Chalie said it better than I did… and if I implied that anything has to equal anything else, it wasn’t my intent. Complex nuance should mean we can acknowledge partial truth.
Are humans not at all concerned about living with that. Around their home. In the air they breathe.
???
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Oh no. No, they aren’t. They definitely aren’t.
Suburban america is just little plots of barely alive grass that has been chemically treated to the point where nothing but the grass will live there.
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Andrew Bird wrote a song about it: Spare-Ohs
I was moved by your post. Leaf blowers start at 8am sharp in my neighborhood, and you can usually hear at least one blowing until at least 6pm. I hardly see anyone raking anymore. I wonder if the people who get their yards professionally mowed and blowed are at work during the day and don’t hear the noise. And, I don’t think these people even know their yards are being treated with pesticides. They simply hire a lawn service and pay them to do what they do without asking questions.
I have a neighbor who has the most interesting mushrooms pop up in one area of her yard. I get excited to see what fungi will be there. But, she hates the mushrooms. She said she thought they made her yard look “dirty.” I told her I thought they were beautiful. I guess people are worried about perceptions, without being knowledgeable about what is really happening in their yards. Does she know why the mushrooms are growing there on the site with the old oak tree stump? And she is from a generation that grew up without leaf blowers and lawn services everywhere.
I wish there were laws against using pesticides and leaf blowers. Some cities have these laws.
I don’t know what the answers are, but I share your concerns.
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Some of what has been said in this thread is also mentioned in this video about the history of dandelions.
Dandelions and Civilization: A Forgotten History - YouTube
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The community wants to make you conform and they have the HOA to fine you if you don’t.
I have a 65 x 100’ lot. The front yard is 90% natives, planted specifically to support wildlife. It is a nightmare for the HOA and the tree butchering guys won’t leave me alone.
I got complaints back in the '90s to clean up my yard. I finally had to make a list of the plants in the public view (including the weeds and St. Augustine turf, about 180 species. I was testing to see what would survive with neglect.), and went to the monthly board meeting. Scientific and common names. I challenged that if any of them could come to my house and identify a quarter of the plants then they could tell me what to clean up. I was wound up so I went into some of the plants they call weeds and pointed out which beneficial insects feed on the flowers and which birds ate the seeds.
Since then they leave me alone. They evidently tell the neighborhood inspectors to hammer me for the driveway, sidewalk and house, but don’t mess with me on the yard.
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I have never seen any research establishing that people are safer after removing these things. You could just as easily argue that people would be safer in a mass shooting event, or with a runaway vehicle, if there were more trees to hide behind or to use to physically separate you from a person or a vehicle.
I have, however, seen research establishing that violent crime negatively correlates with large trees. This relationship is well-documented. Here is a study finding that, in Baltimore, a 10% increase in tree canopy is associated with about a 12% reduction in crime. Interestingly, affluence does not explain it, because a large portion of the trees in the study in question were actually growing on abandoned land. Similar studies have found similar, even stronger results, in other areas, including smaller cities like New Haven, CT and bigger ones like Chicago. Some of the studies have carefully controlled for socioeconomic status and found that the protective effect of trees is independent of the affluence of a neighborhood. I recall reading one such study in depth, unfortunately I don’t remember how to pull it up.
The point is, there is research backing up this viewpoint. There is NOT any research, or at least, I have never seen any, linking the clearing of trees to a protective effect.
So like…when people make these claims that they are doing something in the interest of safety, I would say these people are probably just pulling the idea completely out of their rear-end. It is counter-intuitive to them, I see no evidence supporting their view, I see a ton of evidence supporting the opposite view.
I think it’s time we start giving some heavy pushback against this stuff.
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Good to know
Did not appreciate this comment:
“I would say these people are probably just pulling the idea completely out of their rear-end.”
That idea was not pulled out of my rear end. It was formed by being attacked while walking along a hedge lined campus walk.
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Hear, hear. A couple of years ago, I was at our botanic gardens’ annual plant sale, happily picking up pots of violets. A woman looked at the pots and said “you know those will take over your lawn.” (The disgusted sneer doesn’t translate to text, but I’m sure that you can fill it in for yourself.) She was kind of confused when I smiled and replied “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”
It’s even worse if you’re in base housing. When my family was living on Mather AFB, I was introduced to the “Lawn of the Week/Month/Year”. As with most such things military, there were separate awards for enlisted and officers. We lived in Officer’s Country, but all that meant was that a mere second luuie like my Dad was expected to keep to the same standards as the brass.
Back during the height of 80s Cold War Paranoia, lawn services couldn’t get clearance for base access, so that meant that the officer and (usually his) family were in charge of keeping the lawn within regs. And no getting creative; a few flowers around the door (preferrably in pots) – from a list of allowed plants – was about all that you could get away with.
When Dad got transferred to Peterson in Colorado Springs, we couldn’t get base housing. All of a sudden, the mowing and watering got a whole lot less onerous. It was delightful!
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This is why I loved those “In Living Color” sketches featuring Fire Marshall Bill – a roast of that whole mentality. “Do you have any idea how dangerous that is?! Lemme show you something!!”
Start? We should have been doing it all along.
