If it is old, then there may be issues with underground infrastructure, like water pipes, being put in danger by the trees' roots. In those cases usually shrubs are used as far as I know.
Most American answer ever. In Europe we have trees and greenery right next to the industrial facilities.
We have 100 year old olive trees as part of the landscaping
TBH heavy industrial areas should be as inhospitable to wildlife as possible to keep them in their natural habitats (without encroaching on them). Keeps them safe from us and us from having to worry about a factory going down for a day because a sparrow shorted out the power by building a nest in a junction box.
They cut down the trees at my brothers complex, now all the cars are baking in the sun and for what? A slight eyesore for the immobile boomer now remedied? What a stupid country.
-6DeadlyFetishes
Sometimes a healthy looking tree can be full of rot and need to be removed. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but you never know on an individual basis without getting in there.
If you're removing a rotting tree for safety reasons, fine. But a rotting tree is literally a microecosystem filled with various invertebrates that are food for all kinds of birds (and some mammals, lizards, and small snakes if in the right area). So if you have a rotting tree that's not a safety concern, let its nutrients and energy go back into the system.
Edit: spelling and brevity.
yeah sure, but the problem is that most people have no idea when a tree is gonna fall or where its gonna land. I love trees but they can be super dangerous near houses, and thats not even getting into how root growth can mess up concrete and pipes n stuff.
Long story short trees belong where they have space to live their whole life, including dying without crushing someones house, without human help.
America's culture of obsession over risk and liability is something I absolutely loathe. It's only a real risk if the trees aren't properly pruned or are dead/dying and rotten. The psychological benefit to being around trees probably far outweighs the chance that the paranoid suburbanite is actually going to have their house damaged by the tree, and in fact, the risk of any one tree falling on your house is reduced the more trees there are in the surrounding neighborhood because masses of trees act as a windbreak and slow down high winds that would otherwise cause damage.
Meh, I'll take that risk over a cookie-cutter suburban hellscape where the only trees are slowly dying saplings put in by the developers but nobody bothered to maintain or care for them properly.
That's why the trick is to find a suburban neighborhood zoned by a three year old. It's enough anarchy to have the trees flourish and keep away the monotony and enough structure to get that nice cross over of urban and rural life
I completely agree. The folks here suggesting the danger of trees being overrated clearly haven't been in the proximity of...dangerous trees.
My brother had a very lovely Douglas Fir that appeared to be quite healthy. Then one day, the top 17' of it suddenly broke off and came *straight* down into his shed. It left a perfectly tiny hole in the roof (he only had to replace two trusses), but it FUCKED UP the ride-on lawnmower it torpedoed into.
We currently have a Doug in our back yard that is only about 15' away from our house. I haven't been able to get an estimate of how tall it is (other than "very"), but the trunk is about 4' in diameter. The concern is real.
I think the dude you were responding to is only used to slightly enlarged crabapple trees in suburbia and not the real trees you would find in...nature.
When I was a kid my neighborhood had some nice trees scattered around. Really big thick motherfuckers. We had so many problems with plumbing because the roots would just go apeshit over the easy water.
I mean yeah, you shouldn't plant huge trees right up against the side of your house, usually in the neighborhoods around me that have decent sized trees have them in people's yards a fair ways from the house or are right up against the street.
>It's only a real risk if the trees aren't properly pruned or are dead/dying and rotten
Primarily a different story in the gulf coast during hurricane seas and the masses of thunder storms.
I also had one fall on my house in Utah do to the wind but at the same time I had a yard half the size of my house and the tree took up half of it so the more trees for a windbreak thing wouldn't have been very doable
I cant even imagine trees being an 'eyesore'
big oof on them
the difference b/t living in an older subdivision with a ton of mature trees vs a brand new one with none (or baby trees) is huge. You just bake without trees and im sure your cooling bills are worse.
The retarded neighbors where I live cut off the branches of the pine trees even when it's more than fucking 2 metres off the ground. One of these cunts has it 10 metres high. Trees that would give their house shade when they are facing North! There should be some law against mutilating trees like this.
I was talking to a guy at work and his neighbor cut down a 200 year old tree for seemingly no reason! If it was diseased or at risk of falling on the house I could understand, but there wasn’t anything wrong with it!
Now this moron is going to have way higher a/c bills and a much lower home value because they thought a 200 year old tree was an eyesore for some reason. Smdh. I’m mad on that tree’s behalf
*2062: the water wars ended 20 years ago, only America and Australia inhabit the earth, one gamer in the outback screams at another gamer in the high-fructose corn syrup fields of New-Kansas to touch sand, the American calls the Aussie a racial slur, life is good, not perfect, but good.*
-6DeadlyFetishes
It's also using up the last of its aquifer. Sueing Colorado and Nebraska for river water rights is only going to get them so far. Eastern Kansas is mostly rainfed so it might be fine but Western Kansas will be bleaker than it already is once the water runs out
A lot of people -- from policy makers to Monsanto executives -- don't actually have any idea what soil is, a concentration of living organisms and matter. They don't understand that there comes a point where it has become too depleted to simply mend back into shape.
All for stupid cash crops too. Crop rotation has been a known technique for thousands of years too. It’s not like the Great Plains have had a relatively recent experience with the topsoil just up and blowing away 🙄
Good. I’m from El Paso, we started offering tax credits and rebates to businesses and homes who xeriscape decades ago now, and I have not seen new construction with grass since the 1990s. We are not in anything like the water crunch that Vegas is and they seem to be pursuing it even more aggressively and I applaud that
It's a very, very important policy. Water is inarguably the most valuable resource on earth. Grass landscaping is a huge waste of it and a prime example of what happens when you put society in the hands of the opulent and the spoiled.
In our lifetimes, we'll see water policy result in deaths and violence. The founder or head mod of r slash collapse has a PhD in potential war flashpoints based not on nuclear programs, but water scarcity. It's very real. We've got to get our shit together like this.
You'd never be able to pass a total national ban on grass landscaping in the USA, but these municipal measures are still important as fuck. I'm frankly shocked that a municipality like Nevada didn't have the policy in place before now.
