Why the American Lawn sucks
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 14 ก.ย. 2022
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The American lawn can be found across the United States.
But it hides something. It hides that it's placed there. The lawn is a British and French invention. The grasses come from Europe as does the style that grass is arranged in. And that has important ramimfications. Because grass that isn't designed for a specific environment, is going to have to have difficult time
Models and Footage:
All footage is provided via Getty.
3D Models:
Cow Skull
Link: sketchfab.com/3d-models/cow-s...
Creator: jimmyq
Adjustments: I got rid of horns and changed the shader. This is not my model.
Bee
Link: sketchfab.com/3d-models/bee-9...
Creator: Dreamwasabducted
License: Creative Commons 4.0
High Poly Riding Lawnmower 3D model
Link: www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/in...
Leaf Blower PBR 3D model
Link: www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/in...
Lawn Mower Low-poly 3D model
Link: www.cgtrader.com/3d-models/ve...
Sources:
hoogisamonkey.substack.com/p/...
Music (Song Name in Order):
- It Will Make You Feel Better If You Put It In the Right Place
- It Takes a Lot to Keep a Figure Like This
- Can You Even Fucking Imagine Being a Teenager
- Hitchcock Would Have Fucked Up Charade
- There Are Days That I Don't
- I Did the Thing I Said I'd Never Do
They all come from the fantastic album: Angie's Sunday Service
Made by the incredibly talented: Chris Zabriskie.
Link: chriszabriskie.bandcamp.com/
License: Creative Commons 3.0
I applaud the American homes in the Southwest that have embraced their desert environment and use artistic arrangements of rocks in their front yards instead.
That's very interesting! My home city is a desert as well, and many people insist on having a garden that is just so difficult to maintain. My country (in South America) in general is very influenced by the USA.
You can applaud but by and large it isn’t true. LA famously has grass lawns, SLC has grass lawns, Phoenix and Flagstaff have lawns, also San Diego. All these cities are in the literal desert yet keep lawns. People drive thru Albuquerque or Las Vegas and assume the entire SW is like that. As a resident out here it isn’t, we have townhouses that look like they come from MA.
@@its_jawsh6145 It's not consistent, I agree. However, gravel landscaping did seem pretty common in Arizona the last time I visited.
@@Robin_Goodfellow yes and like everything it depends on where you go. I agree that the examples of LV, Albuquerque, Lubbock, Odessa, etc. should be held as examples but there’s far more examples of desert cities allowing lawns. Carson city, Reno, Ontario CA, Riverside CA, Saint George UT, Moab, SLC, Provo, Lancaster CA, Calexico CA. The list goes on and on and on unfortunately. That doesn’t even mention the absolutely asinine decision to have agriculture in the desert in Southern California. From being a former resident down there i have no sympathy for CA’s water problem as so much is just wasted. I love the SW but the unfortunate truth is we create our own water problems, the issue isn’t too many people but simply mismanagement. I would also like to add that for almost every single case the more affluent an area the more lawns appear. NE Phoenix has lawns but not downtown Phoenix. This is only one example though and i have no data to back up this opinion, it’s simply my anecdotal experience.
in the desert you could switch to succulents and cacti! just because the climate is different doesnt mean you cant have climate appropriate plants
I'm constantly shocked by the small ways the US differs from the UK.
Europe: grass everywhere, houses with gravel out front and unkept grass out back.
US: loads of deserts and grain fields, perfectly green Kentucky bluegrass front gardens
There's grasslands in the US too, many are working to bring more of them back as well. Plus we also have lots of forest and mountains. Obviously a very diverse country climate and landscape wise.
@@chickenfishhybrid44 Yeah but also lots of idiots think it's their right to live in a desert and lobby to have millions of gallons of water piped into the desert so they can have green lawns surrounded by sand.
@@chickenfishhybrid44 You're one of the countries that has almost all biomes represented. Yet snobs expect perfect uniform lawn from every american. And then they laugh at perceived "commie" uniformity.
not sure where in the US you've been, but where I am most lawns are desert scapes that conserve water (cacti and rock), my lawn is a clover lawn that does not need a lot of water.
@@el.tuerto I'm guessing you live in a relatively low-income neighborhood then. Luxury developers regularly drop golf courses in the desert.
The thing I hate the most about the American Lawn is that you can get into legal trouble for "Not taking care of it."
I'm renting and I'm somehow responsible for maintaining the lawn
Well it's a health issue if it's not cut. Ticks, the types of fungus you don't want... Animals nest and then the occasional dead one.
@@wlatronica21 No it’s not. That’s some bullshit American myth.
@@wlatronica21If you reduce your neighbor's property value, they can sue you. Replacing the lawn with a non-harmful rock garden would probably lead to such a lawsuit.
are you out of your mind?
why in the world would gras growing to its natural state a health issue?
This American lawn is so common, that for such a long time I thought that
1 that’s as tall as it grew
2 grass didn’t have seeds
you eat the seeds (well most do, if not you). Corn is a grass, heavily modified by humans.
Didn't you saw wild grass in your life ? Isn't there really no wild grass in the US ?!
nah, you normally cut grass. Not saw it.@@eljulio8725
@@eljulio8725 I honestly haven’t. And if I have I didn’t know it was grass
@@Lil_critter holly molly
Never in my childhood I thought I would be watching American Lawn culture while sitting in a remote village of India. Thank you Internet, TH-cam, and your crazy video editing skills. You're genius.
You have better grammar than most Americans I know
@@chicocorry1311 really is an unfortunate thing. I'm in the Philippines, and I've had chat conversations with american born students who have dogshit grammar
@@chicocorry1311 how many is that, like 4?
Can relate, I'm watching this from Russia
Which state brother?
You think you've seen lawns in America, but lawns in Australia literally create wastelands.
what do you mean by this? I'm an Australian, but don't really care much about lawns so I am not sure what you mean.
@@JackAllpikeMusic Well, for example, if you went to a modern suburb, you would most likely find a street which is mostly asphalt (road), with a wide concrete driveway (and minimum parking requirements), and bare grass lawn (empty because you can't afford to fill it with garden).
This is while the houses are big and grey, and backyards virtually non-existent.
Compared to European fringe suburbs (which are still green), or what fringe suburbs used to be in Australia (now inner suburbs), this is quite a depressing look, and is avoidable.
The 'wasteland' appearance is due to a number of well-known factors of the "Australian ugliness", such as the unnecessary width of the street relative to the ratio of quality green or natural space and village-like buildings.
So, it looks like paradise that got paved into a grey desert.
@@betula2137 and those tiny concrete shoeboxes easily go for a million 😂
This happens in America too though
I still can't believe it when I see people trying to have those American style lawns, they're planting them now, and they're be vaporized in 2-3 months the moment the summer sun finally decides to rock up, it's a waste of time, money, and beauty, just plant some golden wattles, bottle brush trees and bushes, and put mulch down like the rest of the people with actual gardens
This probably won't be seen, but I want to say it anyway. I've believed in natural "lawns" for over thirteen years of my 27-year-old life. I studied ecology in high school, and have always adored the natural sciences.
I live in Northeast AL., a place rife with manicured lawns. Since childhood I've noticed the natural population of insects dramatically decreasing, and it's very depressing because I like insects.
Thank you for posting this video, it reminds me that I'm not the only one who cares about our planet.
There is a frisbee park behind my house that used to be a golf course. Before it became a frisbee park but after the golf course closed, it was an overgrown green space. Open fields of tall grass, milkweed, wildflowers, deer and coyotes, etc. When the place was mowed down to become a park, my parents thought it looked much better, but me and one of my parents friends said that we preferred it when it looked more natural. I feel you - I don't really like the homogeneous look of manicured lawns, it just doesn't look natural to me.
