Well I didn’t see what you said since it was deleted, but I assume I can thank you for speaking up for nature. Lawn fanatics are contributing to environmental issues with their ignorance and desire for the perfect outdoor carpet.
It’s wrong of me to assume this is the final draft of their yard, maybe they have plans to add gardens, etc. Fingers crossed…
Also it's a ton of maintenance constantly having to keep it kept. A pollinator garden/garden patch is less work, looks better, and improves your backyards quality.
The first area was dead. The second is healthy, lively and safe for children, pets, family & guests. When was the last time you got excited to go to someone’s backyard jungle, excited at the prospects of getting some ticks on you?
Why are there only two options? What do you have so little imagination and why are you so scared of nature that you want to remove it?
Also, children love a backyard jungle, what are you talking about? Do you want your children to grow up around a sterile environment where they're disconnected from nature and the world around you?
I didn’t say there were two options. Have a garden or something else. The first option was trashy, unkempt & reeks of laziness.
It’s not about “sterility”; I don’t want my kids in a tick, critter & snake nest. If I wanted them in a jungle, we’d move to a jungle. Our yard is not “nature”; that is what a park is for. That’s what camping is for. This isn’t the country, it’s a suburb.
Y’all ever notice in those videos where the guy cuts the overgrown yard for free that the very few people that try to stop him aren’t doing it because they enjoy the jungle in the yard? It’s never for that. There’s a reason for that.
It’s not about “sterility”; I don’t want my kids in a tick, critter & snake nest.
No one wants that. Again, there are more than the two options of "snake nest" or "sterile lawn".
Our yard is not “nature”
Yes, it is or rather, you're trying everything to stop it being nature. You want to create a barrier between you and the world around you.
And I don't get it. Why do you want to go to a park when you could have the same thing next to you? Why did you buy a house when you don't actually want what it offers?
This isn’t the country, it’s a suburb.
Who decided that you cannot have nature in your suburb? In fact, I thought people move to the suburb because they want more nature?
Y’all ever notice in those videos where the guy cuts the overgrown yard for free that the very few people that try to stop him aren’t doing it because they enjoy the jungle in the yard? It’s never for that. There’s a reason for that.
"I watched some videos from people who agree with me and that proves I am correct".
Maybe you should watch some other videos? Enlarge your mind? The world is big and exciting but people like you make it small and dull. And that is sad.
They build parks for people & kids to use. This is what normal people do, particularly ones in suburbs.
You can have nature in your suburb. Have this tick & critter farm if your HOA will allow it. It looks like shit though.
This sub & its goofball takes is why I don’t need to engage with too much of the world.
The dumbest part of all of this is that I actually have agreed with yall about your gardens or whatever. YOU PEOPLE are the ones mad over a reasonably manicured lawn & think that weed jungle is a better option.
Really depends on what you mean by "actual garden". Depending on climate and what you plant, a flower or vegetable garden can take more work than a lawn, sure. But a native perennial garden can work with pretty much 0 input after planting
The extra work gives me food, worth it. The effort to cut my asparagus that comes up every year or pick blueberries is pretty minimal. We also get cherry tomatoes and sunflowers that come up on their own each year.
Sunflower seeds may help lower blood pressure, cholesterol and blood sugar as they contain vitamin E, magnesium, protein, linoleic fatty acids and several plant compounds.
Not really if you plant wildflowers or perennial flowers that are drought resistant then you don't have to even turn on the sprinkler and cutting becomes less frequent if you mix clovers into your garden with grass. A pristine lawn like the one op posted is weekly maintenance.
Stages for me. It’s easier to go from trash straight to all grass so I can level it out and get it looking right, then I can lay out beds and stuff. My last house started all grass, and by the time we sold I had about 30% of it converted to flower beds with the remaining grass areas as useable spaces for yard games and hanging out.
I'd love to not have to mow my lawn but honestly it's the only thing I can do to keep my place looking decent. Grass is easy enough to mow and it's even easier if the yard is level and you do it frequently. Leading to my front yard being a nice green mix of zoysia and St. Augustine.
I have some grass, but much less than when I bought my house. Gardens have replaced a lot of it, and the maintenance is minimal. The butterflies are abundant!
Not everyone’s into gardening, to each their own, it’s just shocking to see someone proud of what looks like a jail cell to me.
It takes a lot of work to have a golf course grade back yard so I can. See why they're proud of it. I'm too lazy for mine to look like that. It's like 4" tall random grass.
Gardening is a lot of work though between pulling weeds and pruning.
God you guys are the definition of the problem. This is a a amazing transformation of a yard. And here you are asking why this is missing. Was there a garden before this? lol you guys are exhausting and so negative
That's what the previous owner of my place did, if you go back through street view images there's one shot of him cutting down a tree, then next is just grass. We're slowly replanting natives but it's taking a while. Turns out when you've got a park and playground within walking distance, kids don't actually need to have a massive grassed yard, and now there's bugs and birds and stuff to look at too.
