in praise of the wild edges
a broken lawnmower and the cult of suburban groundskeeping
I’ve long-neglected this little section of my Substack writing empire (😏) and I feel myself waxing nostalgic for my old bloggy home, Three Ravens. I created this section as a way to experiment in what I would (very) loosely define as nature writing. To be honest, I’m only vaguely sure of what nature writing actually is - I mean, I’m sure there are some Rules about it somewhere, but I haven’t bothered to read them. Anyway, I hope to write here at least once a month from this point. If you’re not interested in this branch of my work, you can click on “manage your subscriptions” and toggle your notifications accordingly. Nature, however, is one of the foundations upon which all of my writing is built, so there’s that.
A couple of weeks ago, I broke the lawnmower. I’d like to say that it was purely accidental, and it mostly was, but I suspect there was some subconscious element at play as well. It was already a little bit broken, the lever that raised it up and down snapped off and so it was stuck on the lowest-to-the-ground setting. I never used that setting, for the simple reason that the ground here is very lumpy and bumpy (lots of subterranean tree roots and rodent highways, not to mention frost-heave and other natural occurrences) and it would get stuck on said lumps and bumps, requiring a great deal of heft and haul to move it along. My much-battered neck and shoulders do not appreciate that type of yanking and shoving so when I accidentally ran over a drain cover and broke the blade, well…I was only a tiny bit sad.
We live on a corner lot so we have a front garden, two ‘side’ gardens (known as the ‘main garden’ and ‘orchard’) and also the boulevard, which is technically town property but we’re responsible for keeping it mown. That’s a lot of grass.
Well, it was when we moved in - there’s a lot less of it now.
I know, you might be thinking “Bloody hell what an unholy mess!” - and you might be right, it’s definitely not looking its best right now1…and then again, who’s to say what ‘looking its best’ should even be?
Hence, my current ruminations on suburban groundskeeping.
If you were to take an aerial photo of our little corner of the neighbourhood, our house would be immediately recognizable in a “one of these things is not like the other” way. Everyone in our immediate area is fond of rolled, ‘weed’-free, closely trimmed lawns with the occasional raised veg bed and seasonal flowerbed. Which is fine, we all have our capacities and for some people, gardening isn’t something they enjoy or have the ability/desire to undertake.
However.
And you just knew there’d be a ‘however’…
Why is it that the accepted norm is the aforementioned bowling green lawn? I mean, who decided that? I feel like it was the same people who spearheaded the smear campaign against dandelions — which I suspect was Big Pharma who, as you may or may not know, all have agricultural divisions which all manufacture pesticides/herbicides. Need I say more?
Here, and in most other municipalities, we have by-laws about how long you’re allowed to let your grass get. I once tried to naturalize the boulevard (in case that term is a Canadianism, I’m referring to the strip of grass that runs between the sidewalk and the road) and got a naughty-note in the mailbox threatening a fee added to our property taxes if I didn’t mow it. Fighting that particular by-law is on my to-do list. That strip of green was populated by ox-eye daisies, white and red clover, wild bergamot, Queen Anne’s Lace, wild chicory, various grasses and asters…it was beautiful and the insects certainly enjoyed it. While it lasted, anyway.
The thing that does my head in is that there’s so much brouhaha about saving the pollinators and protecting habitats and yet one of the easiest things we can do is to stop manicuring our lawns and let the ‘weeds’ grow. We could even go one better and if everyone donated the money they spend on weed-killer and fertilizer and gas for their lawnmower (or on their landscaping service) to a charity of some kind, imagine the good that could do?
I may be preaching to the choir here, many of you came over from my old blog and so know my feelings on these sorts of things, but now that we live in a town rather than the country, I see this foolish behaviour happening all around me and I want to bang my head in frustration.
Case in point: there’s a Virginia Creeper growing along the chain link fence that separates one of our neighbours yard from ours. It was here when me moved in, planted by the previous-previous owner, and I’m the first to admit that it’s a thuggish creature. It really has no sense of decorum and will spread wildly in any and all directions with great enthusiasm. It has been a bit of a trial at times, but nothing a bit of hard pruning can’t handle. And, the berries it produces are a great favourite of the birds as they fuel up for their migration flights in the autumn.
WELL.
Over the weekend, my neighbour decided to ‘give it a trim’, which is to say, hack it all down.
Thankfully, I’ve let it expand to areas beyond the fence2.