Also, notice the flower in my profile pic; that's a species of thistle (milk thistle I think) that can be seen on almost every lawn where I live (NY). On lawns, however, it never looks like a flower, since it gets mowed down before it can fully grow, so it always looks like a thorny shrub. My mom didn't know that it could become a flower until I told her.
Cry about it.
I refused to allow the man who was going to cut the kudzu to use Roundup. I will use a vinegar, epsom salts, and dish soap on mimosa sprouts.
Yes, having a good mix of local grasses and flowers in essential to maintaining the local ecosystem.
I live in a rural area in the woods, and I get both sides of the coin. I mow my lawn where I like to set up my lawn chair, where we go fishing, and where my family likes to do recreational activities. But I do enjoy leaving parts of the yard uncut to help encourage beautiful native flowers to grow, help prevent erosion, and to encourage wildlife around our place. So having a half cut and half natural lawn is the best way to go in my opinion.
I'd like to try that.
Given the grass came from Europe I wonder if the flowers are infact native 😂.
Wild gardens have become quite popular here in the UK. Well in England, not sure about the other countries.
They take less maintenance than manicured gardens and promote insect life. We have a family of hedgehogs that nest in our shrub's which is nice.
It's also a wise choice as nobody in my family can garden, can't grow a seed 😂
@@AdamMGTF I'm very torn on it all. Alot of the newer homes where I live in Canada have unmanicured lawns. When they move in, they usually do some landscaping but it never gets maintained. some lawns don't even have grass on them anymore. Tall grass can be a breeding ground for mice and rats, both of which we've had to deal with in the past (our neighbour behind us doesn't cut his back garden). You don't want them in your house as they can damage electrical cables and cause fires. When I walk the dog, I do admire those with well manicured and well maintained gardens. It's rather impressive and while they may not be using native vegetation, the best of these lawns have a wide variety of plants, trees and shrubs that add greatly to the diversity of the community.
@@TimothyCHenderson well we are lazy but not that bad. I don't think there are any houses in my area where the grass isn't cut.
We just have a hedge area that's natural that's part of an un-used bit of garden.
Our house was built in the 70s. More modern houses here have tiny gardens and the lawns are tiny, so they can pack in more small houses I guess. I wonder what that will do for wildlife.
It's interesting you mentioned pests. I've never seen rats/mice in my home town. I'm sure they are problems in more built up areas.
Do you get many predators for them there?
That's basically what I do I weed eat around my fruit trees flower bushes and herbs and cut the driveway but the rest I leave alone
Nothing says "american dream" like a father sitting in an adirondack chair, cheering on his most valued son as he mows the lawn, while his least valued son watches nearby and slowly questions his value as a person
He should be trimming with the weed eater, please.
This is oddly specific. Everything good at home Ben?
@@JustanothaGuy it was pictured in the video...
ow
@@sneauxday7002 I don't know man he really took it to heart...Everything good at home Sneaux?
Fun fact: Ha-Ha’s got their names because it was funny to watch someone who wasn’t paying attention to fall off them thinking the lawn was level and not knowing the edge was there.
This has to be a joke. source.
@@thehipsterking2184
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ha-ha
read the first segment
its not that far off
So, they're basically a dick move made into a landscape feature?
What's a haha
Nevermind..😅
Honestly, rebuilding lawns to be the same environment as the land there used to be would be amazing. Imagine having a moss "lawn," or interesting rock designs, or lichen covered stones, or clover and other plants native to the region. Imagine looking out to your lawn and seeing nature rather than some same old same old plabt
I don`t have to imagine this, we have that many places in Norway. Even City parks often have special sections for wild flowers
I'm from Argentina, when my parents got their own house it came with a lawn, they immediately thought it was pointless because we already had a backyard, so they expanded the indoors. And slowly, the neighbors started doing the same. I wonder if that's a thing that you could do in the USA without too much alienation from your neighbors
Lol no you would probably get fined by your city if you did that here
Vamos vamos
@@smokejaguar986 How is that legal? D:
@@AstorEzequiel cities in the US have like a "dress code" for homes. most homes absolutely need a lawn and you *must* have it maintained or you'll be fined for not keeping your lawn up to standards.
@@ashxxiv .... can I make it a small lawn?
Used to be lawns were managed by sheep. Sheep prefer weeds (forbs) and grass less so. It gives the appearance of a weed free lawn while maintaining plant diversity, fertility, desired shortness and health. We just need more sheep, fewer chemical inputs and lawns will become the rainwater harvesting wonders they used to be.
In Scotland is where golf originated and Scots relied heavily on sheep, so golfing, on grass, became a thing.
They still are lmaoo
Sheep provide their own chemical inputs to the lawn.
@@GoneZombie
Covered under fertility. Sorry 'chemicals' throws you so much that 'synthetic' needs to specified for you.
You'll live.
@@b_uppy I was trying to be funny, not antagonistic. Let me correct that mistake.
@@GoneZombie
Sorry. I've had people go crazy because I failed to use the term 'synthetic' in other conversations...
Fantastic video, well some people take pride in well manicured lawn, we collectively should see them as a societal failure of promoting terrible ecological practices as something to be proud of.
The Man Himself Has Spoken
We need to stop this inecoality and upend the rule of lawn with grassroots movements. I suggest the slogan "mower is less".
I agree with just about everything you have to say & offer on various topics. But I'm keeping my residential lawn until it's literally illegal. 😂
You know it's a great video if Alan is saying so
Like my lawn is perfect
I feel like it is very important to point out that there are leafblowers now that are really quiet and run off battery (and are great at cleaning up theaters after people decide that dumping popcorn and sticky sodas on the floor is a good idea even though there is a trash can right at the entrance)
I've done landscaping work in the past for a school district, and one day while raking the top of a freshly trimmed hedge it occurred to me that the hedge was alive. It was trying to grow, and exist, but we were systematically carving it into the shape of a cube as a piece of decoration. It reminded me of the Temptors from All Tomorrows, a being bred specifically to act as nothing more than an ornament.
Wait, so you worked in landscaping and it was only mid-job that you realized what your job involved? I guess we can't all be engineers.
@@bobbybologna3029 I just never considered the ramifications of domesticated shrubbery. Lots of folks have a moment where they just realize that there's an animal in their house, but didn't think of them like that. They only see them as a pet. Same with the hedges, it's just a pet bush instead of a cat.
@@bobbybologna3029 Imagine an engineer realizing "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, especially with climate change, maybe my field consumes too much" like nobody goes into anything knowing everything involved.
@ChaoticKreg o great one, impart unto us thy wisdom of what political/economic system does have 'ethical consumption'.
Bro had a "Are we the baddies?" moment 💀💀
I had to read Lawn People for a class a few years ago. It was shocking learning that almost all current US grass wasn't here 500 years ago. With colonization I think of buildings and settlements changing the landscape but grass? I could go anywhere in the US, pick up any blade of grass, and it's overwhelmingly likely that that grass wasn't here 500 years ago. Blows my mind.
Grass lives 6 months, not 500 years.
@@joshdavis5991 I hope this is joke, because it sounds too stupid
@@joshdavis5991 they do not mean literal age
@@joshdavis5991 Wdym? 1 month = 100 years
@@worldspam5682 yah I’m joking
My take away is that, through out all my life I was made fun of for being a "poor hillbilly redneck" when I was actually a liberal eco-friendly hippie the whole time, before it was cool.
some neighbors say my lawn isn't perfect and that i'm lazy, but really i'm just eco-friendly ;) p-please believe me guys, i-i'm just eco-friendly!!!!!!
redneck used to mean hard driving rural unionist
@@sarahbezold2008 Anyone pro-Union now is actually liberal.
What comes around goes around I guess.