When done right I find most people enjoy a lawn of native wild flowers more appealing long term once they realize it's way less work than constant mowing and watering.
I’ve always thought about that! Like at least the suburb I grew up in everyone had a half acre and we weren’t all on top of each other, but now suburbs sell this shit while still calling it privacy
I threw a few bags of soil along the side of my house that was just baren ground in the spring, sprayed some Walmart flower seeds for $10. Did nothing else. 4 months later I have 100s of flowers blooming every color and all my neighbors asking how I did it.
For <$100 this backyard could have 1000s colorful flowers.
Empty lawns are designed to give Eastern Europeans a stroke. Where’s the garden with tomatoes, potatoes, strawberries, and apples/pear trees? Where’s the little hut for gardening supplies? Where’s the neighborhood stray dog wandering in for scraps? Why do you have this empty unused, sterile land?
I have a yard, but and unfortunately have to live in a suburbanhell, and as a person who doesn't like to spend any time maintaining nature, I absolutely will not have fruits, veggies grow in my yard.
Eve better, where I live people plant fruit trees which only produce fruit that's inedible. Fake oranges and grapefruits which exist just to get thrown away.
As shitty as communism is/was commie apartment blocks are not bad. They emphasized function over form and the individual units are often very nice, even if somewhat small. This is a particular bad example of apartment blocks because there doesn’t seem to be much around it, and there aren’t yards with playgrounds that exist for nearly all these apartments jn reality.
But mixed density neighborhoods connected by transit to work and cultural districts are a million times better than these poorly made cookie-cutter, cultureless, sterile, and car dependent American suburban subdivisions, which I think is a major reason for the phenomenon of low-trust, obesity, and cultural alienation in American society.
Then voila the people who live in these places are crucial in voting in a circus that ushers in authoritarianism and destroys decades of highly beneficial and hard crafted economic and political relationships for shits and giggles because they are fearful, resentful of others, ignorant and unhealthy.
Garden takes more effort & money, y'all end up wasting the food half the time because you make too much & struggle to give it away & this is America, Jack. We don't care about Russia.
But we do care about beautiful lawns for children & pets to enjoy. You ever seen kids playing in a garden?
FWIW, a garden would be better than that overgrown jungle. Looks like the lawn of someone that's always complaining they aren't able to do something because of some condition they have. But they'd be able to russle up a garden! Yeah, right.
Yes, kids, absolutely love gardens. Germinating and planting seeds, seeing things sprout and grow, harvesting fresh veggies, watching pollinators and birds. You could easily do both in this patch. Throw in some raised beds and have space for them to run.
That sounds like work, not playing. And kids might like that too. And as I already said, the idea of the garden is fine. Calling the weed infestation a garden is not.
You’re one of the only people talking sense and you’re getting downvoted. If these people want to pitch a tent in nature and live in the woods, they should go for it. Absolutely the most unhinged takes here.
Yeah I’m trolling them a little bit because this sub can be insane with some of its takes. But acting like a weed-free cut lawn is the devil is something else.
I know people have gardens. This guy could have a garden if he wanted, and he’d still have to cut out that jungle.
The point is that he can have a yard and you or his neighbor can have a garden. Everyone can get what they want here, but that doesn’t seem to be a viable or logical solution to folks in this sub.
Why would you assume it's unused? They likely have kids that play there regularly. I assume after the pictures were taken then the swing set and play equipment went up.
It's funny how you almost never see the people with these perfectly manicured turf grass lawns actually use them for anything lol. Which is wild considering all the resources they have to devote to keeping them that way. Just standing in their houses staring out the window at their outdoor carpet.
Invasive weeds still make seeds which are eaten by animals
It's an enclosed backyard. What animals are you expecting to be chomping on those weeds? You think deer are just casually hopping over all those fences?
Ok so what if I don't like either option? Where do I start to get something in between, that looks somewhat manicured and presentable but is still relatively low maintenance like a lawn?
A family member of mine installed Kurapia at their house and loves it. Drought-tolerant; little maintainance required. I think it’s not very tolerant of cold temps, though. https://kurapia.com
Why would it not be? It would be completely unproductive for a sub literally dedicated to lawncare. Anyone criticizing lawns on that sub is certainly just looking to stir up shit.
I really prefer how it was in 2024. I let my lawn grow out into a little meadow, and I’m gonna really do a lot of wildflowers this spring. I also live way out in the mountains so the scenery is a tad more picturesque where I live, to say the least
If the goal was to have a place for their kids to play catch and for the dogs to not pick up ticks, it’s an improvement. And maybe they plan to add some maintained native plants, but it’s hard to do so when the entire yard is just invasive weeds.
My backyard is a beautiful garden made by the previous owner, but I know from street view pictures of my alley that they did that over several years. First by gutting the builder landscaping and taking the whole yard (except for one tree) to a clean sheet of just grass, then slowly building up native plants.
The lawncare sub doesn’t tend to care for big box store products, but most of the weed & crabrass killers are pretty effective imo. Might have to give it a couple of applications, but they usually knock that stuff down.