It’s behaviour like that which makes me despair at having to live among other humans. I’m sure she thought she was doing something nice but…
Sorry, back to the point…
The death of the lawnmower has me considering the ways in which I may have internalized some of the nefarious lawn-cult messaging. As the front lawn became more and more bedraggled-looking3, I could feel myself getting a tiny bit anxious. I would compare it to the lawns around us and start feeling the silent peer pressure. I’ve always let the edges around our main garden and the orchard naturalize — for a multitude of reasons — but the front-facing lawn has always been more or less conventionally managed. Even so, I would mow around the clumps of ox-eye daisies that sprouted up in the spring and my flower beds are rather more rampageous than standard suburban issue. Still, the unspoken Rules were niggling at me and I really had to tolerate my distress over the whole thing…all the while, the purples and yellows and white blooms of various ‘weeds’ were producing a lively carpet of colour.
In the end, it was my husband who caved first - and I concede to his wish for a presentable front-facing view - and asked a co-worker who has a side-gig cutting lawns to do ours. So now we’re neat and trim and up to code again.
The main garden, though? It’s getting a bit wild out there. I used the strimmer to take down the tallest bits but now I’m challenging my perceptions about what I think looks ‘tidy’.
When we lived in Troy, we mowed ‘desire paths’ through the long grass and it was so lovely to have the wildness all around us as we walked. I’m also thinking of wildflower meadow seeds and how that might work…as well as the tucking in of more native shrubs. We visited a pollinator meadow earlier this week and it’s given me lots of ideas.
The changing climate is challenging me to tend my garden in different ways. Longer, colder springs, followed by extreme heat, humidity and unreliable rainfall means the way I grew things, even the four years ago of my first growing season here, hasn’t been working. Add to that, it’s a whole different climate entirely to the one I was used to in Troy - and we’re less than two hours away from there, geographically. I’m wondering what, if anything, an adjustment to mowing practices might force upon me. It’s a bit exciting to think about.
We’re going to have to buy a new lawnmower at some point — it makes no sense to pay to have the front cut by someone else — but in the meantime, I’m going to reflect on how I can perhaps change how I do things in a way that benefits both this patch of earth and my dodgy shoulder. 😉
How about you? What are your thoughts on suburban groundskeeping? Drop a thumbs-up emoji in the comments if you’re pro-dandelion. 😉
a dearth of rain and a lull in blooming times..and also my penchant for a wildly overgrown aesthetic. There are several vegetable plots, herb patches and berry bushes in there…in amongst the various shrubs and flowers etc.
It’s a tenacious sort of person and will be back in full force, probably before the end of the summer so I’m not too worried. It was the principle of the thing…
it’s only the ‘weeds’ that are growing right now…we haven’t had much rain and there isn’t much actual grass in our lawn anymore
Dandelions grow in disturbed areas, so having them in a lawn is usually a sign that the soil is trying to heal. Their roots dig deep and bring up nitrogen. I'm pro dandelion. I still mow many of the areas around our house because we have a lot of invasive species, like Privet and Wisteria. They would take over if I didn't mow. But we have 6 acres and most of it is not mowed, so there’s a balance. I think the goal in more suburban areas is to keep things tidy - looking like someone lives there. And I can see both sides of this mow or don't mow issue. Lawn mowing gives people a sense of control. An overgrown lawn makes people feel a bit overwhelmed and like things are out of control. So, they mow. "I can't control the news cycle or the bills that keep pouring in, but I can maintain this green patch in my yard." I work in a hardware store and we have a lawnmower/outdoor power equipment shop that is a major part of the business. Lawnmowing is part of our culture. Without a major cultural shift it won't change. I recently signed our property up for Greg Tallamy's Home Grown National Park. Have you heard of this? Maybe it's just in the U.S.?Wild gardens are a good thing. But tidy is suburban. A sense of controlled tidiness is suburbia. And many people move to the suburbs because they are subconsciously afraid of the wild and untamed. Can't believe the people asking how to get rid of frogs at my work. Ugh!! They're afraid of snakes, of bugs, of whatever. (I call aisle 26 the death aisle.) But I try to drop subtle hints about the balance of everything when people come in for their snake-away. I've had some good conversations and some that ruined my day or week. Okay, so this a long comment, but this is in my wheelhouse and I feel like I work (job work) in the paradox of this situation. I think it's about balance. Especially in suburbia, some clean areas with defined flower beds. In the end, as we know suburbia is a myth, we can't escape nature. We just have to keep trying to shift the culture, but I fear it's late in the game. The climate has shifted and our insect populations are dwindling. We can do small things that hopefully multiply into big things in our private yards. In the end, your feeding the birds and the pollinators that will give us a future. Good for you. ♡♡♡
The before and after photos! Made my heart so happy. Thank you for reclaiming the wild in your wee space there. Such lusciousness for the eyes, I can only imagine what it must be like to actually be amongst it. In our dry, hotter and hotter summers in California my yard looks pathetic since I barely water. Worrying about what the neighbors think is def in the back of my mind more than I’d like. So I feel you. Native and drought tolerant plants and butterfly and hummingbird landscaping are on my wish list. If only I were a more passionate gardener. Or richer. 🤪😂😁