Lawns are an outdated cultural norm. Let’s lose them — before we lose the pollinators
In Canada, there are about 6.2 million lawns. If one of those is yours, count yourself part of a long history rooted in wealth and status. But what once stood as a symbol of being rich enough to hold land and not farm it is today an outdated cultural norm — one that’s doing a disservice to us and the species that support us.
In 17th-century England, only affluent landowners could afford a turf grass monoculture, maintained by animals at first, and then increasingly by poorly paid workers. Lawns were meant to differentiate the aristocrats from the farmers and became one of the first signs of society’s mass acceptance of waste. After all, the land was just being held for display.
