Coloradans’ expectations for green grass too high

Re: “We must limit turf in new developments and ban new turf golf courses,” May 7 commentary

Thanks, Mayor Mike Coffman, for your work on a water conservation ordinance for Aurora. As a landscape architect who has spent his career encouraging sustainable landscapes, this is a welcome initiative. It isn’t the water-intensive turf that is a problem — it is our perceptions about what a lawn should look like. Sixty or more years of indoctrination by the green industry and watching sports have created some wasteful landscape practices. Most people don’t know one species of lawn grass from another and assume it should all look like a golf course. They apply as much water, fertilizer and chemicals as needed to get that effect. The people who hire the landscape managers should be the ones lectured about environmental responsibility.

The truth is that a traditional bluegrass, fescue or rye (cool-season grass) lawn, if allowed to go dormant with mottled brown patches and weeds in the summer heat, can be fairly water-conserving. There is nothing wrong with a stressed lawn in July and August. Indeed when I visit England’s city parks in late summer, that is much of what I see, stressed lawns. Even with their generous precipitation they don’t have a problem with large brown patches. We here in dry Colorado somehow do. Go figure that.

The heart of the problem is our nonsensical lawn worshiping syndrome, which really needs something like a prohibitive ordinance. Good luck with that. The green industry will fight you all the way.

Frank Miltenberger, Denver