I was thinking the other day how much energy it must take to keep all the lawns in Cary in pristine conditions. I would need some help with calculations (thinking Brandon or Bash) on how much energy is used to maintain the typical America lawn. We can also include water and money to show people how much they can save if they switch to drought tolerant native landscaping. We could also include some renderings of potential successful lawns and research the best plants. With this initial data for one lawn the total for America would be ridiculous!
The end result could be a very simple comparison. An image on the left with total energy water money and an alternative showing how much they would save. Could be humuourus, Andy whats the famous painting of the couple farmers w/ pitchfork in front of their house?
(On the defense of lawns however there are few things I love more than a fresh cut yard, the act of mowing, the smell, the pattern are all American symbols. However, it may be the price we pay for drinking water in some parts of the country.)
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Definitely agree, whatever the cost is I am sure its a decent chunck of change people would like to save. Cary has been doing some things like recycle water, and my parents are getting into rain barrels and crap to cut down cost and now with gas.
Would not be that hard to calcuate all that either.
A solution might be to try to restore the natural surroundings to peoples yards. You eliminate yard maintenance, other than trimming and maintaining plants. People can still decorate their and plant gardens, but you would teach them where and how certain plants grow together better in nature.
Think about this, some of the nicest and richest homes are in Old Raleigh, where most homes are surrounded trees in older growth.
That would be a neat comparison too, added value of older growth on land plus the addition of no yard maintenance, compared to a typical "neighborhood" house.
I think I read somewhere that lawn mowers are among the dirtiest, most polluting machines on the planet. why? well i guess no one cares about how many lawns per gallon a lawn mower gets, and when was the last time you serviced your lawn mower?
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