@@boldCactuslad Why stick to that kind of “perfection,” though? It’s not even pretty. It’s bland, expensive, and useless.
I’ve always kinda been jealous of the huge American lawns but I remember when I went to California I was shocked to find MASSIVE green lawns everywhere not just by houses but all over, even in DESERTS, with huge sprinklers devouring water… no wonder lake mead is running dry. If I lived in a desert I don’t think I’d have one.
I live in the UK in a terraced house with a large back garden, and a smaller front garden with some grass some paved, it’s bigger than the other houses in my close since it’s in the corner but it’s smaller than our back garden, and both are much smaller than a lot of American lawns. I wouldn’t change it for the world, but I don’t think I’d actually mow it all the time like dad does, I’d just leave it to the wild 😅 most of my garden is left for nature with trees and hedges that house squirrels, hedgehogs, foxes, cats and birds, so having wild grass growing in the middle wouldn’t bother me, especially if I could get a rare endangered grass growing in it.
I live in Minnesota and seeing people watering lawns makes me want to give them a piece of my mind. I haven't watered my lawn a single time in my life, and its still thriving. It rains enough to keep them perfectly healthy here, stop wasting water on lawns.
@@SoupyMittens I was gonna say, isn’t Minnesota one of the cold wet ones? And then I saw the ending. It’s a shame people waste water like that but at least most of it will just be absorbed into groundwater and loop through the water cycle again so it’s not as bad as it could be.
california refuses to store fresh water in reservoirs and instead lets it run into the sea
@@SoupyMittens Lol what's your take if the person watering their lawn is using well water? Would the water not just flow right back into the ground (natural water level)? I am genuinely asking as I am not sure if that is a option in other places of the world. (Here) We have one of the world cleanest and largest underground lakes. (Goes to make 65% of the worlds IV bags.) So high chance, even if you're non American the IV bags at your hospital were made here, where I am specifically. Also you may say, that sounds like a bad idea... what happens if something goes wrong there... yeah what happens? (Baxters is the company fyi that makes them).
@@EC-dz4bq nobody uses well water where I live, and also the lawns are so covered in pesticides and whatnot that the water becomes contaminated
My family has gotten rid of our lawn front and back and converted it into a garden. We couldn't be happier. No more using noisy gas-powered machines, no more having to deal with ant piles
Wow, what a fantastic production. These lawns are greenwashing the suburbs, making them appear environmental while being invasive and wasteful. Thanks for this fascinating video!
SHUT THE HELL UP ITS FUCKING GRASS
I love when these types of videos attract the worst types of socialist scum.
How much you wanna bet none of these people ever touched grass lel?
Ah yes, such a pity the American landscape isn't all gravel and concrete.
Nay, the mere presence of greenery is an abomination.
@@cooldud7071 its just the type of greenery. Grass doesnt really benefit the environment. Grow flowers or something
@@cooldud7071 When it depletes aquifers and poisons the land with pesticides, then YES the mere presence of greenery IS an abomination.
Hoog not only explained why American lawns are bad, but extended it further to a metaphor for many other issues dominating the American political space. The part on “someone else treading on your freedom for what you do with your lawn because of their own actions” is especially relatable to current politics.
but he didn't, that statement was another example of the misunderstanding europeans have about americans. In the case of the fertilizers, the restriction on the use of fertilizer, through the power of the state, would be treading on them. Americans have freedom of action, and the freedom of the consequences which those actions give out. Society acts as a regulator for that. You can see that in their freedom of speech, you can say whatever you want, but stray too far into madness with nazi-esque quotes and society punishes you, however the government is not allowed to take action against you, as such you would have freedom of consequences for your language from the government. I don't believe it is that black and white cause people aren't black and white, but I do believe he's got this wrong
Apt metaphor for the rise of fascism taking place in the States right now.
@@RDKirbyN lemme guess, you think the LGBT community is fascist, or do you admit the American government is shit
@@hairlessgrizzly559 thd Groomers aren't Fascists, they're just a little more butthurt than usual.
@@hairlessgrizzly559 ...what are you on about? No to that first part lmao.
The US govt has been a beacon of fascism in varying degrees for almost two centuries. It's how the US came to be with it's states and territories, and currently with it's endless wars, etc...
Everyone worth their salt knows Hitler modeled his camps after US treatment of natives.
I'm surprised you didn't mention the reason behind why you can't do what you want with your lawn sometimes in the US. HOA's (Home owners associations) are the reason behind not having the freedom to do what you want to your lawn. They restrict many things depending what most of the home owners in that area want.
He cant cause hed have to admit government is the problem not the solution… something leftist aren’t capable of doing unfortunately
@@isaac6077 Homeowners associations are private entities. They aren't associated with the government.
HOAs are not everywhere. You absolutely do not have to move into a neighborhood with an HOA. Mine doesn't have one. I have a small back lawn and in the front I have a minimal-water-needed desert rockscape. Nobody cares or can legally stop me.
@@ScottJB I believe 60-80% of houses are in HOA's. You are one of the lucky few.
@@loveshack8172 That's only condos. Homes in general are about 27% in HOAs. It's actually very easy to avoid if you can afford a single family home.
Noone talking about the _insane_ quality of the vid?
Seriously, amazing job with all those little animations, color codings and research
Actually, the Zero Turn lawnmower was originally in use by Dutch city and town 'green services,' at least in the 1970s already.
Don't know about countries but such a model made absolute sense if you were a greenworker and had to cut all kinds of sizes and shapes of areas with grass. It could evade traffic signs, trees and other obstacles to get to the most difficult placed patches of grass.
The Zero Turn lawnmower can do so much more than just cut grass on a perfectly rectangular lawn.
Zero turns are loud and heavily pollute here in America. If they were all electric, I'd be okay with them on large lawns. While they can maneuver on a small lawn, they scalp the hell out of them most of the time because they are just too big. They destroy the grass in the easements between street & sidewalk in my local town. Maybe if the mower decks were raised to 5.5 inches, they wouldn't scalp. But even on big areas, like parks, I see these huge zero turns mowers destroying groundcover with their high power and shooting dust everywhere. I see them mostly as a menace.
@@Nphen Zturns are very useful at golf courses, even ones with a lot of bumps or hills. I know my workplace hasn't exactly "trained me", and I've only been on them for ~50 hours, but they are incredible at their goal. Mow a lot of area quickly, and avoid scalping the shit out of grass. Now do they scalp? Depends on the height of the blades and the experience of the user. I am by no means proficient lmao, so I can't say I'm good at making sure grass doesn't get a little messed up. But my coworkers have definitely shown me it's possible through their mowing
I have personally chunked a lotttt of grass, but after getting more used to it I noticed that 1) some terrain simply needs blade height set differently 2) the user needs to be ready to lift the blades with their foot in case of any bumps. (there's a peddle to temporarily lift the blades from the down position, varied by how hard you push down.)
Not trying to be a smartass, I just thought it'd be interesting to share. And I agree on the electric arguement, if it could be less deafening I'd enjoy it a little bit more. Idk how much they contribute to total emissions, but it would be nice to have a mower that could be plugged in overnight and ready to go.
@@pandaman2840 exactly. Anyone who's driven one would not want to go back to any other. Now that being said, I think Zturns are a little over the top if you're using it to mow just your own average lawn. Waste of money and really doesn't save you time and is likely a form of compensation. But if you're working with a mowing or landscape company or have a large plot/acreage that needs to be mowed, then that baby will save your neck and time. Just a little loud and guzzles gas, but I'm sure newer ones are probably a bit better than the 90s one I work with.
@@isaiahc8390 shut up
@@Nphen "heavily pollute" They do?
In Australia, lawns with no plants are only found in poorer suburbs. Wealthy suburbs generally have diverse gardens in every house for extra privacy, cooling, and aesthetic. You go to a poor suburb, it's all grass. You go to a rich suburb, you see lots of big trees, hedges, shrubs etc.
