No one. It started out as a status symbol, to show off that you can afford have a bunch of empty space in your yard as opposed to using it (for buildings or growing food) and the time to/the ability to have a servant maintain it, and unfortunately now you’re excepted to waste time and water in order to do ecological damage.
Manor lords who want to see attackers coming from a distance. Requires a few dedicated serfs for all the scything, but such is the cost of protecting one’s estates.
Werent it more a flex how rich you were?
“See that lord over there. He is so rich he does not even need to use all off his land for agriculture.”
In the 20th century it morphed into a marketing gimmick to sell lawn equipment, fertilizer and products to maintain a perfect manicured lawn
“See Mr Jones next door. He is so rich that he can afford to have a perfect cut grass lawn with no dandelions in it”
If you have kids It’s helpful to have an open, flat area for them to run around on. It doesn’t need to be (just) grass, but that’s probably the most robust, and least likely to have sharp surprises, option.
You’re talking about a shared park. A much better use for land instead of a hoarded, fenced lawn.
Parks are great, but unless they’re directly outside the houses where I can keep an eye on what’s happening they’re not as safe or convenient. Being able to send the kids into the garden to run off some energy whilst I’m in the house doing something, and being reasonably confident that they’re safe is a huge benefit.
That’s certainly not impossible with a bit of sensible planning around how housing is laid out, putting clusters of housing directly around a shared green space, but it is rather challenging to retrofit in existing conurbations, and impossible in more spread out communities. The American style of huge featureless lawns surrounding the house right up to the property boundary are pretty awful, but the more European style of a bit of lawn surrounded by flower beds and maybe trees is rather better.
But there are other people in parks. Why the fuck would I want to deal with their bullshit when I can just have my own park?
Yeah I can’t believe some of these replies. Living on open land is the shit. It’s such a dystopian attitude, to want to be stacked up on each other like that. I hate apartments. Even suburban neighborhoods are too much for me anymore anymore. I’m living rural and I don’t want to leave. Few neighbors spread out. Not that far from town, 30 min to most stuff.
It’s so you can plant stuff there to defend your house from zombies
I need to to tell the kids to get off it!
Keeping the weeds out of a rock garden is annoying too I’ve found. The best way to do nothing is plant pine trees, everything under them dies lmao.
Backyard lawn gradually gets replaced by fruit trees and garden.
If the area is dry enough, the trees will barely survive and make sure nothing else will. If it’s slightly wetter, you’ll still get plenty of small shrubs and other hardy plants.
I’ll take one.
Goats.
Goats will only eat grass if there are no other green plants accessible.
How about sheep then?
Sheep won’t do that voluntarily either I think, grazing animals need a variety of plants to be healthy.
Cut down all the rest of the shrubbery.
Why, you got one you don’t want? Lawns are the shit. And not like suburban lawn. I mean, like a couple acres*, at least.
I can’t believe some of these replies… crazy.
I hate grass, I hate mowing it and the free time that eats. Its useless
I’m slowly deleting patches by installing garden beds and pathways with things that are useful to me and wildlife and don’t need constant maintenance.
My dream is to strip off the top layer of most of the yard and put down some grasses that don’t grow above 4-6 inches and other ground cover between my garden beds.
I grew up mowing and hating mowing the lawn. Now that I’m an adult, I mow it exactly once a year. In fact, less than that because one of my partners and I alternate each year.
It gets pretty and nice and like 2 feet long like a natural forest with buzzing bees and the critters love it, then mow it and it dies for the year. Done.
It’s a pity that we have to mow it at all, though. When the early summer sun hits low through it and you can see how much life is in it, it’s like a dream… Then it gets killed and I remember I live in the United States.
I have 600mq of “lawn”. Its actually native grass that I need to keep trimming 6 months per year. I only water some flowers and plants I added to a specific area for the wife, and only like two months every year if it doesn’t rain.
Lawns sure are weird :3
and ugly and wasteful and horrible for biodiversity
If you’re in the Americas, grass isn’t even native to your country, please try to find alternatives!
Fun fact, grass lawns got started by English aristocracy who could afford to waste land on nothing. It was a status symbol for rich people that got copied by people trying to look rich. Do everyone a favor and renaturalize your yard.
Grass is a category of plants (over 10000 species). Americas had grass before Europeans came.
Ok if you want to get all technical sure, but the types of grass people use to have those luscious green lawns aren’t native to the Americas.
