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Comment by ornel | Hacker News Reader

Lawn mowing seems like such a useless thing. I mean domestic lawns themselves, especially in a crisis of biodiversity loss, are such a waste of possibility. I had to stop the video when I saw the mower was going for a patch of clovers, thus reducing plant diversity to a single boring, useless species

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Indeed. Sure, lawns do have their place, like for playing sports or for kids to play around. But otherwise, what a waste. Just plant some local flowers or whatever and have a meadow.

As an example, at some point my father stopped bothering to mow his lawn all the time (basically only once per year). It's now a nice meadow with all kinds of grasses. Frogs, butterflies, dragonflies, bees like it.

An additional issue with robotic mowers is that they tend to kill hedgehogs.

That's only an option in areas where the township will allow it.

Big reason to cut the grass is to keep pests away from the house.

That said, I rather consciously arrange deadfall along one steep bank between our house and that of a neighbor so as to encourage/foster lightning bug egg laying/larvae/pupae.

Dwarf clover is a great alternative to a lawn. I used to think lawns were useless, but if you stop and think about it for a moment, you're gonna need some clearing between the woods and your house for a firebreak and safety (snakes). Of course you're gonna want something aesthetically pleasing planted there, so that's usually grass unless you go with an alternative

clowers work only if you never use the lawn, even with mild foot traffic it just dies off and you are left with patch of mud. all the biodiverse no lawn movement only works in pinterest photos and chronically online subredits. my lawn is for recreational activities outdoors, hard to do that in the mud or grass taller than my 7 year old.

a square of tall grass and weeds isn't all that pretty and outright annoying if weeds are of the painful kind.

Like, yeah, there are more interesting things to do with your lawn but they all require more effort than dropping a robot charging station and letting it do its thing.

Also the clover patch is probably gonna regrow, mine do... tho I don't try to ground them to the ground

„biodiversity“ as in „just let the place rot and get covered by weeds until trees and over stuff planted by you collapse due to the massive-and-aggressiveness of pests and pesty weeds.

a lot of folks don't understand permaculture when they first dive into it and end up in a bad situation. cultivating a pleasing ecosystem is both complicated a lot of work to get right, but eventually it can mostly take care of itself. sadly, traditional gardening doesn't really teach you how to maintain plants in concert or how to passively repel pests. it can be pretty rewarding to learn though if you don't mind getting into the science of it.

„biodiversity“ as in a mix of roads, gutters and cars. There was a suggestion of introducing some footpaths to the mix but there was concern it was too much diversity.

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