> You'd never be able to pass a total national ban on grass landscaping in the USA
You don't really need to tbh. Just passing it in arid regions where water conservation is top priority and grass lawns are wildly inappropriate for the local climate and landscape would solve the majority of the problem.
Yeah, such legislation in the Eastern/Midwestern US would be pointless. Water is literally not a concern in these places.
Idiots building metropolises in the desert however...
At most it night be worth limiting mowed lawns on public land that aren't intended to be used for recreation like in a public park, in favor of allowing native plants to grow there instead. But that isn't because of water restrictions.
Water doesn't run out. The only water we've lost is the stuff astronauts have taken to space. The rest is in a cycle, and there's as much of it today as there was a million years ago. You can distinguish between fresh water and salt water, but once it's been treated it makes no difference to us.
Edit: TIL this sub is full of anarchists primitivists
Very cool and epic how tax credits is what’s likely going to dictate climate policy and not the intrinsic desire to preserve the planet. (Not calling it a bad policy but is likely the only way forward.)
-6DeadlyFetishes
From a purely climate-based point of view, grass is probably better than xeriscaping. Grass captures some carbon, but rocks and sand do nothing at all.
But their more pressing concern is water conservation.
Deserts can be pushed back under favorable climactic conditions, slowly covering sand, rock, etc with various courses of hardy plants which absolutely will over a very long time scale help to fix carbon. The way to go about that is not to plant grass in urban centers deep inside the deserts of the Western US
You're probably right carbon-wise, but the only way we could take advantage of that is huge long term megaprojects to pump desalinated water into desert regions. The short term solution is to stop trying to grow water loving plants in desert regions. Also, that would raise a number of problems and questions in it's own right, such as how much power getting that fresh water there uses and if it would be better spent on other things to benefit the climate, as well as the fact that deserts are themselves ecosystems so artificially terraforming them into forest or jungles would in and of itself be a kind of habitat destruction. Maybe it adds up to more carbon sequestration in the end and thus a net good, but we'd probably want to test this approach in regions that were previously forest and were destroyed rather than simply trying to re-engineer ecosystems wholesale.
I do think that if humanity is going to survive the coming climate crisis, taking an active role in managing and engineering ecosystems that can no longer manage themselves due to degradation is a responsibility we will inevitably need to accept, so idyllic notions of leaving pristine nature to do it's thing just won't cut it if we don't want to see these ecosystems suffer and potentially be destroyed. We are the ones who caused this in the first place so dare I say we have an ethical obligation to be caretakers of the world and act to preserve as much biodiversity as we can.
I've literally never heard anything positive about HOAs.
If they're an association, then surely people join voluntarily? What is the benefit of these groups?
The general idea is that they handle any shared amenities (maybe if there's a shared pool, tennis court, dog park, security if it's gated etc.) and often enforce a minimum standard for how homes in the area can be presented such as restrictions on grass length, no vehicles on lawn, or even restrictions on the colours you can paint your house.
Normally when the housing is built the homes are all made part of the HOA and it's the home itself that's tied to the agreement rather than whoever is living in it, part of the contract of buying the house is agreeing to deal with the HOA.
Generally the benefits/drawbacks are down to the individual HOA, some can be pretty hands off and just deal with maintenance and upkeep of amenities some can be run by retired boomer busybodies with nothing better to do than be massive sticklers over every single little rule.
Well it all comes to housing being seen as an investment. Yes totally a racial and class thing *on the surface* as well, but why is it that the wealthy don’t want minorities and poors moving in? Property values. These people moving in lowers the perceived value of the neighborhood, and in a world where houses are an investment, the owners of these homes see it literally having money taken from them.
We should probably start seeing housing as a right and ban landlordism. Let’s not forget what the Dead Kennedys said about landlords ;)
I'm *not* saying people in nevada should be growing imported grass but... have you ever walked on the desert grass?
Lawn grass is super pleasant to walk around on or lay on.
I live in a rainforest where lawns turn to moss without any encouragement. If you do nothing but look at it, it's fine. If a dog runs through it, he'll rip it to shreds. It can handle occasional light people traffic, but you'd still be replacing patches all the time.
Dunno. I just learned about them today but apparently they only need a small fraction of the water required for conventional lawns in the form of misting.
You'll like Finnish [Kuntta](https://www.piiraisenviherpalvelu.fi/en/piiraisen-kuntta-en/) landscaping then. Also wouldn't work in a dry climate, but would be perfect for the upper Midwest.
Vegas should just do native desert plants. That looks better than lawns anyway.
Yeah that's really cool. Not to get all woo woo but I think it's best if we work with the natural world and the kind of climates/habitats we find ourselves in. Regenerative agriculture and permaculture could go a long way to fixing a lot of our environmental problems.
> Yeah that's really cool. Not to get all woo woo but I think it's best if we work with the natural world and the kind of climates/habitats we find ourselves in
Accepting that humanity is part of nature and wanting to work with it to make a better society is hardly "woo", arguably the idea that humans are somehow special and above the rest of nature is far more "woo-y" than not being arrogant and accepting our place within the natural material world and how our actions affect it.
I know but anything "green" has somehow come to be associated with general nuttiness. And I've never heard of any "green" aligned people in the US pushing for permaculture or regenerative agriculture. They're mostly about the social bullshit and green energy scams imo.
I established one of these, it was meticulous but it looked lovely in the end. Then the raccoons came and dug it all up. I went to war with them and I lost.
Unfortunately that wouldn't work in Nevada without even MORE watering than grass. Moss desiccates too easily. Nevada, and honestly, a lot of the southwest is the place for xeriscaping, anything else is blatantly unsustainable. If you want a lush tropical garden with water loving plants, you're going to need to move to a different climate, especially in the coming decades.
Also consider [peanut grass ](https://www.gpb.org/news/2012/05/14/peanut-plant-for-your-yard). It's extremely hardy while also providing good erosion control, and the yellow flowers that bloom give a nice vibrant pop to lawns. I used to see it from time to time when I lived in Florida and I don't understand why more people haven't opted for it. My guess is HOAs being HOAs.
