Where the $@*% is the Army of Gardeners? Get Off Your Duffs and Make A Difference!

Guest Rant by Shawna Coronado

You know what ticks me off royally?

Churches, synagogues, temples, and businesses of every sort! Shocking, isn’t it? And let’s make this clear they tick me off because in every community across the United States you can find these organizations AND MORE displaying acre after acre after expansive acre of grass with no real gardeners doing a thing about it. Where’s an Army of Gardeners when we need one?

Lousy, useless, non-sustainable grass is pretty much good for nothing. Grass is the enemy. Face it: grass sucks! No literally, grass sucks a tremendous amount of chemicals which are bad for our water aquifers and sucks good old-fashioned water which is good for… well… staying alive.

I mean, c’mon people use your common sense. Let me spell it out. With the nation's population projected to increase to 392 million by 2050 combined with a down global economy where many cities across the United States alone are seeing over 11% unemployment rates – we are in trouble.

It is not the responsibility of the government to solve every problem we have. Get off your duffs and build your community. No one else is going to do it for you. Here’s how you get started – first, get rid of all that useless grass that’s sucking our most precious resource. Encourage your businesses, churches, neighborhoods, non-profits – and most importantly – your family to start planting vegetables like they are going out of style.

Here’s a real shocker – vegetables are going out of style. Food around the world is being rationed. With the Global Warming Crisis causing weather changes and crops to fail around the world, this is no longer something we should be ignoring.

It’s difficult to conquer all the grass in the world. However, I have chosen to set the example for my Army comrades. Without a regret, I have ripped out my front lawn and planted the damndest little veggie garden you have ever seen (in part-shade no less). Guess what? It’s growing just fine and so far I have donated over a hundred pounds of veggies to the local food pantry.

If you cannot plant vegetables, plant a Therapeutic Garden. Cancer, diabetes, and heart-disease rates are skyrocketing. Why not plant a useful garden which might encourage your community to be healthier? By planting more gardens you are also preventing crime in your neighborhoods. Let’s see… hmmm… what are the benefits? Stronger mental and physical health, reduced crime, and fresh organic veggies for your neighborhood. Seems like a win-win to me.

Never has the world needed an army of gardeners like it does now. Come to attention! Build a neighborhood garden, grow extra veggies to share, help your community now because without your help some of your neighbors might not be able to weather these difficult economic times.

Grab your pitchforks, hoes, and rotted manure! It is time we made a difference!

Shawna Lee Coronado is an author, locally syndicated newspaper columnist, blogger and greening expert focused on teaching and living a green lifestyle. Visit Shawna's prime website for more information on her book and other media - The Casual Gardener.com.  Also visit Shawna’s gardening blog, The Casual Gardener and her greening blog, Gardening Nude. Photo by Shawna of her front-yard veg garden.

Comments

[Ginny Stibolt]

Good post Shawna. We can't depend upon big government to do everything for us. But even the government is doing something when you see that Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has named August 23-29, 2009, National Community Gardening Week. As an ongoing commitment to encourage community gardening, the USDA is installing “People’s Gardens” at USDA facilities around the world. These community gardens are places people can grow their own food and donate extra to local food shelves. This summer the People’s Garden at the USDA headquarters on the National Mall in Washington, DC, has donated more than 170 pounds of produce to The DC Central Kitchen. The DC Central Kitchen offers job training in culinary and food service skills to DC's homeless.

The Bible lessons of being "good stewards of the land" would ring much truer if our churches would set a good example. The church-based community gardens could do so much good right in their own neighborhoods.

I'm hopeful...

[Squirrelgardens]

Kudos to you for again making point that vanity gardens and turf for what they are. My neighbor and I both took out all the remaining turf this summer.

You would have thought we were torturing puppies the way the neighborhood reacted. Oh well they will get over it or not.

Thanks for making this important point again.

[Shawna Coronado]

Thanks! Making a difference is possible if we have the resources - and with all the expansive, useless grass out there - we have a wonderful resource to tap into: land.

My dream is for more people to really try to make a difference!

[Holly]

Totally agree! In fact, this is exactly how I felt when I started http://www.dinnergarden.org. The solution to hunger is right in our front yard.

