{"id":9509,"date":"2016-07-09T03:09:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T02:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/?p=9509"},"modified":"2016-07-05T08:37:51","modified_gmt":"2016-07-05T07:37:51","slug":"lawns-are-not-eco-friendly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/gardening\/environmental-gardening\/lawns-are-not-eco-friendly\/","title":{"rendered":"Lawns are not Eco Friendly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a title=\"January Lawn by brianpettinger, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hortoris\/4316377689\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm3.static.flickr.com\/2763\/4316377689_5d491d9897.jpg\" alt=\"January Lawn\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The green swards in front gardens throughout the UK are not as environmentally friendly as you may think.<\/p>\n<h2>Environmental Issues with Lawns.<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>3 million lawns are mowed several times a year &#8211; that must be equal to 250 million miles. Petrol mowers, particularly old mowers, produce more greenhouse gas than cars. Electric mowers are not a lot better but who uses a scythe these days. Even a mechanical push style mower has used natural resources in its manufacture and delivery.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Feeding lawns with chemicals should be an <strong>environmental no-no<\/strong>. Leave clippings on the lawn to rot down instead.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Watering the lawn is unnecessary but is still undertaken by many at the height of the summer when resources are scarce.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Weed treatments, even if following organic guidelines, are likely to kill off the food and natural habitat of some creatures.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Environmental Tips for Lawns<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Do not cut the grass too short. Longer leaves shade others and thus save moisture.<\/li>\n<li>Short lawns weakens the grass and scalping encourages moss.<\/li>\n<li>Wild flower meadows look good, need no feeding and provide seed and habitat for a variety of wildlife.<\/li>\n<li>Clover is too be encouraged in lawns, it feeds the soil and the flowers provide food for bees.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><a title=\"wild flowers by brianpettinger, on Flickr\" href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/hortoris\/4834851398\/\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/farm5.static.flickr.com\/4131\/4834851398_d502754ac0.jpg\" alt=\"wild flowers\" width=\"500\" height=\"355\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Get an eco-friendly lawn not a chemically unbalanced energy consuming grass patch<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9509","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-environmental-gardening"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9509","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9509"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9509\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9509"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9509"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenerstips.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9509"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}