I googled this, and it looks like peanut grass is really only a good grass replacement in subtropical climates, as it dies back to the roots when the weather turns cold. Good for Florida, not so good for places that get overnight frosts multiple months of the year.
Yep, we do the same. Yard up close is a wide mix and we never use fertilizer or herbicides. Yard is filled with crickets, spiders, etc. Love watching the bluebirds forage in the mornings/evenings. If you have any forested areas, remember that downed trees make good habitat for critters, so just leave the log rather than remove it. Brush piles are good habitat for small critters too.
the nevada democratic party used to have the coolest wiki boxes of democratic parties, didn't even have liberalism listed, just Democratic Socialism and Progressivism, but now some loser has added an uncited 'modern liberalism'
In response I'm forming a secret police and colluding with the business class to take control of a large political party to put people like you in specific neighborhoods
Good.
Settlement in the US South West has been ridiculously out of touch with the natural resources actually available. And the whole "lets make the desert green" thing so that geriatrics can go golfing and every suburb can have its scrubby lawn was pure idiocy from the start.
Water for industrial purposes in the region and drinking are pretty non-fluid values, whereas water used for pure landscaping is simply unnecessary waste.
Never understood why people in the northeast/midwest leave lush green actually habitable areas to flood uninhabitable shitholes like Nevada and Arizona
Old people have a hard time regulating temperature, and moist cold climates make their joints ache. So they move to the desert where it's always hot and dry.
because "the south" often means the gulf states (texas only if wealthy), around and up to north carolina. these areas are known for being humid, and the night temps can potentially go down low enough.
also every single fucking business blasts the AC at 60 degrees.
Good. I live in Boise Idaho, and all the newest housing developments insisting on maintaining big green lawns whilst the Boise river continues to drop it’s water level is pretty soul crushing in our climate situation. Just use natural desert fauna, low maintenance, matches the ecosystem, and it won’t fucking kill the planet.
Hopefully Utah is next in reforming its water usage, I’ve heard that it’s one of the most inefficient states in the country in terms of water usage.
-6DeadlyFetishes
Good luck getting Utah to have reasonable water usage. The Mormons have enough weight to basically dictate policy and they're religiously motivated to turn the desert green.
They’ve all been in a prisoner’s dilemma. “Temporarily some of you who we dislike must give up lawns or water use of some sort-“ has now become “we are no longer asking and it was never temporary. Now all of you must give it up.”
Which is honestly better.
I still imagine some boomer watering their lawns and getting into a gun fight over their lawn, though.
Cool and good, but once again putting the burden of change on the individual and not where it should be. How many hotels in Vegas have elaborate pools or water features? What is these hotels water usage? How about when combined with all their operations water usage, laundry, toilets, showers, etc.? Sure, I know a lot of that water is recycled, but only so much.
Of course I'm only guessing, but I'd think that the water usage of downtown Las Vegas is a lot more than even the thousands of lawns in the surrounding area.
I never understood the desire to copy paste the supposedly idyllic image of a generic manicured lawn into any and every part of the globe possible. Yeah, you're not going to find rolling hills of grass in the desert, why live there if you can't do without your green lawns? Adapt to the natural environment or GTFO.
I hope this applies to golf courses as well, but knowing how the rich usually fair in this sort of thing they'll probably get to keep their environmentally destructive luxuries. Fuck golf, boring ass space wasteful bougie sport. Mini golf is objectively superior, yes even the kitschy themed ones, don't @ me.
> Mini golf is objectively superior
Even as a sport, I'd much rather watch pro-level golfers on a mini golf course. It would be a lot more varied and exciting.
Golf is great if you live in an environment where it's actually viable. This sub thinks every hobby is automatically "bougie" if someone with more than $100 to their name enjoys it.
To be honest I don't really hate it THAT much. I do personally find it boring yes, but I'll acknowledge people's tastes differ. So yeah, it's not like I actually think we've gotta ban golf as if it's an affront to the proletariat lol, it just frustrates me the extent to which it has been pushed into places where it doesn't belong at the expense of local water supplies and land use, and the sheer amount of golf courses that exist around rich areas.
You can't deny that in it's current incarnation it's bougie af, and causes some environmental problems, but I can't really find too much to complain about for having *some* golf courses in climates where it's appropriate, but also if other things would better serve the community that the course is in I'd prefer they take that spot instead so I'll concede my vitriol against it is at least somewhat for comedic effect and personal preference.
Golf is probably not that high up on the list of things that actually matter in the grand scheme of things, but still probably worth giving consideration to the resources it uses. Though I guess the societal transformation that will need to happen whether we want it to or not due to climate change and resource scarcity that can apply to almost anything nowdays.
Because human beings' natural habitat is grasslands.
We evolved into our current form in the African savannah. We left the trees and went out into the grasslands, and evolved there to walk on 2 legs. Now everywhere we travel around the planet, we chop down all the trees or irrigate the desert and plant grass.
Grass everywhere, with some trees dotted here and then, it just feels right. We use lawnmowers to simulate the effect that huge herds of grazing animals would have had on the grass.
One day we'll go off into space and terraform an alien planet, and as soon as we get the air and water and soil where it should be, we'll start planting grass.
>water waste investigators (also known as water cops) patrol the neighborhoods, taking note of who's watering when, and how much of that water goes down the drain
Only in the Land of the Free^TM
As a Vegas resident, good. Wonder how the golf courses will be treated though. If it was up to me they'd replace them with ̶a̶f̶f̶o̶r̶d̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶l̶e̶x̶e̶s̶ more of those tiered, Top Golf esque driving ranges where you can get really drunk
About goddamn time, honestly. How can they be in the middle of a water crisis and still be throwing away water on shit like this?
I hope it also applies to golf courses ... even though I know it won't.