[Tara Dillard]

Why so narrow? What about a potager? Flowers are a cash crop. Let them pay for labor to double dig, tools, etc.

Garden & Be Well, XO Tara

[Busyellebee]

Ha Ha Ha, This is brilliant. It is so true about all these large expanses of land just lying fallow, for no good reason. Half the time they don't even look nice. To think there are millions of people going hungry right now, and all we are doing is growing not food, but useless acres of grass that even Daisy the cow would turn up her nose at. Why do we allow this? Perhaps a credit crunch was needed for us to wake up and do something about all this waste. Funny that decades of eco-campaigning produced limited results, but the second the banks lost all our money .... Oh well, that's the end of my garden rant...for now LOL

[Julie A]

I'm so happy to find this site!!
Thanks Holly for steering me this way.

[JoniB]

@Busyellebee: Bullseye! I didn't make that connection between the banks and the sudden interest in being "green" - I just cynically said that it wouldn't happen until Hollywood made it fashionable.

Thanks for this rant. I'm forwarding it to my email pals.

[Kelly]

Cheers to lawn reduction! In addition to vegetables, we have lots of native plants in our yard. Besides being relatively low-maintenance, they support a variety of wildlife--lovely to look at but also essential to our own well-being. The Pollinator Partnership (www.pollinator.org) explains one of the most important reasons why (though certainly there are other benefits to conserving biodiversity):

"At least 80% of our world's crop plant species require pollination. Estimates as high as 1 out of every 3rd bite of food comes to us through the work of animal pollinators. Birds, bees, butterflies, and also bats, beetles and even mosquitos are among the myriad creatures which transfer pollen between seed plants.  This function is vital for plant reproduction and food production."

[Katie]

This is exactly how I feel too Shawna! Excellent post. I've followed your garden's progress since Spring Fling and think you've set a great example with your front garden.

We are hoping to tear out our front lawn this coming winter and replace it with a patio and garden. We hope the patio (and beer!) will invite people to come and chat, and we can share produce and good karma with all. I want to be the change agent that creates community in my neighborhood. Grow where you're planted, I say.

[Shawna Coronado]

I'm so proud - you grow gardeners! Get out there and make a difference for your communities.

World hunger is a concern, however, with the economy the way it is right now, there are people in the U.S. and Canada who are starving. Literally.

This is such an obvious solution. Businesses have miles of open lawn just waiting to help their communities. I so wish they'd take the next step.

S

[Liisa]

YEEEEEEYYYYYYYYYY! I love this rant so much, I'm filled with angry glee! Go Shawna, I'm so inspired now!

[Nathalie Lussier]

I totally agree! Lawn/grass really sucks. It's something that really sets "conventional" people off when I mention it.

Way to go highlighting this issue!

[Michelle D.]

Another Nazi lawn hater that fails to understand the larger picture.
What this Ranting lawn hater fails to miss is that there is common ground in the use of lawns as well as some social economic issues that come into play.

You want an army of gardeners to rip out the lawns of churches, public parks and businesses and replant them with vegetable gardens ?

Sure this can easily happen if you get community acceptance and involvement at a pro bono level but don't expect private businesses to increase their already stretched monthly garden maintenance bill just because you think a private organization should subsidized your point of perspective and install a farm on their property.

That church or business may find their lawn a positive point of cash flow in the form of rental space for functions, weddings and community events.

It takes a hell of a lot less man hours to maintain a lawn then to maintain a vegetable garden.
If there is not a community consensus to start and maintain a vegetable garden then it will fall upon the private business to pay for garden maintenance services.

Your rant sound nice and warm and fuzzy but there is a lot more economics involved in it when you look at the bigger picture of ripping out lawns in public spaces.

A more realistic approach would be to educate the homeowner to plant a vegetable patch in their own back yards or to support their local farmers who make their living growing vegetables.

[Jim Oberschmidt]

Well said dear friend.

[Pam J.]

While I agree with Michelle D. I sure wish we could all quit using Nazi references. Ditto for Hitler references and fascist references. Gives the language a bit of punch, I guess, but in the wrong mouths (Mr. Limbaugh take a bow) it's not at all constructive.

