Are you planning to mow the lawn over Waitangi weekend?
You might want to rethink your plans after listening Dr Bruce Burns, a plant ecologist at the University of Auckland.
It's time to rethink how often you mow - and there are financial and environmental benefits to not mowing your lawn so often, he says.
Let go of the obsession with a close cropped lawn, he tells Kathryn Ryan.
Photo: Pexels
I am thinking that we could back off from a number one haircut and let a little bit of wildness into our lives in cities.”
The reason for that is to reduce the costs and increase the benefits of lawns, he says.
Cumulatively lawns add up to a vast amount of space, Burns says.
“We're dealing with about 15 to 20 percent of the urban landscape.
“And if you take that over the area of Auckland, for instance, that adds up to about 150 to 200 square kilometres of grassland that's managed in the Auckland area.
“If you want some context, that’s about the size of the Waitakari ranges.
Undoubtedly lawns give us many benefits, he says.
“Particularly in the pandemic that we're just experiencing, they become a lot more important to us.
“But on top of that, they do have a number of ecosystem services; as plants they provide us with oxygen, they take up CO2, but also things like storm water management, they help take in water reducing runoff into our streams.
So, they have an effect on water, an effect on air, they have an effect on our biodiversity as well.”
But the costs can be high, he says.
“I have a PhD student working with me, she did a survey of how much Aucklanders spend on lawn management over a year and if we take those figures and extrapolate, Auckland is spending about $131 million a year in terms of lawn management.”
Then there are environmental costs, he says.
“We often irrigate lawns and with climate change drying out parts of the country, that freshwater used on lawns is going to be more and more precious.”
Selwyn District Council found one hour of watering your lawn was the equivalent of one day of household use of water, he says.
Petrol mowers ae heavy polluters too, he says.
“Emissions that come from that can be substantial, not as much as cars, but up to 5 percent of emissions can come from lawnmowers on a normal weekend.”
And that pleasant cut grass smell might be hiding something more sinister, he says.
“Actually those chemicals that are released, volatile gaseous chemicals can combine with CO2, things in the air and increase air pollution.”
There are direct financial costs as well, he says with ACC paying out $20 million a year for lawn mowing related injuries.
So what can we do to create a nicer space that isn't quite so rigorously coiffed?
“Perhaps there are areas in the garden you might want to leave unmown or mown less frequently, for periods of time and actually get to know what actually does come up in your garden.”
Control of bad weeds is still required, he says.
“I'm saying not mowing is an excuse for neglect.”
Embrace the meadow, he says.
“It's amazing how much invertebrate life and pollinator life can spring up when a meadow is allowed to flourish.”
We tend to think of the lawn as a green extension of the house, he says.
“They're not, they're actually ecosystems that have lots of interesting species.”
And that diversity is surprisingly high.
“In a Christchurch study they found over 300 different species of plants in those lawns, some of those grasses But there's a wide range of species, some of them native species actually come into lawns as well.”