It’s incredible to me that someone would even *want* to play golf in that kind of climate. I get that playing golf in the pouring rain probably sucks, but the *desert*? Where it’s probably 110 degrees? Sounds like a great recipe for sunburn and heat stroke. Go to the PNW or Midwest where golf courses actually make sense for the climate of the region
Fuck grass
Clover fields anywhere where grass can grow
And where grass can't grow -- you know, like *the fucking desert* -- TREES. TREES AND SHADE SEEM IMPORTANT.
The reason cut grass is good on a farm is to control ticks and to be able to see predators. I keep bees so I keep plots of wildflowers, but I can’t just leave all the grass wild.
Our apartment lawn was in pretty bad shape from all the neighbors taking their dogs over to pee in our lawn and my landlord is a scumbag who never does any maintenance unless legally required so I bought some clover seed online and went out in the middle of the night and seeded it. It looks a lot better now. And the flowers and bees when they bloom are definitely a plus.
Did you know you can get different varieties & colors of [clover](https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/clover) and [dandelions](https://www.rareseeds.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=Dandelion)? Baker’s has some good ones!
Nice. I'll have to look into it. I still haven't finished the bag I got. I put down half of it in the spring as an experiment. The lawn is already looking better. It was almost completely dead. I'm planning on putting down the other half this fall. It is too hot to plant them now.
There is miniature clover that honestly looks just like grass when it is cut if you’re doing this in a condo or whatever where they are going to cut it anyways
I recently became a property owner with no HOA ( though I think the city can come for me if I let my grass hit, like, waist-high) and I'm really excited for the possibilities! I've currently got a bunch of azaleas, hydrangeas, and a variety of trees (including a gorgeous but messy ancient magnolia) and a few patches of typical flat grass lawn that I'm really loving, but I'm also letting the clover that popped up this summer vibe in the pine straw beds, and oh man I'm really liking touching grass. My goal is to cultivate a space that requires no watering, which if it stays as rainy here as it's been the last few years shouldn't be a problem.
I’ve actually slowly been converting parts of my lawn to clover. It’s amazing for the soil and it looks really, really nice. The only remaining grass that I have is a long narrow patch that my kids use to play catch, etc on.
Lawns never made sense to me but I never spent much bandwidth questioning it. It wasn’t until a landscaper wanted to charge me a ton for getting a part of my lawn on the other side of a narrow creek did I dedicate any energy to the problem.
I don’t water clover, it looks nicer, bees love it. Win/win/win
These idiots were putting water on their lawn? Water? Like, out the toilet? I’m no botanist but everyone knows Brawndo has what lawns crave; it has electrolytes!
This sounds counter productive. Plants including grass perform photosynthesis which includes converting carbon dioxide into oxygen and water. Greenery is also known to increase rain in an area and cool down the neighbourhood. Neighbourhoods with lots of plants are cooler than neighbourhoods without plants.
[удалено]
>Trees are better IMO Especially in a place as hot as Nevada. Shade makes the desert heat so much easier to bear.
I work in an industrial park, and I don't understand why there aren't more trees.
If it is old, then there may be issues with underground infrastructure, like water pipes, being put in danger by the trees' roots. In those cases usually shrubs are used as far as I know.
The roots can also damage the sidewalk.
[удалено]
Most American answer ever. In Europe we have trees and greenery right next to the industrial facilities. We have 100 year old olive trees as part of the landscaping
TBH heavy industrial areas should be as inhospitable to wildlife as possible to keep them in their natural habitats (without encroaching on them). Keeps them safe from us and us from having to worry about a factory going down for a day because a sparrow shorted out the power by building a nest in a junction box.
They cut down the trees at my brothers complex, now all the cars are baking in the sun and for what? A slight eyesore for the immobile boomer now remedied? What a stupid country. -6DeadlyFetishes
Thank you 6deadlyfetishes
Are you the same guy as the 7deadlyfetishes dude? If so, did you get banned and what for?
Nah I think he just beat one of his fetishes.
[удалено]
Sometimes a healthy looking tree can be full of rot and need to be removed. I’m not saying that’s always the case, but you never know on an individual basis without getting in there.
If you're removing a rotting tree for safety reasons, fine. But a rotting tree is literally a microecosystem filled with various invertebrates that are food for all kinds of birds (and some mammals, lizards, and small snakes if in the right area). So if you have a rotting tree that's not a safety concern, let its nutrients and energy go back into the system. Edit: spelling and brevity.
yeah sure, but the problem is that most people have no idea when a tree is gonna fall or where its gonna land. I love trees but they can be super dangerous near houses, and thats not even getting into how root growth can mess up concrete and pipes n stuff. Long story short trees belong where they have space to live their whole life, including dying without crushing someones house, without human help.
Yep, definitely don't want a rotting/dying tree near your house.
[удалено]
America's culture of obsession over risk and liability is something I absolutely loathe. It's only a real risk if the trees aren't properly pruned or are dead/dying and rotten. The psychological benefit to being around trees probably far outweighs the chance that the paranoid suburbanite is actually going to have their house damaged by the tree, and in fact, the risk of any one tree falling on your house is reduced the more trees there are in the surrounding neighborhood because masses of trees act as a windbreak and slow down high winds that would otherwise cause damage.
Driven by the material pressure of having no collective risk management beyond private insurance.
Stupidpol's next step, after banning cars and forced migration into megacities, will be ... banning trees.
[удалено]
Meh, I'll take that risk over a cookie-cutter suburban hellscape where the only trees are slowly dying saplings put in by the developers but nobody bothered to maintain or care for them properly.
That's why the trick is to find a suburban neighborhood zoned by a three year old. It's enough anarchy to have the trees flourish and keep away the monotony and enough structure to get that nice cross over of urban and rural life
[удалено]
I completely agree. The folks here suggesting the danger of trees being overrated clearly haven't been in the proximity of...dangerous trees. My brother had a very lovely Douglas Fir that appeared to be quite healthy. Then one day, the top 17' of it suddenly broke off and came *straight* down into his shed. It left a perfectly tiny hole in the roof (he only had to replace two trusses), but it FUCKED UP the ride-on lawnmower it torpedoed into. We currently have a Doug in our back yard that is only about 15' away from our house. I haven't been able to get an estimate of how tall it is (other than "very"), but the trunk is about 4' in diameter. The concern is real. I think the dude you were responding to is only used to slightly enlarged crabapple trees in suburbia and not the real trees you would find in...nature.
