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mowing treatments over the past three years, seeks to reduce lawn mowing and still provide usable spaces that people find attractive, as well as better habitats for plants, birds and bugs. Lawns are prone to erosion, but the new plantings could also help with urban stormwater issues.
Between 15 and 20 per cent of Auckland is grassland, which includes verges, backyards, lawns and parklands, Burns said.
Studies found cut grass releases chemical compounds – ‘‘the freshly cut grass smell’’ – that interact with other air pollutants and worsen smog over Australian cities.
Furthermore, lawn mower emissions could be responsible for between five and 10 per cent of engine pollution in urban environments.
‘‘It’s an idea we seem to be stuck in a one size fits all mentality, that everything needs to be close-cropped grass,’’ Burns said. ‘‘There’s a whole range of alternatives for our landscape that could reduce environmental costs and provide a range of other benefits. Let’s experiment.’’
Auckland Botanic Gardens curator Rebecca Stanley, who was working on its ‘‘no mow ecosystems’’, said no ecologist would support mowing lawns.
‘‘To get a perfect lawn you need to water it, which is a waste of resources, you need to fertilise it, which is a pollutant, you need to use fungicides and herbicides and insecticides. Some people even kill worms in the soil before they plant a lawn so that wormholes don’t appear,’’ Stanley said. ‘‘To me every one of those things is a complete environmental disaster.’’ The Botanic Gardens’ vision is moving into suburbia. Lynn Ryder moved to the Auckland suburb of Ellerslie five years ago and planted a wildflower ‘‘mini meadow’’ out in front of her home to feed bees, because she liked flowers and it required less mowing.
‘‘I would love to see more people planting more wild flowers,’’ Ryder said. ‘‘But you do have to maintain it. It doesn’t last for very long unless you keep layering it and keep planting. It’s not as if you don’t have to do anything with it.’’
That’s part of the reason why the defenders of our lawns insist they are thriving.