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Living with Weeds

Dandelions, speedwells, clover, and a variety of other broadleaf plants or forbs often tend to associate with lawn grasses. In fact, Dr. Stephen Collins has recorded some 50 species in a typical non-herbicided lawn. Although the modify the textural pattern, these plants are green, add diversity, and stabilize the soil just as effectively as a monoculture of grass.

Occasionally certain species of weeds may become so abundant that some control may be desirable. Application of weed killers to do this necessitates the use of another chemical consuming energy and resources in its manufacture. Although the environmental hazards posed by these chemicals may be minimal when they are properly used, improper use has caused damage to desirable woody species, including neighboring trees.

In some cases the spread of dandelions is actually favored by the use of weed killers, since the openings in the turf provide sites for the establishment of dandelion seedlings as well as crabgrass.

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The Lawn

Warren G. Kenfield*

I really like lawns. They have the pure clean simplicity of a freshly painted floor, or a bolt of mono-colored cloth. I like them as I like sheathing evening gowns on other men's women, beautiful to look at, but horribly expensive to support. The economic theory of "cost vs. benefits" is apropos. I prefer a bed of moss, the subtle satisfaction of a stretch of periwinkle, or the inviting expanses of an unmowed grassland rippling in the breeze.

The Lawn is one of the most interesting sociological and psychological phenomena of our times. It is a sort of living fossil, having evolved several thousand years ago in the history of our Western European culture. Not a fossil in the sense of the coelacanth, which fish, until found recently off the African coast, had been considered extinct for 70 million years. It is still very much at home in those waters. Lawns, to the contrary, are kept alive only by an exorbitant amount of nursing and babying, otherwise they would disappear, to become as extinct as the dodo.

The Lawn arose early in our cultural history, certainly before the days of gardeners and landscape architects. When we first domesticated cattle, goats, and sheep, we kept them fenced and tethered close to the hearth. This action was to protect them from marauding animals, especially human neighbors. (The custom of fencing still persists, for though we have made the former animals extinct, the later still exist.)

Vegetationally, the practice was a logical and esthetic coincidence. The hooves of the animals compacted the soil to walkable firmness. By their excretions, a high fertility-level was maintained. By trampling, only grasses survived. By grazing, a close-cropped sward was maintained. The result: a Lawn, a beautiful expanse of emerald green.

Times have changed. The original top-soil has been exchanged for "fill," called top-soil by the man who sells it to you. The tethered front-yard cow has vanished, replaced by chemical fertilizers and herbicides (quite fine in their limited way) and by mechanical monsters (that keep the repair man busy, even when Junior does not pour water in the gas tank). The Lawn? A living fossil in a modern human zoo.

* The Wild Gardener in the Wild Landscape. The Art of Naturalistic Landscaping. Hafner Publishing Co., New York and London, 1966

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Fertilizer Use in Connecticut

"Of the total fertilizer used in Connecticut, nearly 40 percent is sold for nonagricultural purposes. Since much of this is used on lawns where the harvested crop is not utilized, such use may well be a significant source of nutrient pollution. This suggests that a tax on non farm fertilizer might reduce its use and thus reduce pollution from this source. At the very least, we can tell suburban homeowners that green lawns may lead to green lakes."

Frink, CR. 1971. Plant Nutrients and Water Quality. Agricultural Science Review 9 (2). Cooperative State Research Service, U.S. Dept. Agriculture. pp. 22-23.