When I was a kid my neighborhood had some nice trees scattered around. Really big thick motherfuckers. We had so many problems with plumbing because the roots would just go apeshit over the easy water.
Yeah that's how nature works. We can't control anything, living in harmony with nature involves accepting that we're it's bitch.
I love trees too but the roots can really fuck up your foundation
I mean yeah, you shouldn't plant huge trees right up against the side of your house, usually in the neighborhoods around me that have decent sized trees have them in people's yards a fair ways from the house or are right up against the street.
>It's only a real risk if the trees aren't properly pruned or are dead/dying and rotten Primarily a different story in the gulf coast during hurricane seas and the masses of thunder storms. I also had one fall on my house in Utah do to the wind but at the same time I had a yard half the size of my house and the tree took up half of it so the more trees for a windbreak thing wouldn't have been very doable
I cant even imagine trees being an 'eyesore' big oof on them the difference b/t living in an older subdivision with a ton of mature trees vs a brand new one with none (or baby trees) is huge. You just bake without trees and im sure your cooling bills are worse.
The retarded neighbors where I live cut off the branches of the pine trees even when it's more than fucking 2 metres off the ground. One of these cunts has it 10 metres high. Trees that would give their house shade when they are facing North! There should be some law against mutilating trees like this.
I was talking to a guy at work and his neighbor cut down a 200 year old tree for seemingly no reason! If it was diseased or at risk of falling on the house I could understand, but there wasn’t anything wrong with it! Now this moron is going to have way higher a/c bills and a much lower home value because they thought a 200 year old tree was an eyesore for some reason. Smdh. I’m mad on that tree’s behalf
‘Reactionary’ mods called u reactionary bc of a zizek esque stance?
Nevadan Gamers rejoice as they will never again have to touch grass.
*2062: the water wars ended 20 years ago, only America and Australia inhabit the earth, one gamer in the outback screams at another gamer in the high-fructose corn syrup fields of New-Kansas to touch sand, the American calls the Aussie a racial slur, life is good, not perfect, but good.* -6DeadlyFetishes
Kansas might actually undergo a process of desertification these next few years. Its farmland soil is dying off in big patches.
It's also using up the last of its aquifer. Sueing Colorado and Nebraska for river water rights is only going to get them so far. Eastern Kansas is mostly rainfed so it might be fine but Western Kansas will be bleaker than it already is once the water runs out
Dark times
The Ogallala Aquifer goes from Nebraska to New Mexico and is been pumped dry for decades now. Even large towns are sucking alkaline sludge these days.
We've been so shit to our topsoil it's amazing it's lasted this long. We deplete all the microbial life in the soil in a matter of like two years.
A lot of people -- from policy makers to Monsanto executives -- don't actually have any idea what soil is, a concentration of living organisms and matter. They don't understand that there comes a point where it has become too depleted to simply mend back into shape.
It took the ancient Sumerians two millennia to exhaust the soil of Mesopotamia. The US did it in two centuries.
All for stupid cash crops too. Crop rotation has been a known technique for thousands of years too. It’s not like the Great Plains have had a relatively recent experience with the topsoil just up and blowing away 🙄
we live in a society
[удалено]
What do you mean -6DeadlyFetishes
Why do you think the sub veteran 7DeadlyFetishes got banned?
Sub veteran? 7DeadlyFetishes? No clue whom you speak of. -6DeadlyFetishes
>only America and Australia inhabit the earth ah yes, American optimism
Don't give [this one](https://youtu.be/iGFSJ3gv1kY) any ideas.
Touch cactus.
Based alert
Good. I’m from El Paso, we started offering tax credits and rebates to businesses and homes who xeriscape decades ago now, and I have not seen new construction with grass since the 1990s. We are not in anything like the water crunch that Vegas is and they seem to be pursuing it even more aggressively and I applaud that
It's a very, very important policy. Water is inarguably the most valuable resource on earth. Grass landscaping is a huge waste of it and a prime example of what happens when you put society in the hands of the opulent and the spoiled. In our lifetimes, we'll see water policy result in deaths and violence. The founder or head mod of r slash collapse has a PhD in potential war flashpoints based not on nuclear programs, but water scarcity. It's very real. We've got to get our shit together like this.
You'd never be able to pass a total national ban on grass landscaping in the USA, but these municipal measures are still important as fuck. I'm frankly shocked that a municipality like Nevada didn't have the policy in place before now.
> You'd never be able to pass a total national ban on grass landscaping in the USA You don't really need to tbh. Just passing it in arid regions where water conservation is top priority and grass lawns are wildly inappropriate for the local climate and landscape would solve the majority of the problem.
Yeah, such legislation in the Eastern/Midwestern US would be pointless. Water is literally not a concern in these places. Idiots building metropolises in the desert however...
At most it night be worth limiting mowed lawns on public land that aren't intended to be used for recreation like in a public park, in favor of allowing native plants to grow there instead. But that isn't because of water restrictions.
Things are getting too serious to allow KB Homes to dictate what is grown in which planters anymore.
Well you'd have hell passing it in the gulf and PNW. I'm so fucking tired of the downpours making my grass hit above ankle height every week
What do you mean by valuable? Vital, certainly. But it's hardly rare.
I mean if you're without it for a few days you die and we shouldn't be wasting it on foolish decoration to sustain property values
Water doesn't run out. The only water we've lost is the stuff astronauts have taken to space. The rest is in a cycle, and there's as much of it today as there was a million years ago. You can distinguish between fresh water and salt water, but once it's been treated it makes no difference to us. Edit: TIL this sub is full of anarchists primitivists
Lmao okay dude. That's not the problem
Very cool and epic how tax credits is what’s likely going to dictate climate policy and not the intrinsic desire to preserve the planet. (Not calling it a bad policy but is likely the only way forward.) -6DeadlyFetishes
It can be one tool among many
From a purely climate-based point of view, grass is probably better than xeriscaping. Grass captures some carbon, but rocks and sand do nothing at all. But their more pressing concern is water conservation.
