Is it time to re-think having a lawn?

[hunter]

51. It matters a lot where you live.

In places where it rains all year you can just mow what grows. That's how I treated our "lawn" when we lived in the Midwest.

When my wife and I moved back to California and bought a house one of the first things we did was rip out the lawn and replace it with plants that did not need regular watering. There's no HOA and the city only cares about trash or dead cars. Everything else can be neatened up with a string trimmer.

We we ahead of the trend. In the years that followed many of our neighbors have done the same.

A few neighbors have installed synthetic turf. Some of it looks fairly natural, you notice it because it's too perfect. I don't know how long that stuff will last. When it starts to look shabby it probably won't be recycled even though that's one of the advertised features, rather it will end up in the landfill.

The U.S. Southwest is in bad shape. Ultimately Arizona will be forced to build desalinization plants in California and Mexico in exchange for California and Mexico's share of Colorado River water. Preliminary plans are already being made to do this.

Desalinated water is expensive, probably too expensive to waste on lawns.