Yeah it’s the same in America
Yeah pretty much every house in the upper class neighborhood has plants. Most of the middle class ones do as well, and even some of the lower class ones can have plants sometimes
Lookup Bethesda, Chevy Chase and Northwest DC neighborhoods as an exmaple of wealthy streetcar suburbs with many plants and trees. Then look north at the neighborhoods around Rockville and Aspen hill which are a bit poorer and have large lawns and generally less trees
@@SoupyMittens problem is a lot of middle class neighborhoods have an annoying home owners Association that the homeowner must get approval from to plant anything.
My next door neighbors have a plant loaded yard, both front and back. Large spruce trees block pretty well all direct sunlight from the front yard at all times of day, making it feel quite private as well as the coolest outdoor spot in town during the summer. When I was a child she would regularly invite me and my siblings over to help her care for all her plants, and would reward us with sugary drinks and pocket change. I do quite like that yard, though myself would not have the commitment to caring for all the flowerbeds and whatnot.
Instead of writing my essay I’m watching a 16 minute essay on grass and the origin of lawns.
I always knew there was something inherently wrong with large lawns that are used for absolutely no purpose other than to look nice. It’s inserted itself into the American consciousness as a status symbol and makes everyone feel like their own little king or queen
No sh**, Dirt = Money.
As a space for children to play it makes perfect since. Play sports, tag, or any other outdoor activity makes perfect since.
What I don't understand is why someone like me should maintain a lawn when I don't have any children and since I've never seen an active adult before I'm likely never going to be playing sports again.
There's nothing inherently wrong with a citizen being able to feel like they have a little bit of power over their own realm. The opposite is that people no longer compete to keep their space beautiful and appreciable and give up their power to have any kind of say over anything that happens to them or their families.
It doesn't even look nice though it looks stupid and unnatural
@@TorontoPopulistConservative but what about when people want to plant other stuff on their lawns instead of just plain green pasture without HOA knocking down their doors?
"A father would pick out a son with the smallest chance going to a liberal arts school..." I am lmao!!!
Scrolled way too much to find this comment
tfw i found out that lmao is a verb
idk exactly whatv that means but it feels like a personal attack lol
@@lunchtime_mmmmmmm what exactly did you think it was
It literally means "laughing my ass off"
The sentence "I am laughing my ass off" is a correct sentence.
destruction 100
Hoog casually creating Lawn Simulator 2022 to visualise the topic
Mexicans will buy that game.
@@jamesmitch9792 oddly racist...
@@jamesmitch9792 As a Mexican, can confirm.
@@guidedexplosiveprojectileg9943 I'm Mexican. Very funny joke. Don't call people racist on my behalf.
ORALE, CON GANAS COMPA
Wow, something I never really think about until it becomes a chore is the lawn - I take it for granted as it, like everything in this world, is something that just existed in the world I was born into. Yet it has such a storied history. We live in a world defined by systems put into place by long dead actors. Crazy.
Amazing video - I must watch more of your productions as I am impressed.
If you'd like to know the answer to the chicken and egg problem, the lawn being desirable came first, however even the people that pioneered the idea for American neighborhoods never intended it to be adopted on a city-wide scale. The kind of seeding ground for this was a neighborhood of Radburn in New Jersey. It is widely considered the first model which every modern American neighborhood can trace its roots to. It had built upon the neighborhood concept (which in turn was built upon the English landscape garden concept) which was developed throughout the 1800's in both England and selectively in America, to incorporate a more modern living style and being within walking distance of city infrastructure such as stores and places for events. The idea of the country inside the city was the driving force behind these developments back then, however most developments in that nature up until Radburn had been further away from civilization and required a streetcar, horse, or later a motorcar to get to more useful places (with notable exceptions in English cities). Radburn was designed with both walking and driving in mind, and as such there was a street and sidewalk separated by both grass and (I think) a row of trees. The houses all had backyards sure, but all of the backyards faced inwards into a single large common lawn area away from the road and it's noises. Right outside of the neighborhood of Radburn, and a short walk from any of the hosues, the architects had planned for a more dense, city like area to be built which would've had space for shopping and business. Unfortunately in 1929 the stock market crashed and they had run out of money after only the neighborhood was constructed.
Every planner, government official, and architect who saw Radburn was completely enchanted with it's design, and it was decided by the US government that it should be the model for all future urban development, ignoring the wider context in which it had been built and only focusing on the neighborhood itself. When FDR issued the famous housing bills of the 1930's, Radburn was used as a model, when the Levittowns were built in the 50's, Radburn was the model. The issue is that every single one of the future mass-market developments stemming from Radburn had taken the very basic aesthetics of it: driveway for every house, front lawn and back yard, and street and sidewalk, without considering either the design of Radburn as a neighborhood itself or the wider context it was envisioned in.
This was the philosophical factor driving American suburban expansion for the next 7 decades, all the way up until quite recently when people started to become fed up with it. It sucks too, because Radburn is beautiful and if the entirety of it had been built, America might be a somewhat different place today. There were of course other factors at play: Eisenhower and the highways, GM and their push for car-centric development from the 1930's to the 1950's, and ideas which were coming out of Europe from the 20's and 30's as well, most notably from Le Corbusier.
And I just also would like to mention that yes, leaves in a certain quantity are good for your lawn, but depending on if you get snow, you should remove them going into the winter, and shouldn’t let them pile up. Many nasty molds can grow under the leaves that eventually kills everything under them. Everything is a balance
spread out the leaves then run them over with a lawnmower could help mitigate things like that
Let it all decay and become fertilizer for whatever stays
@@chaotickreg7024 want to hear your genuine take on this, what we do is put the leaves in a compost pile, let them break down that way, then spread thinly and evenly over the lawn each year, we usually are using the debris from the bottom of the compost pile, me and my step dad believe there is a humanely way to having a green lawn. For instance we have numerous flower beds/vege gardens/fruit trees to produce pollen that might be lost in our lawn area, we keep honey bees as well.
@@PuckADV Sounds good to me
ever try to use a leaf blower to collect compost? leaf blowers a great for saying "not my problem"
I love lawns as spaces for children to play. A well kept lawn is an absolute joy to picnic on, play soccer, football, etc. You'll quickly notice something about these uses though...no one does this in their front lawn, and very few have a backyard large enough to do this. Lawns are great as attachments to parks (and not calling a lawn with a couple trees a park, it's shocking how often you see this in parts of the US, especially near schools in new subdivisions), but they're terrible as attachments to homes. You really need a big open field to use Kentucky Bluegrass and similar turf grasses to their recreational potential, and you need it to be next to other forms of recreation so there's a natural reinforcing loop of recreation between the two. A great example was the park in the neighborhood I grew up in. A field as long as a soccer field but in both directions was next to a basketball court and a playground. You saw families, dogs, and teenagers all use the space almost every afternoon. I never saw anyone over the age of 5 play in their front lawn.
I think the best answer to the American lawn as a cultural compromise is rather wide and not very deep row houses with basically no front lawn and a square shaped backyard. There's just enough of a patch of grass back there for the dog or your toddler, but if you want the real deal you gotta go to the park where teens will play soccer and your dog can really run after the frisbee. Americans love their backyard cookouts (it might be one of our better cultural traditions) and a 35 foot by 35 foot backyard is enough to accommodate one. This would also be enough room to have a one car garage underneath the house like you would see in some suburban houses in the 1960s. Also as for maintenance, mulching lawn mowers are where it's at. You solve the "unsightly" (I disagree, but I also would rather have a garden than a lawn) grass clippings and leaves while improving the decomposition of the organic matter to fertilize the grass. Ultimately I would rather we had a Dacha culture instead of a lawn culture, but at least we can hopefully tweak the culture to be less damaging, because if you try to get rid of lawns entirely you would suffer way too much backlash. At least until there's some sort of crisis and everyone wants to use the space for more practical purposes...victory gardens, anyone?
