concrete back yard. Id love a lawn.

Lawns that are real and not plastic or paved over are valuable in soaking up rain. There would be less flooding or other issues from water levels if people did not pave over their front garden to be a car park.

Same. The squirrels dog little holes to put nuts in too and then dig them up in summer.
We’ve added more flower beds this year.
We have DD so we do use that area for play also and DDog.

I like my back lawn. My cat and dc like playing on it, and I think it's really pretty because we let part of it grow long and mow a path through it, and I'd say at least 50% of the lawn is actually daisies, clover and dandelions. We have a lot of wildlife. I'm in a town. I also hate the over manicured look.

I'm less attached to the front garden and have turned it partly in to a vegetable patch.

I saw a stunning garden a few weeks ago with no lawn though. It was a very small city garden which had a raised bed in the middle surrounded by tubs, a circular paved path around it, and trees and flower beds all around the edges. Even a micropond. Incredibly well designed for the space, it was like a tropical oasis full of ferns and roses. Beautiful.

I have a small lawn. I used to do the feed and weed nonsense before I saw their promotional materials and realised I preferred the before picture to the after. It has been a few years now and is still stubbornly just grass despite my chucking around dandelion, clover and daisy seeds. I would much prefer it had more biodiversity.

where my pets can lie in the sun My cats choose to lie, not on the short grass, but in the long grass, where they each carve out their own sleeping hole and pretend they are the only cat in the world.

When I was a child in the 50s, our lawn, mowed probably every two weeks because my father found it a chore, had wildflowers, including mouse ear hawkweed, self heal, daisy, clover, buttercup, field woodrush, lady’s bedstraw, common mouse-ear, lady smock, ribwort plantain, hoary plantain, birds foot trefoil. I believe that was the foundation of my current love for and knowledge of wild flowers

Remembering my own childhood, I designed our garden to have lots of paths, including a “secret” path along the hedge which completely bypassed one section of garden to come out unexpectedly into the “woodland” (two mature flowering cherries and a couple of hollies). There was a short period when they played on the lawn, though the terrace was easier for tricycles and scooters, but by school age they’d abandoned it for all the more interesting nooks and crannies. So I moved the climbing frame into the “woodland” and that remained their outdoor base until they left home

Don’t know about decking, but gravel and patio don’t tie you toa tyranny if weekly mowing.

No problem with a flower rich short lawn, but a lawn regularly treated with weed and feed is not wildlife friendly

I can't get upset about lawns when, round here at least, the alternative seems to be plastic.

I encouraged our parks department (about 15 years ago now) to mow only once a year in the wilder parts of our local park. It’s turned out really well - the single marsh orchid that appeared about 7 years ago has increased to 79 flower spikes this year.

Another park in the centre of the town is managed almost entirely for nature. There’s a small mown field where dogs can be exercised, but otherwise it’s all wildflower meadow, stream, ponds, woodland, wetland, and is very popular locally. There is even a visiting kingfisher.

I love lawns, not perfectly manicured, but green and lush, I have clover on mine right now and it looks beautiful. I really like the contrast of the grass with the plants and trees in the borders, and the feel of grass in summer and the smell when it's cut. Also the way the lawn makes the garden bigger, I read Margery Fish's We Made a Garden recently and she explains this much better.

Ridiculous suggestion that a patch of grass is bad for the environment.

Mine is used for lounging and play. It’s literally a green patio, which sounds pretty eco friendly to me. You can’t put a sun lounger in a flower bed.

Why do you have ticks? They’re usually brought in by sheep and deer. Or do you have dogs?

I hate the concept that a lawn is 'old fashioned' or really the whole idea of fashion in gardens, suggesting that plants and landscaping must regularly be dug up and binned and replaced with something more fashionable.

We have quite a big lawn, no fertilizer or weedkiller. Looks nice, is practical, occasionally we set up a badminton net, paddling pool or similar on it, sometimes we move the table and chairs onto a shady patch when it's really hot (😭😭, not currently!) and it soaks up the rain beautifully, preventing flooding. What's not to like?

We inherited a garden with mature shrubs, trees and vegetable beds. DH deals with the vegetable beds, and put in a pond (no treatment or filters just a "wild pond" that has frogs and newts in it)

I am not green fingered at all, I'd sooner swap a few shrubs and trees for a bit more lawn as mowing the lawn is much easier than trying to keep loads of plants/bushes and trees under control! I find it overwhelming and a bit claustrophic in the summer when everything grows like crazy. In warm weather its much nicer to sit on a cool.lawn than on the patio. (Not been an issue this year!🤣)

Our garden is huge, a couple of acres, we have lawn, a lot of it, which is cut and maintained. No chemicals, obvs, it’s too big, and huge borders and beds. I like the lawn, and I shall be keeping it thanks.

A lawn which has been weed-killed to become a monoculture has very little in the way of diversity of organisms.

The OP is specifically talking about perfectly manicured lawns with not a weed in sight. So many of you who have leapt to the attack have been saying your lawn is full of clover, or parts are left unmown, or that you mow only once a fortnight - that’s not the sort of lawn she’s talking about.

To say that it’s either a perfectly manicured lawn maintained by loads of fertiliser and weedkiller OR concrete is nonsense. There are plenty of middle ways.

It’s not ridiculous at all. There are ‘tidy lawn’ obsessives who throw vast amounts of chemicals at it to ‘keep it neat’, use fuel in lawnmowers, and use sprinklers in dry weather, so its only environmental value in such cases is, as a pp said, is as a rain absorber. They’re ecological deserts. When I lived in a Midlands village (and had inherited a small front lawn I encouraged clover and wildflowers in) I had a succession of tradesmen arriving at the door offering chemical ‘lawn treatments’, and neighbours offering me weed killer. Given the English middle-class fiat against sitting in front gardens, I doubt many of them are used as ‘green patios’. And the alternative isn’t gravel, concrete etc.

can you make a point which rebuts the person, of course it’s a ridiculous suggestion and is good for the environment, just as some folks use chemicals doesn’t mean the majority do. Please rebut instead of going off on a tangent.

Yes, exactly. Just as there are with paved spaces. I’m experimenting with growing chamomile in the cracks of my paved area.