It was a little town, filled with little people; they all lived in their little houses, and all watered and weeded their little yards. Everyone waved to their little neighbors each morning and they all gave each other little presents at the holidays. They gave little complements to each other about their little front lawns: overflowing with little flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, and succulents. One day though, a new little family moved in. A different little family.

(I swear this isn’t a metaphor for racism…)

This family ate a little differently, they talked a little differently, they walked a little differently, but most of all they gardened a little differently.

The little neighborhood approached the newcomers with their cornucopia of little fruits and veggies, some even bringing seeds to help their future friends start a beautiful little garden. Yet as they walked up to the little door they noticed something a little strange.

The front yard was filled with a very strange little crop.
It was of a dark green hue, it stood straight up at an almost unnatural angle, it had a needle-like structure, and most of all seemed to lack any evidence of flowering or producing anything edible. All the little neighbors looked at each other’s little faces in confusion. They looked down at their little baskets and asked how they could have missed this little plant. Finally they turned to their new neighbors.

“What exactly is that strange little plant in your front garden?” Asked the tallest neighbor in the little town.

“Oh” Said the new little neighbor “It’s called grass”

“H-How do you cook it?” Asked the youngest girl in the little town.

“You don’t”

The little town stared in shock.

“You just water it.”

And so the little town slowly backed away, confused and afraid of this new little crop.
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Today, our society faces a very serious problem, water shortages. Between our slowly warming earth and fast growing populations we are scrambling for solutions. Poverty, abuse, and food shortages are all being worked on by our greatest minds. And yet we often forget about our most precious resource… water.

The fact is that in California and much of the Western United States a drought is rampant. Specialist recently discovered a chance, that in the next fifty years, if weather pattern remain constant, a mega-drought may ensue. Most droughts last a maybe a year or two; a mega-drought is one that will last at least a decade.

So have we failed? At this rate what can be done to stop the path we are one? The fact of the matter is the simplest solutions are our best chance. Obviously, we’ve all heard the speeches since first grade: “Turn of the faucet while brushing your teeth,” “consider shorter showers,” and “wash off fallen ice cubes, don’t just through them away.” Yet, one of the easiest and most practical answers is being ignored… Kill Your Grass.

For almost a century the perfect American household has been staunchly implanted in our minds. A working father driving away in his suit, a stay at home mother baking pies, their perfectly behaved children, maybe a dog here or there; but the icing on the cake has always been a perfectly mowed lawn. I hope we can all agree to move past this image, but it leads to an important discussion on the history of lawns.                

America, for those unaware, was founded as a series of British colonies. The first colonists came here with British ideals and one of them was the lawn. In feudal times a nobles’ grass was a symbol of their power. It showed the amount of livestock one was able to keep, because they ate the crop. When the United States became independent and began to expand it held onto those ideas and spread them. Because it rains all the time in Britain watering is not an issue, and the livestock took care of sheering. The European system solves this green menaces’ main two problems: irrigation and mowing.                                

And so the American suburbia was mapped out. But there was something peculiar about it. Every house was built four and a half meters from the street. Why? So that every citizen could have a little taste of nobility… so that every citizen could have, a lawn.                                                                       

The most watered crop in North America is, you guessed it, grass. Every year we waste seventeen million gallons of gasoline cutting this succubus.  Now imagine if every lawn across America (about 40.5 million acres) was replaced with a desert theme or better yet, a vegetable garden. Southern California and Arizona overflowing with succulents that use an eighth of the water needed to maintain grass in a desert. Imagine an east coast filled with raised beds in front of their homes, containing sunflowers, cabbage, squash, tomatoes, and every other fruit and vegetable under the sun. Not only would they be saving money on food they would actually be using their water efficiently.

Many communities have viewed the lawn as an aesthetically necessary part of every home since the beginning of time. But I want you to imagine a community like the one painted at the top of this paper. A community built on environmental consciousness.

In early 2009 my mother decided to turn our lawn in southern California into desert, it had red bark and stones covering it, cactus and drought tolerant crops growing from it. And I remember being afraid. Our neighborhood wasn’t exactly the most liberal when it came to front yards. I remember not bringing my friends over because I thought it was weird.
But then I became a full grown flower child. I began to see things in a new light. My neighbor’s scowls started to look like admiration. Then when news of a drought hit I realized just how efficient our house was. And so today my friends I ask one thing of you. Change convention. The American dream must change. Our wasteful ways must change. We cannot allow our history to become our reality.

Now is not the time to point blame and now is not the time to simply push aside that which we find unsettling. The time has come for unity. The time has come for us to hold ourselves accountable. Leave grass to where it is best used, by Mother Nature herself. Stop wasting billions of gallons of water per day.
Bring out your beautiful Agave and Aloe Vera.  Create a front yard with a purpose. Show the world that when we are faced with a problem we adapt. A movement begins with a single voice being raised to show that the conventional method is wrong. But imagine an entire generation of voices. So who will scream out with me? Death To Grass!