I disagree, a lawn is terrible for children to play and to picnic. An aqueduct or reservoir park on the other hand is a wonderful place.
It's not unlike public transit- a thing I use daily as I've never owned a car and don't intend to. Parks are like that. A magnificent public resource and accommodation we should spend on. I walk and sit in them often. I've also spent my adult life in apartments, and don't expect to own a house.
Still, I don't want to be forced to live my life in public or semi-public, to do all outdoor relaxation in public, or to do all travel on a public conveyance if I can retain the option of living in more relaxed and private ways.
@@randomobserver8168 You can just use curb cuts like Dan Long and use native plants.
There's so much land but no, houses must be so close together that basically make them shantytowns for the middle class
@@brubrulani You can have them be townhomes.
i wish i had a bigger lawn just so i can do more damage to the environment
This is so weird to look at as a European. I am the oldest son and I have tended to our natural garden with a manual lawnmower and we never applied and substances to our lawn and we never raked it, just having the gras be short was good enough.
Super interesting video tho!
As someone who co-owns a landscaping company, yes.
Please get cities & schools to raise up the mower height to 5 inches or higher. When grass is 5 inches tall, the blade shades the root crown and it becomes drought resistant. Mowing at 3 inches is literally destroying millions of acres of groundcover and accelerating erosion, especially in sandy soil areas. Using a zero-turn at 3 inches or less will always scalp parts of a bumpy lawn, too. Just raising to 5 inches, and ending weed control to allow clover to provide nitrogen, can then also eliminate fertilizer. I used to run lawn care trucks and also am a formerly licensed pesticide applicator. My lawn is green & thick, never use fert or chemicals.
ive never lived in a place where we had to mow our own lawns, whether its a hoa or apartment complex it seems more practical to hire people to mow instead of have every household own a dedicated lawn mower.
@@Nphen definitely, I cut fields at 0.8" and it requires alot of support to keep it green and a monoculture. Still cheaper than plastic turf though.
I’m an American who is rather tired of the suburb, but not as tired of the ideas that made them. Those lawns got our country through both world wars, as victory gardens could be planted to offset food shortages, something that couldn’t be done so easily anywhere else. The problems really showed when there was an industrial effort to carve up these plots from farmland and desert. Imo you have to go one way or the other: Townhouse with very tiny patch and a small backyard, a city dwelling like a condo or apartment, or you need a forested cabin or full pasture. The section of the traffic issues we could have avoided became commonplace as a result, and kids often became isolated. I grew up in that environment. I will hopefully be blessed enough to raise a family in a townhouse or a rural setting along a town road.
Suburbs are objectively the best place to live. Townhouses are HORRIBLE
Repent and follow Jesus my friend! Repenting doesn't mean confessing your sins to others, but to stop doing them altogether. Belief in Messiah alone is not enough to get you into heaven - Matthew 7:21-23, John 3:3, John 3:36 (ESV is the best translation for John 3:36). Contemplate how the Roman empire fulfilled the role of the beast from the sea in Revelation 13. Revelation 17 confirms that it is in fact Rome. From this we can conclude that A) Jesus is the Son of God and can predict the future or make it happen, B) The world leaders/nations/governments etc have been conspiring together for the last 3000+ years to accomplish the religion of the Israelites C) History as we know it is fake. You don't really need to speculate though because you can start a relationship with God and have proof. Call on the name of Jesus and pray for Him to intervene in your life. - Revelation 3:20
Revelation 6 1st Seal: White horse = Roman Empire conquering nations under Trajan 98-117 AD & Gospel spreading rapidly. 2nd Seal: Red horse, bloody civil wars with 32 different Emperors, most killed by the sword. 185-284 AD 3rd Seal: Black horse, economic despair from high taxes to pay for wars, farmers stopped growing. 200-250 AD 4th Seal: Pale horse, 1/4th of Romans died from famine, pestilence; at one point 5,000 dying per day. 250-300 AD 5th Seal: Diocletian persecuted Smyrna church era saints for ten years, blood crying out for vengeance. 303-312 AD 6th Seal: Political upheaval in the declining Roman Empire while the leaders battled each other. 313-395 AD
Revelation 7 Sealing of 144,000, the saints, before trumpet war judgments, which led to the fall of the Roman Empire.
Revelation 8 1st Trumpet: Alaric and the Goths attacked from the north, the path of hail, and set it on fire. 400-410 AD 2nd Trumpet: Genseric and the Vandals attacked the seas and coastlands, the blood of sailors in water. 425-470 AD 3rd Trumpet: Attila and the Huns scourged the Danube, Rhine & Po rivers area, dead bodies made water bitter. 451 AD 4th Trumpet: Odoacer and the Heruli caused the last Western Emperor (sun), Senate (moon) to lose power. 476 AD With the Western Roman Emperor (restrainer of 2 Thes. 2) removed; the son of perdition Popes took power.
Revelation 9 Two woe judgments against the central 1/3rd and eastern 1/3rd of the Roman Empire. 612-1453 AD 5th Trumpet: Locust & scorpions point to Arabia, the rise of the Muslim army. Islam hides Gospel from Arabs. 612-762 AD 6th Trumpet: Turks released to attack Constantinople with large cannons (fire, smoke, brimstone). 1062-1453 AD
Revelation 10 The little book is the printed Bible, which was needed after the Dark Ages when Scriptures were banned by Popes.
Revelation 11 7th Trumpet: Martin Luther measured Roman Church; found that it’s an apostate church, not part of true temple. The two witnesses are the Scriptures and saints who proclaim the pure Gospel and testify against the antichrist Popes. Papal Church pronounced Christendom dead in 1514 AD. Silence for 3.5 years. Then Luther posted his 95 Thesis, which sparked the Protestant Reformation and brought the witnesses back to life. Millions of Catholics were saved.
Revelation 12 Satan used the Roman Empire to try to wipe out the early Church, Satan was cast down as the Empire collapsed.
Revelation 13 The antichrist beast Popes reigned in power 1,260 years, 538-1798, is the little horn of Daniel 7, son of perdition. The false prophet Jesuit Superior General rose to power from land (earth) of Vatican and has created many deceptions.
Revelation 14 Points to great harvest during the Protestant Reformation & wrath on Catholic countries who obey antichrist Pope.
Revelation 15 Overcoming saints victorious over the beast. Prelude to 7 vials and judgment on those who support Papal Rome.
Revelation 16 1st Vial: The foul sore of atheism was poured out on Catholic France, leaving them with no hope, led to revolution. 2nd Vial: The French Revolution started in 1793, killed 250,000, as France had obeyed the Pope and killed saints. 3rd Vial: The French Revolution spread to rural areas of France, where Protestants had been killed in river areas. 4th Vial: The bloody Napoleonic wars shed the blood of countries who had revered and obeyed the antichrist Pope. 5th Vial: Judgment on the seat of the beast. Papal States invaded in 1798, Pope imprisoned, removed from power. 6th Vial: The Turks vast domain dried up, they were only left with Turkey. They lost control of Palestine in 1917 AD, Israel became a nation again in 1948
@@isaiahc8390 Did you seriously follow me onto TH-cam just so you can harass me for being Catholic?
@@accelerationquanta5816 yeah no thats a hard pass for me
@@accelerationquanta5816 american suburbia are objectively the worst kind of city planning its possible to build, its terrible in every way, and its not even sustainable, its all build on the principle of expansion and expansion and expansion
My favorite part about lawns is their relationship with droughts.
