I want to make a short film / animation where aliens are approaching earth, the only thing we know about the aliens is that they plan to destroy all life and replace it with their own twisted creation. A few minutes of typical story follows, heroes assemble, go to fight, etc. The heroes lose and the ending scene shows that the aliens have succeeded and replaced all the diverse life on Earth with a perfectly manicured lawn that covers the entire planet. A biological wasteland.
if I didn’t take care of my lawn, I’d have invasive Bermuda grass getting into everything and it would kill all the other plants. I’ve also looked into overseeding with mini clover but I’ve read that it doesn’t tolerate traffic well. open to any suggestions as I’m fighting a losing battle with fescue and the damn Bermuda.
Fescue is amazing grass. I suggest overseeing with an aggressive ryegrass if you really have issues, but just let the Bermuda grass be. Otherwise add in some microclover seed for good measure.
Monoculture anything is bad. For example, many parks will have tons of trees but if you pay attention you’ll likely on see the same handful of species.
A few options. Cover the entire lawn for an extended period of time with a bunch of tarps or cardboard so no sunlight reaches the grass. Kill the entire thing. Start over with native seeds. Or roto till the entire thing
For me personally Bermuda grass never stood a chance against all the clover, dandelions, cheeseweed, purslane, tall flatsedge, and broadleaf plantain that make up a lot of what used to be the lawn. Some of those are invasive technically but at least rabbits come to eat the dandelions and plantains
In those moments I’m as high as fuck and imagine I could own a home, I’d just desert-ify the yard. It’s going that way anyway, let’s beat the rush. Just sand and rocks and some desert plants. Like us, most yards will die in the water wars.
I only mow at the last possible second to not get a fine, has been working really well for my yard. I have seen flowers, corn, and a beautiful assortment of creepers and clovers start taking over the sterile grass. My neighbors neighbor seems to get butthurt. They take care of my direct neighbors yard whom I share a chain link fence with, she loves my vines with the flowers and strange gourds that wind around the fence. Neither of us planted it but the people who tend her yard destroy it 😭if we just let everything happen naturally some very cool things start to crop up. I’ve seen some absolutely massive grasshoppers and a bunch of praying mantis as well. My bee hotel never attracts anything but I’ve seen plenty of bees about which makes me happy.
Weeds are very easily pulled without damaging anything in a rock garden. Also it doesn’t require fertilizer or water (except for a very small amount for those small bushes).
I feel like this can still be a native lawn depending on which biome it’s in. Seems more desert like than a prairie/forest type “native lawn” you might traditionally think of.
But yeah native can look different depending on location so I might be ok with this
Is the native landscape a rock garden? If you live in the Mojave: Go nuts, but that black rock is going to bake your house and drive up your carbon dioxide usage. Plants breathe just like animals do and that increases humidity locally, and in dry climates that can be a significant cooling effect. Essentially cheap evaporative cooling.
Remember it’s not just about saving honey bees! Honey bees are domesticated, which means that humans will make sure that they have food and shelter and appropriate medicine and care throughout the year to ensure they make honey.
Saving “the bees” moreso means saving wild, native, often times solitary bees like bumblebees or carpenter bees that don’t produce honey but that also aren’t domesticated - they have no safety net that humans give them.
Those bees along with all other pollinators like bats, birds, and other insects are the ones at risk!
Still, we should all consider growing native yards to return habitat back to these dying species!
I have lived at my current property for nearly 7 years now, and while I cut the main area up against the house once a week, I typically let the rest grow out for a month. Never used sprays other than flea and tick for my dog’s yard, and never even pulled weeds.
Still, it’s almost all completely homogenous grass. Not sure what species, but it doesn’t grow very high. 3-5 inches. No wildflowers have encroached, no other grasses except clover, not even weeds other than dandelion. The only other thing that grows anywhere is some English ivy that’s pissing me off all over the house. Every time I pull some out and dig up the root, I find more a few days later.
Still, MUCH higher insect, pollinator, and other wildlife activity vs my previous residence. It’s been nice seeing fireflies again, even if it’s still nowhere near what it was when I was a kid.
Our yard is about 3" of top soil on top of basically solid clay. When we moved in a little over a decade ago I tried taking on the dandelions, but I quickly pivoted to planting clover. Now we have tons of the stuff, fewer dandelions despite no chemicals (not that I really mind them anymore), and our yard smells fantastic in mid to late spring when all the clover is in full bloom. Tons and tons of bees, crickets, etc. We re-did a flower bed and intentionally planted swamp milk weed and red crocosmia in it. They look fantastic together and the bees absolutely love it, not to mention the butterflies.
But yeah. About English ivy. Been fighting that stuff for years…
The EU has uncultivated land subsidies. To avoid overproduction of food and overexploitation of the land, the EU pays farmers to keep their land uncultivated. Some countries, like mine, force farmers to uncultivate their land once every N years, and, of course, they get subsidies for this.
In my region, farmers will plant flowers and let weed grow, since they’re not putting any pesticide. They let the flowers and weeds die and rot at the end of the season. This way, they dont have to put as much fertilizer the next year. I’ve always seen these uncultivated fields full of bees and other pollinators in summer.
That happens in the US too. It’s why there’s New York addresses that own huge “fields” of land that’s usually a wetland. The marginal land is protected and they get a corn subsidy from the government to not farm the land.
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