Exchange your lawn for a garden and feed your neighbors

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Grass is perhaps the ultimate status symbol. Nothing confirms one's social status more than a green lawn – not a Lamborghini in your driveway or an infinity pool in your backyard. Some cynics argue that the reason golf is so popular is because it is played in lush surroundings on a lawn that stretches for miles as far as the eye can see. People spend an inordinate amount of time and money planting, mowing, fertilizing and weeding their lawns.

I never knew my father. Oh, I recognized him when he sat across from me at the dining room table, but most of the time he was outside tending his beloved lawn. Whenever he saw a patch of crabgrass growing, he was on it in no time, armed with a special tool he found at Sears that was specifically designed to rip out the harmful flora by the roots. I always assumed that one day I would have the perfect lawn of my own, and in a way, I did.

I now live in South Florida, where an army of workers spend every day tending the community's lawns. Everyone complains about the high cost of their condo association dues, but a significant portion of their monthly expenses are their lawn maintenance. It needs to be watered, so they have to pay people to install and maintain irrigation systems. They have to pay more people to put chemicals on the lawn to control weeds and fertilize. Once it's green and blooming, they have to pay to have it cut down. Then the clippings must be thrown away using gasoline-powered blowers that sound like a 747 getting up to speed for takeoff.

An end to the lawn as we know it

In Los Angeles, an organization called Crop Swap LA teaches city dwellers how to dig their lawns and replaced by a garden. Once that process is complete, they can enjoy fresh fruits and vegetables themselves. Many live in so-called “food deserts,” where such things are not widely available in local convenience stores. Additionally, they can share their bounty directly with others or have Crop Swap LA help distribute it for them.

Beverly Lofton is an individual living in South Los Angeles who has embraced the Crop Swap LA program. She said The guard Recently, the spot where her lawn used to be is now home to a green micro farm that uses solar energy and recycled water to grow carrots, beets, potatoes and more. Much of what the garden produces is shared with its neighbors. Moreover, she now uses much less water than when her house was surrounded by a lawn. Crop Swap LA ripped out all her grass and helped her build the new raised bed gardens that took its place. It added a reservoir and drip irrigation system that uses recycled water. Her water bill used to be as much as $200 a month. Now it's less than $20 a month. Not only that, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power rewarded her with a $4,500 rebate when she removed her lawn.

“We grew a lot of dark leafy greens, bok choy, kale and string beans. Crop Swap LA also grows carrots, beets, radishes, potatoes and anything that needs a deeper root system in grow bags called GardenSoxx. And we have a vine, so this year we will have Concord grapes. The micro farm is solar powered and has on-site composting. I wasn't surprised that all these things could grow because when we remodeled our house in 2006, a plow tore up the grass and it came back. Everything with roots wants to grow on this land,” she said.

Share with the community

Because the micro farm is part of Crop Swap LA, the team members come to maintain the garden a few times a week. They harvest on Sundays and often leave behind samples of what was harvested that day. Crop Swap LA offers an affordable membership to neighbors within a mile radius of Lofton's home, entitling them to at least two pounds a week of freshly harvested fruits and vegetables. In a community where supermarkets are virtually non-existent, this is especially welcome.

“Knowing that the food grown in my front yard is feeding people in our neighborhood feels great. Most people who see the microfarm are happy that it is in the community and sometimes offer advice or stories about their gardening experience or their desire to start planting. A gentleman came by to show me pictures of his garden. It's even better when Crop Swap LA employees are here because they can share their expertise and encourage everyone to participate in improving our community.”

“When I was a child, my grandparents lived 1.5 miles from where I am now and had a beautiful garden in the backyard, but I never learned the science of planting, pruning and harvesting from them. I feel like I've redeemed myself. It's very satisfying and I don't understand why more people don't do it, especially with the discount program we have here. Hopefully I can be an example of what is possible,” Lofton said.

The takeaway

Crop Swap LA is a remarkable organization doing remarkable work. It offers advice on which types of raised bed gardens work best for individual families, helps with the installation of the irrigation systems and manages the distribution of the products within the community. This is the living embodiment of what a community should be. I once had a house near Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. One of my neighbors pointed out the plot of land his family used to grow fresh food during the Depression. It was about the size of a one-car garage and fed a family of five, a fact I found hard to believe at the time.

There is another dimension to this story. Fresh food is often inaccessible to city dwellers, which exist on prepackaged, ultra-processed foods that have little to no nutritional value. Not to put too much emphasis on it, if it comes in a can or hermetically sealed container, what's inside may not be fit to eat. People wonder why the incidence of serious diseases and behavioral disorders seems to be increasing these days. Part of the answer may be that the food we eat is literally poisoning us. Growing fresh food instead of cultivating a lawn may be the smartest thing we can do to live a long and healthy life. Ultimately, we are what we eat.