Like bro, your grass can be a tad yellower... this is a freaking crisis
I never water the grass it’s green from may to November. Go ahead and keeping thinking Americans grass is unnatural. Even his facts about the grass types are complete bs. Only rich people put European grass down.
There’s a brief moment in the spring where lawns are actually really pretty because they’re covered in all sorts of flowers until of course it all gets destroyed
Reject Home Owner's Association, embrace Minecraft dirt house.
Not only have we made an artificial landscape, but our houses heat the air and change the wind patterns, and our basements pump out the water tables. I have a large lawn, some is now farm land, and I no longer send the water off property, it now goes to a reservoir to be pumped back to the top of the slop to water the gardens. I still mow, but by mowing in the right way, I make hey, and from chicken to gardening, its very useful. I do understand the need for lawns if there can't be trees to keep grass out, high grass attracts snakes, bug, and bunnies to my gardens and house. So many snakes this year
@@isaiahc8390 Rome isn't the beast, the city of Buffalo New York is, that's were we get the 1 3rd of the world's fresh water for the part 3 from. They've been laying that plot out for over 200 years up here.
@@isaiahc8390 not really sure why you wanna get into that subject, but I'm not worried about the end of days, I'm by Buffalo
The house I rented my senior year of college had a backyard covered in clover. Only had to mow it like 2-3 times the entire year because it grew so slowly, yard work went from ass to a mild annoyance, and our house stood out from all our neighbors without looking worse. Making one or both of my future yards clover is a major goal of mine.
I've had in mind that if I ever own a house I think i'd like to convert the lawn to clover for the lower maintanence.
This is why I live in the rural area where I can do whatever I want with with my property, no city limitations, and no neighbors to deal with.
Moss makes a really nice lawn actually. It’s softer, very environmentally friendly and easy to maintain.
Oh man is moss a lovely substance for walking on... Go up into northern lake areas (like, semi-northern canada or sweden) and in some of those places you have to paddle to get to, you get like a 4 inch layer of moss beneath your feet. Tears up very easily though and the underside is typically less visually appealing.
How the hell do you get rid of the grass to have a moss yard😂🤔
@@BlazRa just don’t plant grass in the first place
be awesome if could have a lawn of that one phycodelic moss.
aint no way this dude telling me my front lawn is born from racism💀
this is a comedy
Wait he said that? even though i disagree with some of this video(a lot of his points are made from single searches and similar websites) i didnt get that from this vid... i would love to hear ur reasoning though.
He mentioned slaves maintaining George Washington’s lawn. Once. Because it was true.
@@dnfluffles772 it was the allusions to slavery and how early American lawns were maintained by slaves. It’s a pretty easy soft ball to use against anything, really.
@@dnfluffles772 he mentioned somewhere that early on the rich used slaves to tend to their lawns
I never ever understood the value of a leaf blower. You’re literally blowing leaves from one spot to another. Just sweep it up dammit
In Kentucky growing up on a 2 Acre plot in the Appalachian mountains that WAS NOT flat and a full acre of it was hill side. The property was nice but not great as a lawn, so Dad always grew a large garden which is easier to tend to than mowing and trimming all summer. Sure tilling the garden is a pain for a few days at the start but once you are finished its fairly easy to keep a large garden compared to a large lawn or "yard" as we call it. A few years ago dad decided he didn't want to have a garden and after just 1 year of cutting grass every week for 4-6 hours every few days he told me the reason why he started a garden when my parents bought the property in the early 1970s. My little brother will inherit that property when my parents pass and I live next door on an extra 1/2 acre that is adjacent, my little brother and I have already agreed cutting grass is for losers with no life and we will keep planting beans, corn, tomatoes and so on, because its actually FAR less work. We can give away what we don't eat and we won't have to spend every free day off work cutting our grass. Just hoe'ing out the few weeds that pop up which takes just a few minutes each week. Nothing like weed eating a hillside or push mowing a deep incline yard. Most importantly its FREE FOOD and it saves us hundreds of dollars every year just on vegetables only and they are fresh, no pesticides or chemicals the only issue is deer eating things and some forest friends show up but they are easy to trap and set free a mile or two away when you need to go that far.
What's an acre?
@@pappi8338 Its a unit of measurement used for land in the United States. 1 Acre roughly is 4050 square meters so total we have about 10,000 Square meters to cut.
ah yes, i love the generalization that everyones lawn in the US is just 5x5, mans never been to the south
Exactly what I thought!
I’m in the south with an acre of property, it’s kinda funny how many misconceptions there are in the video. Seems to focus on specific types of places, but there’s some interesting tidbits here
i subbed when you were under 10k subs and that was a great move. Your videos are very well made, touch upon interestic topics, the animations are fantastic and professional, and your subtle or sometimes not-so-subtle humour is just great. Keep it up man you are on a road to greatness, and hopefully some good change in our society
His videos are propaganda.
@@accelerationquanta5816 bruh
@@accelerationquanta5816 Those evil liberals are trying to take our lawns from us!!!
You talk as if you did an investment LOL
The visuals in this are brilliant, super well made, well done
So many good points without even talking about how much water is wasted to maintain them, good stuff!
NYTimes already made a video about that, so I didn't want to do the same
@@hoogyoutube Yeah I have seen it in other videos before, it's just crazy how many problems there are with lawns.
@@SgtKaito They're not really problems though. Where do you think water goes? If you water your lawn do you think the water just vaporizes and is lost forever? Of course not. It runs off into the ground and mixes with ground water or it evaporates and drops as rain elsewhere. Two things it'd do whether you watered your lawn or not. Watering your lawns is only an issue if you live in a desert like California, but even then it makes up less than 1% of their water usage with the majority of their water shortages caused by massive corporations using millions of gallons of water.
Despite what this video tries to claim, there really are no real impactful problems with lawns. If you don't like em, ok, you're entitled to your opinion but the second you try to distort reality into making them some kind of bad thing we should remove, that's when you lose it.
You can't "waste" water. It's infinitely renewable.
@@War450 He's a leftist who wants to destroy all independence from the government and corporations; of course he hates lawns.
Mono-Clydedons: Plants which can be used to make a lawn that can be maintained by a single Clydesdale. Budweiser is a fringe benefit.
I really appreciated this. It's really well put together and a significant dose of synthesis/critical thinking, which is something that is all but dead in this crazy country.
This is all the more notable because there is already a lot of content covering "how stupid lawns are," so kudos.
Hell, I even enjoyed the little ad. Suggesting that people take an hour per day of phone-scrolling and repurpose it for learning is basically a PSA.
The grass in my parents backyard lawn has been around a full 60 years thanks to my grandparents implementing it. It’s apparently a hybrid desert grass made to last in hot temps. (It doesn’t last long in the hot Sun)
However over time it’s become so unhappy and doesn’t grow like it used to grow.
It stagnates and allows the weeds to grow which I’m fine with.
Not so much my parents. But it looks beautiful.
Each weed brings a new set of insects that enjoy it. It just looks alive and unique compared to others lawns.
However my own father is truly unhappy about the state of that grass.
He really wants it to grow back as beautiful as it used to be when he was a kid.
And I’ve tried very hard while competing with the people that kinda take care of and kinda kill the lawn with their mower.
They mow it way too low and no matter how much I tell them, it still happens so as much as I try to help the poor lawn they just keep killing it and removing the soil. I really dislike how the gardners uproot my flowers and rake the soil right off the ground. I’m trying to figure out how I can stop it but it’s ingrained in their heads no matter how many times I say please don’t do this.. they just keep doing it.
I’d love to know how to keep the top soil organic and growing with lots of organic top soil. So far I can’t get my parents on the same page of thinking as they assume it will make it look like garbage in the backyard and it is their yard so that’s why I try not so hard to stop the people raking and uprooting things.
