‘Are you crazy?”
This is what Bob is wondering. He has written to me to explain a few things, some of it about moss, though mostly about his opinion of me. It seems that, as least in Bob’s view, I am a pitiable idiot who is unworthy to exist in the same beautiful world as moss.
This had, as I hoped, allowed the grass to grow much more lushly, but it had also let big areas of moss establish, a situation that I, as someone apparently unworthy to exist in the same beautiful world as moss, was not happy about.
I wrote that I had spot-sprayed a bit of sulphate of iron solution on the worst of it, but thought there must be a better way. In the hope that Listener readers might have some easy, no fuss, non-chemical solutions to the situation, I had solicited, foolishly I now see, some advice. The single reply was from Bob, which opened, as I say, with “Are you crazy?” It goes downhill from there.
“Moss is green, lovely to walk on, easy care, no mowing, a beautiful native plant,” Bob continues. “For God’s sake save your money and try and learn to live with nature rather than fight a battle that you will lose in the long run.”
Before concluding his letter with some boasting about his own virtuously mossy garden, Bob suggests, with withering sarcasm, that there is one other possible choice aside from my living with the moss and letting it eventually take over what is supposed to be our lawn.
“An alternative is to cover your lifestyle block with AstroTurf. No moss, no mowing: extra time for you to worry about how you are going to stack and dry your firewood for next winter.”
That’s me told. But as it happens, Bob, I do love moss – in the bush, where it belongs.
Is the humble lawn now the subject of a culture war, too, I am wondering? Does wanting to have a patch of patchy grass rather than a lot of dead moss to sit on with a book on a summer’s day now make me an enemy of nature?
There is, I know, a well-established view, which I broadly agree with, that far too many resources are wasted on lawns, with precious water being used to keep them green over summer, artificial fertilisers used to keep them lush, nasty sprays applied to keep the weeds down and much petrol used to keep the grass trimmed.
With these concerns in mind, I avoid these things, apart from the mowing and, just recently, the spot spraying of ferrous sulphate. That doesn’t seem unreasonable, nor a crime against the planet. Or moss.
There are also people – and I have had letters from them, too, in the past – who believe one should just forget about the lawn altogether and let it do what it wants.
Such rewilding ideas might work for a tiny suburban backyard in Auckland, where “abandoned rental chic” may well be something the chattering classes admire over their pinot. Here, it would mean rats in winter and acres of potential fire hazards come summer.
At Lush Places, we want a mowed lawn rather than an apparently more virtuous carpet of moss that dies when it is actually warm enough to sit outside. We also have gardens full of “exotics” rather than apparently more virtuous natives. We have hundreds of deciduous trees, too.
We love them all, and no amount of sneering from the self-righteous will change our minds about that.
