There is a battle raging in my yard, and it is not between pests and plants, rabbits and predators, or ducks and mud puddles. No, this war is far more ridiculous—it’s a war over grass.
Specifically, whether or not it should be mowed.
My mom, bless her heart, thinks the answer is an emphatic “yes.” The mister also wishes I cared more about the perfectly-manicured aesthetic that polite society seems to demand. Meanwhile, I sit here, looking at my beautiful, untamed, thriving mess of an ecosystem, wondering how anyone can miss the obvious: cutting it down would be a crime against nature itself.
See, we’ve designated our fenced side yard as our garden space this year—a project that requires healing the land first. That means running our geese and Swedish ducks through with electric netting, layering cardboard and deep bedding compost, and letting things grow instead of scalping the earth just to maintain some arbitrary standard of suburban neatness.
Of course, the first thing out of my mother’s mouth when she stopped by? “So… we just aren’t mowing anymore?”
Cue deep breath.
I explained our plan, how taller grass reduces runoff, deepens root systems, draws up nutrients, supports wildlife, and—most critically—provides forage for our rabbits and poultry. I even tossed in the fact that cutting grass below six inches isn’t good for it anyway, hoping that basic lawn science would back me up.
Her response? “I don’t do a lot of things like I should, and your yard looks like shit.”
Never mind that we use that tall grass to feed animals.
Never mind that pollinators—bees, butterflies, and beneficial insects—are flocking to it.
Never mind that wildlife is returning, that biodiversity is increasing, that the ground is literally healing itself after years of misuse.
Nope. The yard looks messy. And that, apparently, is the only metric that matters.
Why Lawns Are the Dumbest Status Symbol Ever
I don’t know if people realize this, but manicured lawns were invented to flex wealth. If you could afford to have a pristine green expanse instead of using your land for food production, it meant you were rich enough to waste space. And now, hundreds of years later, we’re still caught in this ridiculous cycle of maintaining useless patches of uniform grass because it looks “nice.”
The amount of water, fertilizer, pesticides, and energy wasted on lawn maintenance is astronomical. The amount of wildlife, soil health, and regenerative potential lost because we insist on keeping everything perfectly mowed? Infuriating.
Meanwhile, here I am, trying to use our space for something that actually matters, and apparently, I am committing some form of aesthetic treason.
I get it. People like clean edges, short grass, and defined spaces. But frankly, I will never be that shallow. I care too much about restoring the land to give a damn about whether it looks pretty enough for drive-by approval. If it were up to me, I’d let the entire yard go wild—no mowing, no trimming, just an explosion of life where nature does what nature is supposed to do.
But alas, I still live in a world where some people think scalping the earth every two weeks is the only way to maintain dignity.
If You Want Pretty, You Can Keep It—But I’ll Take Functional Any Day
I’m not saying people should never mow their lawns. If the sight of tall grass makes your skin itch, fine. Mow it. But let’s not pretend that cutting things down just for the sake of appearances is anything other than short-sighted nonsense.
If you want a pretty lawn, have at it.
If you want a healthy ecosystem, let it grow.
Personally, I’d rather live in the wild—happily feral, knee-deep in thriving biodiversity—than cling to polite society’s pointless lawn obsession.
What’s your take? Pull up a chair and let’s talk about why we still worship manicured grass instead of using our land for something that actually matters.
