With spring turning people’s minds to gardens, and gardens turning people’s minds to environmentally sustainable spaces in which bees, wild-flowers and (whisper it) weeds can flourish, Dad’s fastidiously-manicured lawn is coming under increasing scrutiny from an unlikely quarter.
Who’s pointing the green finger?
No less a personage than corduroy-clad gardening maestro Monty Don. Interviewed in the current edition of the Radio Times, the secateur-wielding broadcaster says it’s time to just let the lawn go to pot (though not actually, because that’s still broadly illegal except in the Isle of Man). “One of the things that I and people like me have been banging on about for ages is that cutting grass burns lots of fossil fuel, makes a filthy noise and is about the most injurious thing you can do to wildlife,” Don tells the magazine. “Whereas letting grass grow, which is, after all, a pretty passive thing to do, is probably the single most effective thing you can do in any garden of any size to encourage particularly insect life, but also small mammals, invertebrates, reptiles.”
It sounds like a good idea
There’s no arguing with it on environmental grounds. The buzzwords are biodiversity – of flowers, shrubs, birds, insects – and re-wilding, and the more of both that you can bring to your garden the better. Over the last year there has been a surge of interest in wildlife as people have taken an interest in their immediate surroundings and, coming against a background in which everything from wildflower tours to birdwatching are enjoying increased popularity, Don’s comments are likely to find favour. Plus it means you don’t have get the lawn mower out.
Lawns are nice though aren’t they?
They have their place – the Palace of Versailles comes to mind – and Don doesn’t contest the fact. He says he enjoys walking on a billiard table-smooth lawn in bare feet as much as the next person. It’s just that there are bigger issues in play now than keeping up with the Joneses next door. And there’s another aspect to his anti-lawn crusade which has nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with what lawns say about masculinity and the masculine desire to control things.
Details?
He describes it like this: “The obsession, which tends to be male, which is controlling rather than embracing, with making a lawn that is pure grass without any filthy and foreign invading plants in there, making sure it’s stripy and neat, and — phew! — just one aspect of life that’s under control.” That, he adds, no longer “cuts the mustard”.
Are we soon to be post-lawn?
Unlikely. There are still lots of them and lots of men with petrol-driven lawn mowers who love nothing better than to run up and down them on a Sunday afternoon cutting perfect stripes. “Lawns make such easy villains because, quite simply, they can’t answer back,” says gardener and author Stephen Anderton, which in itself is hard to argue with. “Monty Don sets lawns up to knock them down in his exaggerated vision of a Britain full of immaculately striped lawns cut by men marching behind thunderous smoke-belching petrol mowers.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here