Where I live in the UK we don’t really have leaf blowers and I’ve never raked up my leaves, I just leave them on the grass and I guess that’s why it’s always so green and likes to grow tall fast. We do mow it though, but often the cut grass is left on the lawn or collected up and composted, then the compost is spread on the lawn. We usually do the latter now but before we replaced our lawnmower we were using a 40 year old one and the grass catcher kept falling off so we just stopped bothering for a while and let nature take place, often when grass is cut on municipal sites and school owned fields it’s often left on too, benefiting the lawn. The only time I can really think of where leaves are raked or occasionally blown here are on parks and places like that, they are occasionally moved if it’s a public place.
Grass is greener and grows quicker in the UK because of the climate. Leaving leaves on the lawn in the US would produce brown patches because the sunlight does not reach the grass
Why do you even need the lawn in front of your houses being completely useless instead of moving the house to the front of your property and make backyard as big as possible
US places often have good sized backyards as well. Some of it is for privacy from people walking by, noise reduction from vehicles etc.
Defensible area
become ungovernable, disregard your hoa, have a cow on your lawn to graze it
Your pet cow
Wtf is the thumbnail for?
Little jab at American polarisation I suppose
Me as a teenager in a live presentation to my father on why I shouldn’t mow the lawn
I worked as a landscaper in Las Vegas. What you said about leaf blower is very much true. The sad truth is that alot of the people I worked with didn't wear earpro and only a mask (if they had one). If there one machine that's louder than a blower to a operator is a arborist chain saw, that combined with it usually being used suspended in a palm tree. All of this makes the industry dangerous not including the lack of enforced safety rules depending on the company. But in the end these people are just workers buts artisans in the craft of grass
Here in the UK there is grass everywhere and it is always quite short, the space in front of houses is small and usually have gravel or a place to park a car and in places where people do cut grass, cut grass and leaves are just left alone, i only ever seen leafblower used to blow leaves off of pavements
Yeah, the UK is a real disgusting place.
The biggest problem is that we haven’t grown plants that shoot zombies yet.
I grew up on my families land, in Pine Ridge South Dakota (the Reservation, yes)
My families land is untilled prairie, for about maybe 40 square miles. Tall grass, and sedge as it gets closer to the buttes and the like
All of it. Was "untamed". The grasses were indigenous, and carefully maintained by family members for two things
1) crafting, as certain grasses make great baskets. Some can make natural dyes that we can use for dying leathers or porcupine needles
2) eating. Many of the plants are cultivated for food, and aren't found outside of the Reservation due whytte farmers seeing those plants are weeds or poisonous to their animals.
Anyone who would see my family land, who aren't aware. Of how rar and precious those plants and animals are. Would simply say "it's wild. Untamed. There's plenty of room to start farming, or making a community."
But now that I live in the city. Surprised by lack of vegetation, and travel through both suburbia and farmlands that mark an American life...
All I see is desert. A true desert
Not the thing non-indigenous people saw when they first arrived on the Great Plains
I went to Pine Ridge with my cousin so she can pick up her friend. The grass in South Dakota looks fake and too perfect.
I'm lucky to live in America, in the middle of nowhere, where my many acres are so full of BS plants that I gave up trying to make it all the same.
I just mow my lawn and dont really do much other than that.
Most of the people that take time into keeping their lawn ultra perfect are usually doing it as a hobby anyways so I respect that.
Personally I think its stupid to hate lawn culture.
People have really benefited from using it as a creative outlet almost.
Its only really bad when you got dumbfuck clowns living in desert conditions tryna maintain ultra high quality lawns for zero reason.
Just put gravel on at that point.
Yeah rural America is a dying life style I love it yeah you have to drive everywhere but that's some of the fun
@@dosdotnet8199 Rural America is way better than urban shitholes
@@dosdotnet8199 small town or rual?
I quite like a wild garden, shrub gardens, rock gardens, you name it. The past couple of years there was a street in Ottawa's lowertown that had all three next to one another. The fourth was a the most smoothly trimmed lawn I've ever seen. It was nice too. Nothing wrong with a patch of ground one can call one's own and trim to sit on. Then again, anyone who thinks Ottawa is due for a water shortage is nuts.
Did you watch the video?
I have been saying this for years, thank you so much for putting this all into one video.
I used to work with lawns, and I always felt like I was contributing a net negative to society. I was wasting many resources to maintain these useless status symbols.
Lawns were originally a way of saying "look how many resources I can afford to waste!" And that's what they still are.
If I'm forced to have a lawn it's constantly overgrown because I don't have time to stress over literal grass.
As an ex child I used to hate lawns!! The grass would ruin the sticky tabs on my shoes, and running around the streets or climbing trees and boundary walls was always much more fun anyways.
Greetings, my fellow ex-child.
Better than acorns... I grew up in a yard full of acorns and that would hurt! Kind of makes me glad I don't have any trees myself, just shrubs and blueberry bushes. I have a lawn in the front to keep the neighbourhood contract happy (although it's not a lot, just enough to play badminton), and then the back is almost all food. The blueberries, a good sized garden my great grandfather put in, and I'm planning to make a box to put squash in because it likes to travel and get stuck on other plants. It's the mullet of yards I guess.
You thought about that as a child? I really doubt it...
@@TheBrazilRules as a child I hated grass in the Velcro of my runners…and grass was so boring walls trees and streets were always more fun. Those not the musings of a savant…
@@JossyFoop Who hated stuff on my shoes was my mom. I did not care about anything
I never knew lawn could be so fascinating and interesting. Beautiful video.
Just a few things:
1. Profound, deep engrossing for those maps of Versailles, Monticello and George Washington.
2. I do agree we are animals, feral at that, though I'd rather think I'm something else than an ape.
3. You finally cleaned your room for that Brilliant shot. Well done ;)
Lawns are really a big part of American and Northern European cultures but they were born and flourished in an era where human kind thought could tame and overpower nature. Thus shaping it to their desires. I believe that Japanese and eastern and south east Asian gardens in general, offers a more holistic view of what the relationship between humans and nature can be. Not based on control, rather on harmony. As you mentioned, we are animals, so let us live like that. I've yet to see an ape on a zero turn mower.
Just want to add that a lawn without law, is just a n.
Your channel is good too kamome i just watched Mexico vid
Technically we are actually apes
Yes, let's waste our rational minds and go back to monkee
@@TheBrazilRules I think there's an argument to be made about whether or not destroying local ecosystems and poisoning children and wildlife to maintain a useless lawn is rational
Imagine if fruit and nut bearing trees where the norm or berry bushes! One of the things I loved as a kid in Florida was that it was easy to visit a neighbor for oranges, tangarines, japanese plums etc or find them on your own property or even in public spaces. When our avacado tree bore fruit it became a neighborhood party place!
The suburbs are actually really noisy, there's always a mower or blower going.
this is the most passive aggressive educational video ive ever watched, brilliant work lads
Need to get on some Not Just Bikes and Historia Civilis
Leftism seems to made a culture of this. Cant quite say im fond of it.
Coming from a country where every residence is cramped with literally zero lawn, some dont even have garage
I kinda envy home residence in the US
Which is why so many that come here and love it is because of these very things that other rail against. The wide, open and individual space a person and their families can and should have.
@@marlak4203 Same. Thats whats so great about the US.
You actually get to OWN SHIT.
I can mod my car and make a post apocalyptic mad max type car, and it would be perfectly road legal and I would barely have to deal with any moronic bureacuracy.
Countries with low Uncertainty Avoidance, such as America, are proven to have very high innovation and less bureaucracy.
Whats great about America is litterally the fact you can own guns, you can fly drones, you can modify your house, and you can do so much shit, that would normally require 50 diffferent licenses or just be flat out illegal.
