Gardener, Spare That Lawn!

No doubt that planting season is well and truly here. Like the first flies, so are those earnest worthies convinced that the way to alleviating world hunger, rising food prices, carbon footprints and assorted other problems is urban agriculture. Rip out the front lawn. Plant in its place vegetables and fruit. Thus the mantra of the self-proclaimed enlightened. Pro and con . . .

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Lawns use copious amounts of water. So do vegetables and fruit, perhaps even more so – a single tomato plant requires two gallons of water per day. Lawns use fertilizer. Again, so do vegetables and fruit – and, incidentally, organic-based fertilizers can pollute every bit as efficiently as chemical forms; ask the survivors at Walkerton, Ontario. Lawns serve no useful purpose. In fact, turf is highly efficient in controlling erosion, year-round. What is going to prevent soil washing off the front garden into the municipal drains? Homegrown vegetables are healthier. Not when grown where grass was holding back lead from gasoline and other pollutants, or where dogs have done – and do – their business Urban front lawns are often heavily shaded by trees (the “urban canopy” promoted by environmentalists), making them useless for growing vegetables and fruit which require 6 to 8 hour sun a day The same trees suck moisture from the soil and their roots interfere with vegetable growth Fruit trees, for numerous cultural reasons, actually do best growing through turf – and their roots can also likewise interfere with vegetables planted close to them There are many perfectly good gardening reasons for eschewing urban front lawns. Likewise there are many excellent substitutes. Given the choice, 18th-century English labourers developed the cottage garden full of flowers. It was left to Marxists to create a workers’ paradise where food supplies were so undependable that in consequence gardens became potato patches. In Hindu belief, the Juggernaut was the eighth avatar of Vishnu whose idol at Puri, India, was mounted on an enormously heavy wagon. Devotees hurled themselves under its wheels to be crushed. The similarity to wannabe food faddists is perhaps just coincidental . . .