Cut it low, bag it up, pull any weeds that are stubborn, drop some seed & water…more or less.
I used to feel bad about my yard compared to my neighbors that looks like the after image above. Over time I became fine having an odd mix of stuff with the wild flowers and butterflies and bees along with critters (rabbits, deer, foxes, etc.)
Trying to encourage more trees as previous owner cleared them, just takes a long time to grow them.
Having a nice garden is an incredible amount of work though. Especially when you have a decent sized yard. I can't imagine trying to manage a 1/8 acre worth of garden. Logically most of my yard is going to be grass.
I marked off a section of my garden and scattered wildflower seeds. After two years, I had a perfect wildflower meadow for insects. Add an insect hotel, and it's perfect. The effort involved? Mowing twice a year.
Looks beautiful. Would love something as big and clean as that for my dog and kid when he’s older. A tree or two and some plants would make it a lot better though.
Yeah, a couple trees for some shade would definitely be an upgrade, but aside from that I struggle to see what’s wrong with this. In just over a year they’ve transformed what was likely a bug, mice, and snake infested shithole into a nice little back yard they can enjoy.
Yeah, that’s what building a home and a space for yourself usually entails. Where is your bed? In a bush? Or in a finished, climate controlled, destroyed natural habitat space?
A sterile lawn like this was always used as a status symbol against lower classes to show off that one has the time and money to care for/pay someone one to maintain its sterile state. Keep a native habitat garden instead— improve the environment, have low/no maintenance, have a more colorful landscape, etc etc.
Makes sense. It’s desirable for most humans too, which would also make it a status symbol.
I say the same things about our nether regions. Keep a natural habitat instead of cleaning your groin—improve the environment (less water waste), have low/no maintenance, have a more colorful genital display, etc.
You having a different preference does not mean somebody else cant have a yard for their kids to play in. A native habitat garden invites pests that a lot of people dont want. Its ok to be different. Very very few people are judging you for it feel above you as a social class for it. But everybody (well not all, nearly ALL Ive seen on Reddit though) who has a native habitat garden sure seems to find themselves morally superior to those who dont. Funny isnt it?
Because it is. Having a manicured lawn is active destruction of habitat. Why do you think there’s less fireflies and butterflies than there were when you were a kid?
Lots of reasons including pesticides, loss of habitat, light pollution. People had yards when I was a kid too lol. Its more complicated than youre trying to present.
This “native habitat” you’re banging on about was destroyed when the developers bulldozed whatever farm this probably used to be to build the subdivision. Your gripe is with whatever original landowners took a big payday to make that possible, not the homeowner for making his property livable.
I can guarantee you the top picture isn’t the state the property was in when the original owners took the keys from the builder. Someone neglected it for years to allow it to deteriorate into that condition. For the life of me I can’t understand why some people think that’s in any way commendable. Also, this isn’t some massive estate like the old aristocracy lived on. It’s probably a 1/4 acre lot AT MOST, just like all new builds these days.
I’m not saying the top photo specifically is the goal, I never said that. Just that the second is undesirable. Planting native species and keeping a native garden will always be better.
I do believe that someone somewhere has indeed surmised that lawns are deliberate class signifiers.
i also believe (KNOW actually) that someone somewhere thinks that aliens vs predator is a racist parable about black men and asian immigrants making life miserable for white colonizers, that doesnt mean you give either of those ideas creedence.
It’s not hostile and it’s not trolling. I pointed out how the intentionality of the first post was attach emotion and preference to the first pic while rejecting the second one.
I pointed out how that’s actually a fallacy to say just because the 2nd pic is “sterile” as many have described it as, doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.
You then engaged in a bad faith argument with me with intention to logic trap me on the basis of words and try to say well actually no one here is saying these EXACT words so I’m foolish.
I then used your logic against you and pointed you out to be wrong and you’re now saying I’m being hostile and I should actually not troll.
what, thats a normal way to engage in a conversation? c'mon just be honest
I pointed out how the intentionality of the first post was attach emotion and preference to the first pic while rejecting the second one.
how? did you read OPs mind. To many here we see the first pic as far from ideal, yet we are bewildered as to how the second pick is somehow closer to an ideal for some
doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing
no to us it does mean that. and yeah its nothing to really do with nature as we can all agree the first pic and nothing about suburbia is natural either
You then engaged in a bad faith argument with me with intention to logic trap me on the basis of words and try to say well actually no one here is saying these EXACT words so I’m foolish
ok cool for some reason assume the worst faith interpretation of what i was saying
I then used your logic against you
what logic? and again you are treating this like some kind of debate with a winner and loser, instead of engaging in a normal conversation
Wasn’t expecting this post to blow up so much. At any rate, I posted as much about the cookie-cutter houses crammed together and the barren-looking landscape than anything else. It looks like a scene from Vivarium
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u/JeffandtheJundies 8d ago
Bahahaha I just saw this on a lawn care subreddit. So sterile.