[Layanee]

It was National Community Gardening Week. Hear Deputy Secretary of Agriculture Kathleen Merrigan discuss it here: http://www.garden-guys.com/podcasts/audio/USDA-KathleenMerrigan.mp3
She gives a nice plug to volunteer Master Gardeners.

[tai haku]

Nice post - I think one point I would make is that there are two issues here. The first is that big lawns maintained in towns by quasipublic organisations like churches, synagogues, community centres could and perhaps should be viewed as wasted space that could be better used doing the things mentioned above; veg, gardens or whatever. However these organisations are, rightly, under no obligation to address this. The second is that they could be persuaded to address this if either a) convinced someone (volunteers?) would do the work and cover any cost (ie veg etc) or b) they could be shown there would be a cost & labour saving (eg xerothytic or wild type gardens as a replacement for lawn). We need to do a) or b) before we can expect them to shift. A good example is this thing:
http://landshare.channel4.com/blog

If there isn't a US version of this, perhaps there should be....

[Rosella]

Michelle, well said! I am sure the churches and synagogues in my neighbourhood have lawns around them because they don't necessarily have the volunteer or paid labour necessary to maintain extensive flower and vegetable gardens. Grass doesn't grow particularly well in my part of the world, but it grows well enough with minimal care and twice-monthly mowing that it is the least labour-intensive option for grounds, although admittedly weedy and somewhat spotty. And just where would my church have the Easter egg hunt if there weren't a lawn? And where would the summer garden party be held? Among the cabbages?

I am so tired of the preaching against lawns. Get rid of the grass! Move up to ..... what? Perennials? Vegetables? Annuals? Shrubs? Wall to wall mulch?Anyone out there who feels that maintaining any of the above is less work than spreading some chickenpoop in the fall and mowing through the warm season? If so, please come visit me and help me with my third of an acre of trees, perennials, shrubs, groundcovers, vegetable garden, and two patios with potted tropicals.

Pleasepleaseplease -- we don't all have to move to the same music, we don't all have to subscribe to the latest garden wisdom. Damnit -- it's not easy to keep a flower or vegetable garden looking good all the time, any more than it's easy to keep a lawn looking good all the time.

[Rosella]

And P.S> -- I forgot to add that I have lawn too, albeit weedy and sometimes shaggy.

[Benjamin]

I'd love to se your zealous and charming rant focused and energized by some rock hard statistics. We get some here in a few comments others have made. I agree with you 100%, but posts like these always seem too focused at the choir. Of course it's for the choir, but the choir needs to be made new, to think new, we need theholy texts redelivered.

[Shawna Coronado]

Oh my. Call me what you will - Nazi, Zealous-Nut, Grass Maligner!

However, my point is not to deride grass itself - it's the chemicals used and the carbon footprint made to mow the suckers that is a negative.

More importantly, my real point is this: Many in the United States are starving because of our current economic situation. Surprisingly, it's not just lower class, it's extending to the middle-class as well.

Shall we gaze stupidly at acres of wasted beautiful lawn delighting in it's perfection? Or shall we use our common sense and work together as caring communities to bring food to the people in need?

If motivating more people to care for their communities means I will be called "nazi", "zealous", or worse, then call me whatever you'd like. I will not be a coveter of perfect lawns when thousands are starving!

I will do whatever I can to help!

What are you doing to help your neighbor?

Perhaps that's a question everyone should be asking ourselves. Although not perfect, I am definitely doing my best to help the ones I can. :-)

Shawna

[Squirrelgardens]

Although Michelle D. I do not agree with you....love your website. Landscape Designer..did notice in your portfolio some very nice xeriscape.

Saved you in my favorites because your work is lovely.

[Shawna Coronado]

Thank you Squirrel Gardens! I appreciate it!

[susan harris]

Lots of feelings here! That's why whenever I write about lawn replacement I include a link to my standard disclaimer, in which I explain why I'm not ANTI-lawn: http://www.sustainable-gardening.com/lawn/disclaimer.html.

Also people raise good points; e.g., that veg gardens take lots more work to maintain than lawns. In my town good intentions without a plan in place for on-going maintenance are evident at several schools and churches. It's a sad reality.