It is a great resource for public spaces like parks and sports fields but maintaining it domestically seems to belong to a distant past. Domestic water has to be potable. Parks can use lower quality waste water and they can manage it better. Some people have huge rainwater storage but even then lawn has to be scaled back in a dry climate.
When I was a kid just about everyone had a quarter acre block with a house and shedding (garage, garden, tools etc) a veggie garden and a big front and back lawn.
I learnt to ride my bike on our big lawn. Played backyard cricket on it. Got stung by bees on the clover. And summer meant playing under the sprinklers running during the daytime with no thought to waste or expense. Golden age.
Drought water restrictions killed most lawns where I lived and when they were lifted most people didn't bother to reestablish them. Most of the green yards of my youth are now bark and natives, glyphosated bare earth or weeds. It sucks for kids. Kicking a ball around without lawn isn't the same. It is another of those childhood freedoms people used to take for granted that seems to have disappeared.
It is a great resource for public spaces like parks and sports fields but maintaining it domestically seems to belong to a distant past. Domestic water has to be potable. Parks can use lower quality waste water and they can manage it better. Some people have huge rainwater storage but even then lawn has to be scaled back in a dry climate.
When I was a kid just about everyone had a quarter acre block with a house and shedding (garage, garden, tools etc) a veggie garden and a big front and back lawn.
I learnt to ride my bike on our big lawn. Played backyard cricket on it. Got stung by bees on the clover. And summer meant playing under the sprinklers running during the daytime with no thought to waste or expense. Golden age.
Drought water restrictions killed most lawns where I lived and when they were lifted most people didn't bother to reestablish them. Most of the green yards of my youth are now bark and natives, glyphosated bare earth or weeds. It sucks for kids. Kicking a ball around without lawn isn't the same. It is another of those childhood freedoms people used to take for granted that seems to have disappeared.