I'm in Europe and my house is surrounded by trees. I don't need AC during summer. Some of the neighbours which moved to the village in recent years built a new house which is just a plain white concrete bunker with a "cement garden". It looks more like a military installation than a house i want to live in. It's possible to build modern and natural, but people have no taste.
2 weeks ago | 26
climate town's most recent vid was on how stupid our grass addiction is, shows your channel as an excellent example of anti grass community resources around 26min mark. besides terrible water impacts they get into fuel, fertilizer and pesticide consumption and particulate emissions which are also shitty and terrible in proportion with the bonkers scale of the lawn industry
2 weeks ago | 131
It's absolutely insane that we have to engineer massive stormwater retention systems in neighborhoods just so that we can have nice smooth yards
2 weeks ago | 15
I've said it before and I'll say it again: The only reason grass isn't considered a weed is because some landscaper decided it should cover our yards. I tried to redo my garden and the grass roots grew UNDER THE SIDEWALK so even when I tried to get rid of the grass in my garden bed it was impossible since the roots were connected to the grass on the other side of the sidewalk as well. When I'm living somewhere that I can control the yard, I want as much of it to be native plants as possible.
2 weeks ago | 17
Until I found out this channel I used to live on the outskirts of out town and was "forced" to love and care about our lawn by my father. Now I know that watering it twice a day and the whole process of keeping it alive was really futile and harmful, for example even in drought years my father was able to justify using the well for irrigation for useless grass. It's nice to see that like 3 years ago our city switched to selective cutting, which means usually leaving like 2/3 in rotations of unmoved space in green areas without seeding new grass lawns, instead leaving it for natural development. And last few years I've even saw bags of native seeds in garden centers for if you wanna replace your dead grassland for something useful to our ecosystem. I've been watching your channel since like 2018 and even though I studied botany for two years at my uni, you still gave me a lots and lots of insight into the whole ecosystems thing. Thanks a ton
2 weeks ago (edited) | 71
My yard no longer has grass and I sowed native wildflowers last year. However, I honestly am not a botanist and i have no idea how to maintain and replant and all this other stuff... Can you make a comprehensive video guide or something to help??
2 weeks ago | 34
As a roadway and water resource engineer, i always incorporate natives into our projects whenever i can. More clients are seeing the value and standards are being updated. Calling them infrustracte is a good idea.
2 weeks ago | 11
Well said. Environmentalism shouldn’t be a dirty word, but for those who see it that way, landscaping with native species is also just common sense “infrastructure.” At base lawnscaping is dumb as hell.
2 weeks ago | 23
You know the first time I read about the dangers of a pristine green hellscape was Craters of The Moon National Park.
2 weeks ago | 4
I love planting native! Every year I watch my neighbors manicure and paint their lawns, and every year I watch the elements and storms ruin those same lawns. Yet mine looks just fine and is even blooming from the weather
2 weeks ago | 1
i live in Florida close to the coastline, but have about a mile and a half of mangroves between me and the surf. even when my town was battered into a warzone aesthetic by hurricane ian we didnt experience surges. i’m thankful the families that bought the coastline designated it as nature preserve. they might have been trying to duck taxes for 100 years but i’m still here.
2 weeks ago | 17
I planted some native plants for my mom in her garden I got one from the botanical garden nursery it’s a nice place for all native plants
2 weeks ago | 9
Good post mate I do this for a job (planting natives)in Australia it's a huge industry here now
2 weeks ago | 1
It's simple common sense to flow with millions of years of evolution instead of fighting against it with machines and oil and other toxic substances... But we don't apply much common sense in modern human cultures anymore.
2 weeks ago | 11
I rent and ALSO ask to replace the lawn and they always say no...but the backyard is mine! My neighbors have been moving all summer- not me! I have been taking out the invasives taking over the invasive grass and seeding native grass!!! I am still seeing people water their grass, in the middle of the afternoon, in summer...I am trying to come up with a way to introduce myself and correct them without doing that and getting them upset and further down the anti-information void.
2 weeks ago | 3
I always get tickets in the beginning of spring for not cutting the grass. I like the bees to get a head start
2 weeks ago | 9
this is how i realized why it's so hard for me to dig holes in the yard(recreationally as a kid, gardening as an adult)
2 weeks ago | 0
I've seen the change native plants make firsthand. If only I could convince the owner of the house to tear up the lawn so I could fix the flooding in the rest of the yard, too. :/
2 weeks ago | 4
Crime Pays But Botany Doesn't
Turf Grass has a place and a purpose ... Sports fields, movie-night-in-the-park, a place for a dog to sh*t .... But making mowed turfgrass the norm for both private residences as well as commercial properties and the margins of strip malls, retention ponds, highway embankments and all the other "nether regions" of human infrastructure is absolutely INSANE.
Even if you dislike plants or find them boring, using the native plants that evolved in your region as a "living machine" - to prevent flooding, prevent soil erosion, mitigate the effects of the urban heat island (through both evapotranspiratice cooling and shading the ground from the sun) - is just what makes practical sense.
Using native plants isn't "environmentalism", it is just *infrastructure*. The plants that spent millions of years evolving in your region are naturally going to be best suited to helping the land stay alive and intact, as well as reducing the devastating effects of heat waves and flooding.
If you don't think lawns cause flooding, then Get a penetrometer (which measures soil compaction) Stick it in the ground above turfgrass and see how deep it goes. Then do it to a native prairie planting. It'll stop at a few inches in the turfgrass (which is where the compaction starts since roots aren't breaking up the soil nor creating porosity). It'll go down a foot or two in the native prairie planting.
Encourage your local municipality to install natives along highway strips and around retention ponds and canals. It is just what makes sense.
And also...
Kill Your Lawn and Plant Native.
2 weeks ago | [YT] | 3,951