With Spencer Shaw
One of the greatest causes of the ecological damage that we are often blind to, is our obsession with the lawn. In Urban, Suburban and Residential Rural areas the lawn is king. Vast swathes of lawn may look attractive and appeal to certain needs, deep within our psyche, but not only are they a massive drain on our resources – through the fuel and machinery required to create and maintain them, but they also have a heavy impact on our environment through use of chemicals, fertilisers, and the carbon and noise emissions.
That said, areas of lawn can be very useful for recreation and amenity values, but do we really need quite as much as some acreage blocks generate. Instead of scattered clumps of trees amongst our vast artificial grass lands, wouldn’t it be nice to see scattered grassy clearings amongst ecologically diverse and complex forestlands. The challenge for us all, is to turn some of our acreage blocks back into forest, saving time and resources on mowing, and in turn create and share habitat with our native wildlife.
So, to make this a reality my suggestion is that we learn to do a little less mowing and instead bring back to life our native understorey vegetation. Native grasses and herbs provide crucial habitat for native fauna such as Red Neck Wallabies, Bandicoots Red Brow Finches, Pale Headed Rosellas, just to name a few. You see I’m not completely anti-grass, you could even say I’m fully in favour of pro-grass (sorry, just can’t go past a good pun). There are a whole swathe of fantastic native grasses and herbs that we can encourage or plant. Surprisingly some grasses grow in or on the edges of our native rain forests such as Oplismenus aemulus (Creeping Beard Grass) or Ottochloa gracillima (Graceful Grass).
These grasses can even be mown to create shade-loving lawns; sometimes even I can use the word L-A-W-N in a positive sense!