I Didn’t Cut My Suburban Lawn All Summer — Here’s Why

And it wasn’t to give the neighbours something to talk about.

By late spring, the yellow woodsorrel was the first to come alive and spread, a low ground cover, the density of the flowers was appealing to the eye, while the grass struggled to survive without intervention. (Photo: author)

I didn’t cut my lawn this summer, but instead grew a bumblebee garden.

My yard was a lush green meadow of mixed wildflowers by the end of the summer, all thriving in their natural environment. Untouched and unwatered, it was wild, though not too badly overgrown, and only a little chaotic

The seven main varieties of flowering weeds provided a bee oasis in the middle of a suburban desert. A day didn’t go by where there were no furry visitors floating around the yard.

The Weeds

Common yellow woodsorrel flourished in large patches as it crawled across the yard bearing dime-sized yellow flowers.

Chicory blue fringed the corner of the yard along the road, its tall woody stalks producing a violet flower more often seen in ditches along country roads.

Bladder compions, with their slender stalks and small white bells, filled the space left by the dying grass.

Tufted wetches grew nests of dark green that produced a delicate purple flower hanging from a short stalk.

White clover, a ground cover, spread too, mixing with the yellow woodsorrel to provide a lush green bed.

There were daisies and dandelions, too, along with others I never identified.

It was beautiful.

All of which would be fine if I lived in the country.

Suburban Blues

But in the suburbs, where everything needs to be just so, it probably wasn’t fine for everyone.

The painful stigma of not conforming in a subdivision is difficult to overcome. I was consciously aware of it as I let the weeds flower in the summer sun, hoping my ground covers would unify.

Letting the yard go in a place where some neighbours installed artificial grass or replaced grass with rockeries, was difficult. The more utilitarian neigbours paved large swaths of lawn to park a second or third car, likely didn’t understand me either.

The garden growers and yard keepers, draining vast amounts of water to keep their Kentucky bluegrass dreams alive, probably looked at my mess with disdain.

There was no grass in our yard. The soil, dry and hard, couldn’t sustain bluegrass without intervention, whereas the wildflowers flourished.

I was done trying to maintain a lawn anyway, so it was an effort I wasn’t willing to invest. But let me add, to avoid all pretension, I hate lawn care. I hate all it entails and would live a very happy life without another second of tending a yard.

The Cost of “The Yard”

There were two reasons I risked the glaring eyes of my neighbours this year. Both were environmental. The first one was the environmental cost of “the yard.”

The EPA estimated in 2006 that seven billion US gallons of water was used on outdoor yard and garden watering daily in the US. Canada is roughly 10% of the US population, so add 700 million gallons of water daily. Of that treated water, and estimated 30% went wasted to evaporation. Assuming watering mostly occurs in the five months from April to October, upwards of 1.155 trillion gallons of treated water is consumed annually, and of that, 3.465 billion gallons evaporates.

In 2011, it was estimated 26.7 million imperial tons of pollutants were emitted by lawn care equipment annually. Carbon alone accounts for 20.4 tons of pollutants. Overall, lawn care represented between 24–45% of all off-road gasoline use. The primary source of pollution came from two-stroke engines, long known for their dirty exhaust. With Canada, a further 2.67 tons is added making the bi-national total 29.37 million tons of pollutants annually.

This is not to mention lawn chemicals, which I’ve never used, that pollute the waterways it runs off into.

In many ways, the use of water and the release of pollutants were significant factors in my decision, but they weren’t why I let the yard grow.

I Did It For The Bees

A visitor, going about its day, saving humanity, one buzz at a time. (Photo: author)

Suburban landscapes are devoid of the wildflowers bees rely on for honey production. Sure, I could have planted a garden and achieved the same thing, but a garden is a consumptive luxury I have no interest in.

Of course, Bees just don’t pollinate wildflowers, but they support crop growth as well. Bees help feed us by being themselves.

To do that, bees need a clean, pollutant-free environment, and what better way to give them that than by not cutting my lawn?

As I cut my weeds back this past weekend with an electric weed trimmer, leaving the clippings to nourish the soil, I thought of the bees and hoped they wouldn’t be too put out as I prepare my yard for the fall’s leaves.

No-Mow Now

I know there are people who do this because there are always people who do these sorts of things. The “no-mow” natural lawn movement seemed like an obvious choice for me. And for anyone who thinks the environment matters more than what the neighbours think.

This year, in lockdown, it seemed like the only choice. A natural lawn, filled with bees speaks of hope and the future, and what better year to think of those things than this?

This year, taking less and giving more, even in a tiny way, seemed like the right thing to do.