Leave your leaves alone! Leaf blowers, like lawn mowers, are counterproductive to a productive piece of land. If you want a better, healthier, garden next year then you should let leaves lie over winter instead of blowing them away (the same is true for lawns, but you probably don’t have
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Things Are Good: To Avoid Pests in the Summer Stop Mowing Your Lawn
Lawns are great for pests and horrible for the environment. Yards with clover and less need for mowing favour friendly insect species and help the environment. The situation is clear and the solution is obvious: stop mowing your lawn. You don’t need to take my word for it, you can
Continue readingThings Are Good: No Mow May 2022
It’s now may and many of you want to get outside to start making your lawn the most beautiful in the neighbourhood. Relax. Go easy with everything and you will find that your lawn will be better than ever. This spring, being lazy with your lawn is the best thing
Continue readingThings Are Good: Nevada to Ban Lawns
Lawns are the manifestation of human environmental hubris, and it’s hurting all of us. Regular readers of Things Are Good know that lawns are bad for a myriad of reasons (see links below for more info), and municipal leaders have caught on to this too. In the warmer, dryer areas
Continue readingThings Are Good: Join the No-Mow May Campaign
Pollinators love the spring and they love your lawn….until you cut it. Spring time is when pollinators need a quick get up and go meal, which usually comes from those peppy plants popping through your lawn early in the season. You can help pollinators survive the spring by just being
Continue readingThings Are Good: Stop Mowing Your Lawn to Save the Planet and Your Time
Lawns are unnatural and require a lot of maintenance, so why do we have them? As a non-lawn person I just don’t get the appeal of a lawn when there are so many better alternatives which require less work to maintain. It turns out I’m not the only one baffled
Continue readingScripturient: Dandelions and civilization
Whenever I see a lawn with dandelions, I think, “This is the home of civilized people. This is the home of people who care about the environment and their community. This is where bees are welcome.” When I see a monoculture lawn, bereft of weeds or dandelions, I think, “Here
Continue readingThings Are Good: Gardening for Beginners
Stuck inside due to the coronavirus? Why not learn to garden so when the good weather comes you can socially isolate yourself while also feeding yourself? Rob Greenfield was nervous and hesitant gardner when he started and wants you to know that it’s ok to be intimidated by growing your
Continue readingPostArctica: Readings of Gordon Matta-Clark
Very hot afternoon. There were some readings of the artist Gordon Matta-Clark‘s notes and letters on the lawn of the Canadian Centre for Architecture today. Really interesting despite the heat.
Continue readingThings Are Good: Worried About Mass Extinction? Kill Your Lawn
A UN report released today reveals that 1 million species a threatened with extinction thanks to human actions (as in YOU!). The most effective thing we can do is vote out politicians who hate the future, but that takes time and we need to act now. Immediately you can stop
Continue readingThings Are Good: The Oppression of Lawns
The concept of a lawn at a residence has a short, but rich, history. Basically, the rich had large estates and to demonstrate their wealth they had large swaths of land not used for cultivation. Today there are still people trying to show off their wealth by owning large lands of uselessness. Things seem to […]
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Continue readingThings Are Good: Look at This Landscaping Called Xeriscaping
California is suffering a huge drought due to horrible water use policies and climate change. For some reason people love to have lawns where they naturally shouldn’t exist, this itself leads to massive water wastage and arguably microclimate issues. Thankfully, perhaps people are beginning to understand that their landscaping is
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