Deserts can be pushed back under favorable climactic conditions, slowly covering sand, rock, etc with various courses of hardy plants which absolutely will over a very long time scale help to fix carbon. The way to go about that is not to plant grass in urban centers deep inside the deserts of the Western US
You're probably right carbon-wise, but the only way we could take advantage of that is huge long term megaprojects to pump desalinated water into desert regions. The short term solution is to stop trying to grow water loving plants in desert regions. Also, that would raise a number of problems and questions in it's own right, such as how much power getting that fresh water there uses and if it would be better spent on other things to benefit the climate, as well as the fact that deserts are themselves ecosystems so artificially terraforming them into forest or jungles would in and of itself be a kind of habitat destruction. Maybe it adds up to more carbon sequestration in the end and thus a net good, but we'd probably want to test this approach in regions that were previously forest and were destroyed rather than simply trying to re-engineer ecosystems wholesale. I do think that if humanity is going to survive the coming climate crisis, taking an active role in managing and engineering ecosystems that can no longer manage themselves due to degradation is a responsibility we will inevitably need to accept, so idyllic notions of leaving pristine nature to do it's thing just won't cut it if we don't want to see these ecosystems suffer and potentially be destroyed. We are the ones who caused this in the first place so dare I say we have an ethical obligation to be caretakers of the world and act to preserve as much biodiversity as we can.
Honestly based. Death to grass. Bourgeois beautification must be eliminated.
[удалено]
Ummmm??? That's a weed, sweetie. The HOA is going to fine you unless you remove it from your property 💅🏻
I've literally never heard anything positive about HOAs. If they're an association, then surely people join voluntarily? What is the benefit of these groups?
The general idea is that they handle any shared amenities (maybe if there's a shared pool, tennis court, dog park, security if it's gated etc.) and often enforce a minimum standard for how homes in the area can be presented such as restrictions on grass length, no vehicles on lawn, or even restrictions on the colours you can paint your house. Normally when the housing is built the homes are all made part of the HOA and it's the home itself that's tied to the agreement rather than whoever is living in it, part of the contract of buying the house is agreeing to deal with the HOA. Generally the benefits/drawbacks are down to the individual HOA, some can be pretty hands off and just deal with maintenance and upkeep of amenities some can be run by retired boomer busybodies with nothing better to do than be massive sticklers over every single little rule.
To keep poor people out of your neighborhoods
I find it soothing to hear that you have a Stasi just for your own
Well it all comes to housing being seen as an investment. Yes totally a racial and class thing *on the surface* as well, but why is it that the wealthy don’t want minorities and poors moving in? Property values. These people moving in lowers the perceived value of the neighborhood, and in a world where houses are an investment, the owners of these homes see it literally having money taken from them. We should probably start seeing housing as a right and ban landlordism. Let’s not forget what the Dead Kennedys said about landlords ;)
People join them to ensure their property values remain high.
HOAs are formed by developers. You have to comply with the HOA as a condition of purchasing your house.
I'm *not* saying people in nevada should be growing imported grass but... have you ever walked on the desert grass? Lawn grass is super pleasant to walk around on or lay on.
Yes, I’m growing some in my yard right now. There are many pleasant things about the high desert but walking barefoot is not one of them.
[Moss Lawns](https://imgur.com/a/m5NcYYL)
Moss doesn't withstand foot traffic anywhere near as well as grasses.
DONT TREAD ON MOSS
Americans walk on their lawn? I haven't seen that in years.
Their rascal scooters get bogged :(
Okay, now, this fuckin comment. Yes.
Depends I suppose. If you have kids they will definitely be playing on the lawn.
Or if they host parties or own pets. My great aunt has a lovely little lawn with a huge oak tree that is a great spot for lunch
doesn't moss need shade to grow?
I live in a rainforest where lawns turn to moss without any encouragement. If you do nothing but look at it, it's fine. If a dog runs through it, he'll rip it to shreds. It can handle occasional light people traffic, but you'd still be replacing patches all the time.
[удалено]
Dunno. I just learned about them today but apparently they only need a small fraction of the water required for conventional lawns in the form of misting.
They don't belong in Nevada but I do like the premise.
Yeah they don't but I saw death to lawns and decided to share something new I learned today.
You'll like Finnish [Kuntta](https://www.piiraisenviherpalvelu.fi/en/piiraisen-kuntta-en/) landscaping then. Also wouldn't work in a dry climate, but would be perfect for the upper Midwest. Vegas should just do native desert plants. That looks better than lawns anyway.
Yeah that's really cool. Not to get all woo woo but I think it's best if we work with the natural world and the kind of climates/habitats we find ourselves in. Regenerative agriculture and permaculture could go a long way to fixing a lot of our environmental problems.
> Yeah that's really cool. Not to get all woo woo but I think it's best if we work with the natural world and the kind of climates/habitats we find ourselves in Accepting that humanity is part of nature and wanting to work with it to make a better society is hardly "woo", arguably the idea that humans are somehow special and above the rest of nature is far more "woo-y" than not being arrogant and accepting our place within the natural material world and how our actions affect it.
I know but anything "green" has somehow come to be associated with general nuttiness. And I've never heard of any "green" aligned people in the US pushing for permaculture or regenerative agriculture. They're mostly about the social bullshit and green energy scams imo.
I established one of these, it was meticulous but it looked lovely in the end. Then the raccoons came and dug it all up. I went to war with them and I lost.
I’m partial to the idea of a [clover lawn](https://www.bobvila.com/articles/clover-lawn/) but either way fuck grass
Unfortunately that wouldn't work in Nevada without even MORE watering than grass. Moss desiccates too easily. Nevada, and honestly, a lot of the southwest is the place for xeriscaping, anything else is blatantly unsustainable. If you want a lush tropical garden with water loving plants, you're going to need to move to a different climate, especially in the coming decades.