@@marlak4203 True just lack the mass transit system
@@azzamalhanif9197
Yes the transit is here just not as efficient as it should be. The system here in America is so lazy-like and some others who don't want people to move around as productive. A lot or most Americans are fine and good with mass transit but there are some factors that get in the way which are social. Some don't want services like busses because they don't want certain kind of people coming into their neighborhoods. And since this has been going on for so long now it's gotten rooted and trying to put things in place like mass transit won't have much fruitage because those people want to keep their neighborhoods a certain way. And the constant bad news always showing the cities full of crime all the time does NOT help that. It exacerbates the separation.
Things like this are why people don't want to hear what these planners talk about when they say dense living and move to the cities when there at mentalities and issues like that going on now. Fix that first (but how?) then...
@@marlak4203 The video creator is a European leftist; they hate independence and spacious living.
America is a mighty big place buddy. You're conflating America with Suburbia. I live in Appalachia where grass is so plentiful we have to cut it to keep snakes at bay.
In a place like that you would really benefit from converting at least a portion to something else.
All this grass that I will never touch
Why do I have a feeling you never touch grass
I've heard of people letting goats graze on their lawns instead of trimming them with mowers. You cordon off the lawn and let the goats eat lol.
But maybe that'll create a booming goat industry
i live in america and i perfer to let natural grass and weeds grow
At least you HAVE a lawn. Big houses and lots of space in between them, plenty of space for grass outside. Here in the UK, most houses are so small and joined together there's barely any lawn space at all.
My idea of a solution is to have suburbs designed relatively similarly, and just have lower maintenance yards. I don't know how this applies to all of the states, but it makes perfect sense in my home state of California, as we're in near-constant drought. The suburbs around my town are doing this already. Also, not having to have a portion of every homeowner's land devoted to something that only loses the homeowner money gives more disposable income, economic win for homeowners, and at least in my hometown, only homeowners HAVE lawns.
I love the subtle humor and satire. Good video
Please never stop these vids
*Dad asks Hoog to mow the lawn*
Hoog:
Probably lol
I grew up in neighborhoods like this… It’s like bleach to my eyes… It made no sense to me why these lawns have to be one specific way, and any attempts to make it unique to you and yourself, the government and communities decide to exercise their own authority to keep you and your lawn in check… I always saw it as pointless, mind-numbing ideals for mind-numbing results… Now that I see the issues razed in this video, I can’t help but wonder if we could be spending the time, money, and research on something more productive and less diminishing.
I grew up with the opposite effect. I thought my neighborhood was the most beautiful place on Earth. I loved the tall oak trees, the birds, and the rabbits. I loved looking down my cove, as I lived at the very end and the street just stretched right down from the front of the house and made for such a nice sight. I loved seeing my neighbors working on their yards and waving to me when our eyes met. I loved how quiet it was when everyone was finished because you could only hear the breeze through the leaves. I loved how clean the air was. I loved swimming in the pool. I loved sitting in the backyard with a glass of water when I was taking a break from mowing. It was so peaceful.
Oh, and of course I loved mowing the lawn.
I like how every lefty had an adult mind as a kid. Almost like you are all making this shit up
@inc0mingr0flc0pter The trendy thing nowadays is complaining about good things. A lot of ingratitude in my generation.
@@TheBrazilRules HOA's are literally evil lmao. Seems like the trendy thing nowadays is for people to defend authoritarian corporations with unchecked power to the ends of the earth. A lot of ignorance in my generation.
Isn't America a free country? Why do you have to fight for different lawns?
Viewing lawns as a form of art is a unique take to me. Especially when you consider that it's mandated by zoning.
chicken and egg. zonging for lawns came after lawns as art
This is my fav video of yours, definitely the funniest to me
I had hope that a video on the history of lawns would be insightful. I did not expect it to be the funniest thing I've seen in months.
It's not really important in the grand scheme of things, but his name is André *Le* Notre, not just André Notre. ;)
In fact pretty much any French person will immediately recognize the name "Le Notre" on it's own as being the landscape designer.
Loved this video. The clean graphics and solid information you provide has been having me come to your channel over and over again. Keep it up, love your stuff.
If it’s any takeaway, the reason law mowing is mandatory in the town where I’m from is mostly due snakes.
There are other pests as well, but snakes breed in the long grass, and said snakes can be really poisonous.
I’m an advocate for natural grass (to an extent) but there are times when growing it actually does impact others. I’ve had to deal with probably a hundred snakes in my yard due to negligent neighbors.
Long grass also acts as shelter to other pests such as mosquitoes and fleas.
As someone who absolutely doesn’t want excess snakes, mosquitoes and fleas around, bordering neighbor long grass can absolutely become unfair to me.
As long as its under 10 inches it should be fine for snakes, but people where I live still mow every week to keep it under 4. Its ridiculously annoying to constantly have to drive around the landscaping trucks who park in the middle of the road every morning.
I wouldn't want neighbors letting their grass grow over a foot high either, but there's a middle ground between negligence and perfectionism.
@@maxvarjagen9810 Exactly.
My neighbors (various ones) have had grass easily 2 feet tall or higher. At that point, it really does become a light hazard to your surrounding neighbors.
@@MrMindCloud yeah 2 ft is definitely a problem. Its funny though, when you live in the opposite situation you kinda miss the snakes, cuz now there's nothing left to deal with the rats. they've just been spreading like mad these past few years.
@@maxvarjagen9810 They been super bad in a few parts of the country for sure. They weren’t bad where I was, but I’ve recently moved (south) and my current area has a huge rat problem.
If I went on a first date with a guy and he talks about lawn for 15 minutes I would immediately get on my knees
The american lawn vs The gay lawn
Not sure if you really mentioned the vast quantity of water americans use to water lawns i.e. with sprinklers, a big problem when you look at the water shortages around the Colorado river
Good thing the whole US isn't sourcing their water from the Colorado
Word. They should really be using local plants for they lawns. At least some of the stayed out west are actually starting to act on it now tho
Alot of the places most effected by the Colorado River have long had water restrictions. Some people literally have fake lawns in CA. My family in CA has Bermuda grass at their house, it's more appropriate for the climate there and doesn't require as much water and maintenance as Ketucky Blue grass, it's like a weed in places where Kentucky Blue grass is prevelant.
@@chickenfishhybrid44 indeed, although that was an example
@@papaicebreakerii8180 yeah crimepaysbutbotanydoesnt has a great campaign to 'kill your lawn' lol
I live in north Alabama and I use my design skills to incorporate native plants to make lawns more natural
I see HOA as a direct violation of my rights and refuse to live anywhere with one
"tell me american, is it true that in capitalist America you have backyards with nothing but grass in it, and you water said grass?"
I hate Europe.
I use Brilliant practically every time I commute, and I highly recommend it. The first 200 subscribers can get 20% off with www.brilliant.org/Hoog.
Corrections/Nuances:
Leaving leaves on a lawn is actually not a good idea if you want a green lawn.
Commuting by train I assume? Its hard to read and answer multiple choice answers while driving or biking...
@@zyansheep tram, actually
Used to be lawns were managed by sheep. Sheep prefer weeds (forbs) and grass less so. It gives the appearance of a weed free lawn while maintaining plant diversity, fertility, desired shortness and health. We just need more sheep, fewer chemical inputs and lawns will become the rainwater harvesting wonders they used to be.
In Scotland is where golf originated and Scots relied heavily on sheep, so golfing, on grass, became a thing.
The best lawns are the ones that are left to grow.
This channel has become more anti-American. Goodbye, friend. 👋
Unsubbed.
What an interesting subject.
What a wonderful presentation.
Thank you!
Can we pause a moment and praise the superbly done graphics in this vid? Well done!
Well done!