It's great to hear someone in the
permaculture world defend lawns. NOT artificial mon-culture chemical-dependant
(and often toxic) stretches of lawns, of course. But bio-diverse, healthy swards of green appropriately located and
maintained. In suburban and in-town settings, we have to mimic natural grazing with our lawn mowers (though
'reel' type mowers at least offer an alternative to noisy, pollution-spewing, petroleum-powered mowers).
A sensibly managed 'meadow-like' yard area IS a useful and functional part of the landscape around our homes, as
Paul points out. (It's amusing to see the anti-lawn people use landscape cloth and gravel, or
concrete paving blocks
in strops between raised beds, or other areas that could be productive, if only for trimmings of mixed
native grasses
and 'weeds' to add to the
compost pile - but these areas will usually also produce a variety of useful '
volunteer' plants,
as Paul says of natural lawns in general.)
It IS a challenge to find a mower that will mow as high as 3", (I prefer 4" or even 6"). ***There is at least one brand
of manual reel mower that has a maximum height setting of 4".*** (Are we allowed to mention brand names here?
In case not, it is a name often associated with scissors. An Internet search on 'reel mower 4" ' brought me to Amazon's
offering of this mower, though I had to go to the manufacturer's site to find the specs and the mowing heights.) HOPEFULLY
they will get
enough sales to send the message that people want mowers that will mow to 4". (I'd like one that goes to 6"...)
A couple ideas on minimizing the amount of mowing needed:
Poultry - geese are idea of maintaining grassy areas, but will rarely be allowed in suburban areas. Moveable pens for
chickens, where they are allowed, can help a lot, and provide even more forage than a couple or a few fixed paddocks.
Rabbits, housed in moveable pens or paddocks, are allowed essentially everywhere (as long as you let people think
they are pets). They will graze both grasses and 'weeds', and minimize the mowing that is needed, while fertilizing
and providing both meat and pelts.
Joel Salatin's son probably has the largest 'pasture rabbit' operation in the US,
but other people have used drag pens and/or wire paddocks to graze rabbits going back at least 3/4 of a century,
that I know of, and likely long before that.
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