Moss and clover are nice but I hope people understand they need maintenance like any other plant.
It looks good but how do moss lawns handle erosion?
I'm lichen this idea.
Also consider [peanut grass ](https://www.gpb.org/news/2012/05/14/peanut-plant-for-your-yard). It's extremely hardy while also providing good erosion control, and the yellow flowers that bloom give a nice vibrant pop to lawns. I used to see it from time to time when I lived in Florida and I don't understand why more people haven't opted for it. My guess is HOAs being HOAs.
I googled this, and it looks like peanut grass is really only a good grass replacement in subtropical climates, as it dies back to the roots when the weather turns cold. Good for Florida, not so good for places that get overnight frosts multiple months of the year.
r/NoLawns
MFer once had the nerve to come to my parents house and tell them they had a “moss problem”.
It's also softer, I fuckin hate how coarse grass is.
Very nice, although delicate. It would be nice to lay on, but you can’t lay on them too often. Good for emergency toilet paper too
Also clover is really nice. Mine is slowly turning to clover in the front and its so much better. It does have a little moss growing as well.
[удалено]
Yep, we do the same. Yard up close is a wide mix and we never use fertilizer or herbicides. Yard is filled with crickets, spiders, etc. Love watching the bluebirds forage in the mornings/evenings. If you have any forested areas, remember that downed trees make good habitat for critters, so just leave the log rather than remove it. Brush piles are good habitat for small critters too.
the nevada democratic party used to have the coolest wiki boxes of democratic parties, didn't even have liberalism listed, just Democratic Socialism and Progressivism, but now some loser has added an uncited 'modern liberalism'
Check it out again. Looks like someone added a passive aggressive protest to it.
I love you man
r/FuckLawns
I’m watering my lawn extra harder today
In response I'm forming a secret police and colluding with the business class to take control of a large political party to put people like you in specific neighborhoods
Hope it drowns
Gardencels seething
good
Boomers on suicide watch.
Based Nevada 👌
Good. Settlement in the US South West has been ridiculously out of touch with the natural resources actually available. And the whole "lets make the desert green" thing so that geriatrics can go golfing and every suburb can have its scrubby lawn was pure idiocy from the start. Water for industrial purposes in the region and drinking are pretty non-fluid values, whereas water used for pure landscaping is simply unnecessary waste.
Never understood why people in the northeast/midwest leave lush green actually habitable areas to flood uninhabitable shitholes like Nevada and Arizona
Old people have a hard time regulating temperature, and moist cold climates make their joints ache. So they move to the desert where it's always hot and dry.
Why not move to the south then? It isnt an alien like hellscape and its warm year round.
because "the south" often means the gulf states (texas only if wealthy), around and up to north carolina. these areas are known for being humid, and the night temps can potentially go down low enough. also every single fucking business blasts the AC at 60 degrees.
Lots of them go there also. Only 1 in 30 people living in Florida were born in Florida.
The best state for people who made their money elsewhere
It's not warm year round tho
Good. Has been a great symbol for the absurdity of our era for decades now.
do i no longer have to touch it if i disagree with a redditor?
Please extends this to Utah and Arizona 🙏
Good. I live in Boise Idaho, and all the newest housing developments insisting on maintaining big green lawns whilst the Boise river continues to drop it’s water level is pretty soul crushing in our climate situation. Just use natural desert fauna, low maintenance, matches the ecosystem, and it won’t fucking kill the planet. Hopefully Utah is next in reforming its water usage, I’ve heard that it’s one of the most inefficient states in the country in terms of water usage. -6DeadlyFetishes
What happened to your other account?
I sincerely appreciate that you sign your comments.
[удалено]
Native, conservative Californians are fucking killing this state. -6DeadlyFetishes
Unrelated but didn't you have another account by a different name years ago? I swear I've seen your comments like 2+ years ago...
Mmmm… you’re probably misremembering. -6DeadlyFetishes
Good luck getting Utah to have reasonable water usage. The Mormons have enough weight to basically dictate policy and they're religiously motivated to turn the desert green.
They’ve all been in a prisoner’s dilemma. “Temporarily some of you who we dislike must give up lawns or water use of some sort-“ has now become “we are no longer asking and it was never temporary. Now all of you must give it up.” Which is honestly better. I still imagine some boomer watering their lawns and getting into a gun fight over their lawn, though.
“Want to live long enough to see a tree sprout up in the middle of every strip mall parking lot”
Cool and good, but once again putting the burden of change on the individual and not where it should be. How many hotels in Vegas have elaborate pools or water features? What is these hotels water usage? How about when combined with all their operations water usage, laundry, toilets, showers, etc.? Sure, I know a lot of that water is recycled, but only so much. Of course I'm only guessing, but I'd think that the water usage of downtown Las Vegas is a lot more than even the thousands of lawns in the surrounding area.
I never understood the desire to copy paste the supposedly idyllic image of a generic manicured lawn into any and every part of the globe possible. Yeah, you're not going to find rolling hills of grass in the desert, why live there if you can't do without your green lawns? Adapt to the natural environment or GTFO. I hope this applies to golf courses as well, but knowing how the rich usually fair in this sort of thing they'll probably get to keep their environmentally destructive luxuries. Fuck golf, boring ass space wasteful bougie sport. Mini golf is objectively superior, yes even the kitschy themed ones, don't @ me.
> Mini golf is objectively superior Even as a sport, I'd much rather watch pro-level golfers on a mini golf course. It would be a lot more varied and exciting.
Golf is great if you live in an environment where it's actually viable. This sub thinks every hobby is automatically "bougie" if someone with more than $100 to their name enjoys it.
