The typical Australian lawn is under threat.
Just take a look at the latest in residential design and you'll likely notice a few interesting changes to our private green spaces.
The first is the revived appreciation for native Australian flora and water-sensitive gardens — our bush gardens are creeping closer to our houses and minimising the lawn area.
And, as our landscape infiltrates how we design our houses things like internal courtyards or copious indoor plants — where the green is anything BUT grass — are becoming a popular feature.
Simultaneously at the very other end of the spectrum, the maintenance-free promise of synthetic lawn or artificial turf also seems to be taking root in our suburban dream.
The quick-fix green carpet promising weekends without mowing, with the look (from a distance) of lawn, is a time-saving viable alternative for some.
Combine that with the ever-shrinking land-to-house size ratios of our newer developments and it seems the future of the lawn as we know it is not looking healthy.
While this flies in the face of the cultural expectations of our Australian suburban dream, the change is already underway and, hear me out, is actually a good thing.
Real vs fake grass
If "Should I have a lawn?" was a technical question it'd be easy, the answer would be a definitive "No".
And it doesn't matter whether you choose real or fake grass as they both have serious sustainability, cost and maintenance issues to answer to.
With natural grass we:
- Pour billions of litres of (mostly) drinkable water on them
- Use nasty pesticides and chemical fertilisers to make sure they look as good as possible
- Needfossil-fuelled mowers to keep them neat while they turn vibrant ecologies into deadening monocultures
If you're going the synthetic route you:
- End up with the feel of plastic underfoot
- Have nasty recycling issues to address
- Get no bio-climatic or carbon benefit and,
- End up with significantly higher surface temperatures (no good for a planet that's getting warmer)
Research from Australia and abroad points to the reality that we need to get rid of our lawns and their toxic maintenance regimes as quickly as possible as a serious act of climate salvation.
But the idea of having a lawn at all is a more complicated topic than just sustainability.
Indeed, as it turns out the issue with the suburban lawn is all about appearances — let me explain.
Lawns are an import
There is nothing "natural" about a lawn as we know it. It's a cultural billboard and one that's arguably out of date (more on that later).
And as the idea of "business as usual" in all things home building is being challenged, it's the whole idea of having a lawn that's now under the microscope.
Lawns, and the aristocracy they represented, were imported much like many other garden staples to Australia from England and Europe (very different climates) and quickly became status symbols of the middle class.
Legendary Australian architect and writer Robin Boyd neatly summed it up, saying that starting in the 1930s"The hedge behind the front fence went, and with it, all pretence that the front garden was a living space. It was frankly an exhibition piece".
In this way of thinking, front lawns have been ornamental for the last 100 years or so, having no practical use (except maybe to distance us from the footpath or for a trampoline or an extra parking space).
They're there to communicate a sense of social standing through the rigour of the associated maintenance regime.
As a symbol, your front lawn was meant to say a lot about you – neat and tidy was a sign of a moral household and good citizenship, unkempt showed you were a ring-in, just passing through or worse … a renter!
But what if the very idea of good citizenship is evolving?
That it now includes concern for the ecological footprint of our private green spaces.
And takes on board the lessons learned from thousands of years of caring for country practices by our First Nations people. Practices that actually work with our climate, not against it.
As a symbol of civic pride and responsibility, the lawn itself no longer has the moral high ground or the same community connotations it had in the 50s.
And if all this is sounding a bit woke for you, just think of the costs of maintenance in time and dollars.
Hopefully, with all that now in mindit might be more understandable that the space inhabited by the typical front lawn is being put to higher and better uses.
Loading Instagram content
What about the backyard?
It's here that things get even more complex as there are (arguably) few stronger symbols of what it means to be Australian than the backyard.
As author Catriona Elder describes: "The backyard is drawn on to produce one of the most potent narratives of non-Indigenous belonging."
But even here, the lawn itself is being pushed out by paved pizza oven patios, pools, hard standing for boats, jet skis and sheds, and decks of all shapes and sizes on ever-shrinking blocks.
Recent research shows our average block size has shrunk considerably (13 per cent) over the last 10 years, while our house size has only marginally reduced (one per cent) over the same period.
It's not surprising then that many new home and land packages sold on the outskirts of our capital cities are in the process of minimising anything that looks like it might need an edger.
Instead, they favour a boundary-to-boundary building with a fluorescent synthetic grass patch between the front door and the curb (there are no footpaths anymore!).
All this, mind you, against the advice of health practitioners, environmental specialists and designers — pretty much anyone involved with thinking about the built environment we live in.
Another argument in the "ditch lawns" column is that our families tend to use them less and less.
Instead, we're occupied by in organised play and regimes of homework, after school care, longer working hours and digital entertainment.
Add to that the reality that a significant proportion of Australians are now imagining a future in apartment living and it's clear to see a lawn of our own is an idea that is dying off under the weight of contemporary life in Australia.
Ok, so if we're getting rid of real lawns and steering away from the fake stuff, what do we put in instead?
Return of the bush garden
If we are to imagine a new model of sustainable lawn in Australia then we're talking about upgrading one of our most potent national symbols and tinkering with how we unconsciously let the world (neighbourhood) know we're Australian.
Interestingly things are already changing … organically (sorry I couldn't help myself!).
A scan of contemporary design awards shows the replacement of large sections of lawn across private and public buildings with native gardens.
It's a trend that arguably hasn't happened as conspicuously since our embrace of the Australian bush in the 1960s.
The Sydney School of Architecture from the 60s, also known as the "Nuts and Berries" movement of the time, prioritised building with the bush, not landscaping over it.
Seems this is a lesson it's taken us a while to learn.
But this move away from the lawn is not just for aesthetics.
People are replacing the ornamental, English-inspired, lawns with something that brings back a practical dimension.
Opting for larger gardens created with water-sensitive alternatives like native plants (including native grasses that don't require mowing), landscaping is being put to work to cool the air around us, all the while promoting rich natural ecologies and creating useful shaded surfaces.
A garden with no, or low, maintenance, little water usage, that supports native ecologies (and we need a strong ecology) … what's not to like about that? Seems both the environment and our weekends can be saved in one move!
But if our lawns are an endangered species, where will the kids play? Where will we read a book on a sunny afternoon, I hear you ask?
A potential by-product of losing the lawn could be a shift in the way we value public parks and sports fields, where grass is still the order of the day.
Their value as recreational spaces and as the precious community assets they are becomes even more obvious.
If this is where we go to kick a ball or walk the dog, all in the company of others, perhaps our private lawns run the very real possibility of being "rewilded", not just with low maintenance native gardens, but with a growing sense of community when we arguably need it most.
Now what could be more Australian than that?
Anthony Burke is a professor of architecture and the host of ABC TV's Grand Designs Transformations and Restoration Australia. You can stream both now on ABC iview.
Posted, updated
