About Austinist
Austinist is a website about Austin and everything that happens in it. More about us.

Editor-in-Chief: ALLEN Y CHEN
Publisher: GOTHAMIST
Your Daily Editor Picks
Recent Comments
Austinist Sponsors
Photo Essayist
Foodoir
Favorites
Contribute

Latest tip:

What if you threw a festival and nobody came? <a href="http://pollstar.com/news/viewnews. [more]

 

Latest link:

 

Latest Photo:

 

Austinist Recommends
tom150_final2.gif

July 17, 2008

The Lunatic is on the Grass

If you can get past the cover, there is an interesting article in this week's New Yorker about lawns. The article is full of fun statistics like "nearly a third of all residential water use in the United States currently goes toward landscaping" and "space devoted to turfgrass in the United States is growing at the rate of almost six hundred square miles a year."

Austin overall is ambivalent about lawns. Lawns are particularly ill-suited for the Texas climate - keeping all that grass green requires a lot of water and chemicals. Nonetheless, most single family homes in Austin are surrounded by green lawns, even after weeks of hot weather and little rain. The city imposes watering restrictions and recommends minimizing total lawn area, but many homeowner's associations have strict rules requiring well maintained lawns. However, with water conservation becoming an ever larger issue and the increasing attraction of xeriscaping for ecological, economic and aesthetic reasons, the Austin lawn may soon become a historical relic.

Email This Entry







Advertisement: Austinist Continues Below!

Comments (1) [rss]

Soon seems unlikely. Most HOAs still don't even take watering restrictions into account. And grass is still a pretty good carbon sink. We'd need to replace them with xeriscaped prairies. Not the typical small plants in the middle of rocks. If we all replaced our grass with rocks we're going to end up with a much warmer Austin. Unfortunately a xeriscaped prairie takes time (and water) to establish.

 
Post a comment (Comment Policy)

2003-2008 Gothamist LLC. All rights reserved. Terms of Use & Privacy Policy. We use MovableType.

Site Meter