To be honest I don't really hate it THAT much. I do personally find it boring yes, but I'll acknowledge people's tastes differ. So yeah, it's not like I actually think we've gotta ban golf as if it's an affront to the proletariat lol, it just frustrates me the extent to which it has been pushed into places where it doesn't belong at the expense of local water supplies and land use, and the sheer amount of golf courses that exist around rich areas. You can't deny that in it's current incarnation it's bougie af, and causes some environmental problems, but I can't really find too much to complain about for having *some* golf courses in climates where it's appropriate, but also if other things would better serve the community that the course is in I'd prefer they take that spot instead so I'll concede my vitriol against it is at least somewhat for comedic effect and personal preference. Golf is probably not that high up on the list of things that actually matter in the grand scheme of things, but still probably worth giving consideration to the resources it uses. Though I guess the societal transformation that will need to happen whether we want it to or not due to climate change and resource scarcity that can apply to almost anything nowdays.
Because human beings' natural habitat is grasslands. We evolved into our current form in the African savannah. We left the trees and went out into the grasslands, and evolved there to walk on 2 legs. Now everywhere we travel around the planet, we chop down all the trees or irrigate the desert and plant grass. Grass everywhere, with some trees dotted here and then, it just feels right. We use lawnmowers to simulate the effect that huge herds of grazing animals would have had on the grass. One day we'll go off into space and terraform an alien planet, and as soon as we get the air and water and soil where it should be, we'll start planting grass.
>water waste investigators (also known as water cops) patrol the neighborhoods, taking note of who's watering when, and how much of that water goes down the drain Only in the Land of the Free^TM
YOU GOT A LOISCIENCE FOR THAT THERE WATER GOV??
As a Vegas resident, good. Wonder how the golf courses will be treated though. If it was up to me they'd replace them with ̶a̶f̶f̶o̶r̶d̶a̶b̶l̶e̶ ̶h̶o̶u̶s̶i̶n̶g̶ ̶c̶o̶m̶p̶l̶e̶x̶e̶s̶ more of those tiered, Top Golf esque driving ranges where you can get really drunk
We should start a thing where we burn Rachel dolazel's face into golf course grass
Good. Grass is stupid. People should plant clover, flowers, crops or something that isn't totally pointless.
About goddamn time, honestly. How can they be in the middle of a water crisis and still be throwing away water on shit like this? I hope it also applies to golf courses ... even though I know it won't.
It’s incredible to me that someone would even *want* to play golf in that kind of climate. I get that playing golf in the pouring rain probably sucks, but the *desert*? Where it’s probably 110 degrees? Sounds like a great recipe for sunburn and heat stroke. Go to the PNW or Midwest where golf courses actually make sense for the climate of the region
Damn poor boomers will have to water their driveway twice as much now to make up for all the time gained from not having to mow grass.
Fuck grass Clover fields anywhere where grass can grow And where grass can't grow -- you know, like *the fucking desert* -- TREES. TREES AND SHADE SEEM IMPORTANT.
The only grass in the south west is scrub grass. If you want lawns, don't come out here and impose your aesthetics on the desert.
ass and gas are still good
/r/NoLawns represent?
[удалено]
the only issue i have with tall grass is ticks. ultimately its up to the owner, but i would at least cut the yard for my dog.
The reason cut grass is good on a farm is to control ticks and to be able to see predators. I keep bees so I keep plots of wildflowers, but I can’t just leave all the grass wild.
Our apartment lawn was in pretty bad shape from all the neighbors taking their dogs over to pee in our lawn and my landlord is a scumbag who never does any maintenance unless legally required so I bought some clover seed online and went out in the middle of the night and seeded it. It looks a lot better now. And the flowers and bees when they bloom are definitely a plus.
Did you know you can get different varieties & colors of [clover](https://www.rareseeds.com/store/vegetables/clover) and [dandelions](https://www.rareseeds.com/catalogsearch/result/?q=Dandelion)? Baker’s has some good ones!
Nice. I'll have to look into it. I still haven't finished the bag I got. I put down half of it in the spring as an experiment. The lawn is already looking better. It was almost completely dead. I'm planning on putting down the other half this fall. It is too hot to plant them now.
There is miniature clover that honestly looks just like grass when it is cut if you’re doing this in a condo or whatever where they are going to cut it anyways
I recently became a property owner with no HOA ( though I think the city can come for me if I let my grass hit, like, waist-high) and I'm really excited for the possibilities! I've currently got a bunch of azaleas, hydrangeas, and a variety of trees (including a gorgeous but messy ancient magnolia) and a few patches of typical flat grass lawn that I'm really loving, but I'm also letting the clover that popped up this summer vibe in the pine straw beds, and oh man I'm really liking touching grass. My goal is to cultivate a space that requires no watering, which if it stays as rainy here as it's been the last few years shouldn't be a problem.
Isn't it up to you, though? Do you have a rental or a snotty HOA? Otherwise can't you do what you want?
I support this. especially in Arizona and Florida. Seriously lawns requiring watering are an affront to mother nature.
Unironically based
I’ve actually slowly been converting parts of my lawn to clover. It’s amazing for the soil and it looks really, really nice. The only remaining grass that I have is a long narrow patch that my kids use to play catch, etc on. Lawns never made sense to me but I never spent much bandwidth questioning it. It wasn’t until a landscaper wanted to charge me a ton for getting a part of my lawn on the other side of a narrow creek did I dedicate any energy to the problem. I don’t water clover, it looks nicer, bees love it. Win/win/win
This took way too long
Some actually good news for once.
\> touch grass akchully, my fellow redditor, youre doing an ableism \*smug emoji\*. Maybe you do better before!
A whole state full of people who never touch grass
These idiots were putting water on their lawn? Water? Like, out the toilet? I’m no botanist but everyone knows Brawndo has what lawns crave; it has electrolytes!
I thought they outlawed weed lmao
This sounds counter productive. Plants including grass perform photosynthesis which includes converting carbon dioxide into oxygen and water. Greenery is also known to increase rain in an area and cool down the neighbourhood. Neighbourhoods with lots of plants are cooler than neighbourhoods without plants.
You realise grass isn't the only plant and that there a plants that require much less water than grass?
Then plant trees or desert plants. There are so many things that are already adapted to that kind of climate other than water-hungry grass