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I’m very sorry to hear about your bad experience but anecdotes are not evidence. An individual data point doesn’t override the majority evidence that exists out there that having lots of trees and greenery does tend to see a reduction in crime. This seems like a case of once a person is afraid of something it is very hard to convince them to be unafraid of it.
Good to know.
That was in no way an apology.
Have a nice day.
Well, I have been, but, frustratingly, I am often the only one doing it.
And like…it hurts me. It makes me look bad when I’m making a big fuss about some point that no one else is talking about.
I sometimes get frustrated with others, in environments where I’m the only one who speaks up about something, because there is a real social cost to it. I’m seen as “being negative” or “rocking the boat” or other negative spin like that. It’s very different from how I see things, which is that there is a real problem and the problem is self-evident, i.e. the problem is the result of direct observations and putting two and two together. But other people don’t seem to see things the way I do so the social costs can be high.
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I get how this stuff can be hard to talk about, so apologies if I am overstepping any boundaries by talking about a personal topic.
I guess the things that I see as hard to understand, and the reason why I used the strong language I did, is that from my perspective, I see a systemic bias.
I.e. when a person jumps out of a hedge, or from behind a tree, or something, people blame the tree. On the other hand, if a similar crime happens on an open expanse of sidewalk with no trees in sight, or in a parking lot, people do not, similarly, blame the lack of landscaping. Similarly, if a person uses a tree to protect themselves, such as by getting away from an assailant, people aren’t weighing this benefit against the benefit of cutting down the tree. And if people use a car to commit the crime, no one talks about banning cars or cars facilitating crime.
I have never been mugged or beaten up an adult, only other kids trying to beat me up as a kid, but like…I know a number of close friends who have been. I also have had some somewhat scary incidents involving cars. But when I think of the incidents my friends have experienced, one of my friends was attacked at night on a broad, open stretch of sidewalk in a suburban area with few trees and open lines of sight. Another person I know was mugged at gunpoint in a suburban parking lot of a box store. Another guy I know was mugged by people who rode up on a stunt bike, and then used the bike itself as a weapon to strike him to the ground before taking his stuff. Another friend had two people try (unsuccessfully) to snatch her purse, when driving up in a car. I also have been multiple times threatened by people in cars, once someone intentionally tried to hit me with a car while I was crossing in a crosswalk, that was utterly terrifying. I have also people throw rocks and eggs at me out of cars. So I have my own trauma about this stuff.
I don’t hear people talking about banning cars or bikes because they’re used in crime, even though it’s obvious how they create a major power disparity that facilitates crime, especially from people in cars, against people on foot. I know two people who have been struck and killed by people in cars, while they were on foot. Yet people are loathe to talk about banning or even restricting cars in urban areas or other pedestrian-heavy areas, and there is serious pushback when we suggest these things. And it’s like, the disparity is huge. When it comes to restricting cars? Not only am I one of the few people who speak up, but there’s severe pushback. But when it comes to cutting out vegetation? There isn’t even a conversation. People just go and do it. There is no recourse.
Just like cars and bikes serve a function, so do trees and other greenery.
This is why I say there is like, a severe disparity here. I think our society values cars, for instance, and does not value trees and plants and greenery in a similar way. And this shows through in the way people discuss these things, like when people roll up in a car and mug someone, people don’t blame the car, but then when people jump out from behind a hedge, people blame the hedge.
It’s irrational.
And it results in bad policy choices and practices and behaviors, when people act on these biases.
I’m not saying this in any way to downplay the trauma of your experience, but I am trying to point out that there are lots of other people out there with all sorts of other trauma, and like…there is this systematic bias, and people aren’t looking at the research and the evidence to try to sort it out.
I don’t really understand it, personally. To me it seems obvious how and why trees and greenery are beneficial and it pains me to see people clear them out so readily without any sort of consideration of the implications of their actions.
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I wonder if this is a case of trees reducing temperature and there being a positive correlation between temperature and crime?
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I hear you. One of my hiking companions this week, lives near the Newlands Spring (pure water coming down from Table Mountain which is used by the brewery). Neighbour wants a borehole - FREE water and no threat of water restrictions due to drought - yippee. She is the lonely only fighting for the indigenous fish down stream - when they, who cares, cut off that water supply. Even her granddaughter said - granny are you fighting for a FISH?!
PS to your - I blame the tree. We have had similar heated discussion around a young girl who was murdered while jogging in restored fynbos. If she’d been running in the pine plantation … blame the fynbos, plant exotic trees. For human safety?! Either way the plants are an easier target than the criminal.
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I know how you feel.
When I was a baby/toddler, we lived at a house in the woods with a yard full of moss species and LOADS of mushrooms. One day, my mom was on the phone with my aunt and some weird weed killer lawn guy drove all the way into the wooded neighborhood we lived at and knocked on the door. My mom answered, and asked what he wanted. He wanted to spray all of those pretty mosses and fungi, and plant some crap turf in its place. My mom, thankfully, said “HECK NO. I’m keeping my moss and fungi” This ticked the weird lawn guy off, and he acted all offended.
We live in a different house now, but most of the yard is still mosses, fungi, random weeds, etc. And I am glad.
To answer your question, I think people are trying to go for the ‘16th century french courtyard belonging to a weird tyrant out of touch with reality’ vibe? I think the groomed yard with invasive shrubs is supposed to look elegent or something, and if your yard has tall weeds you’re a trashy person.
Spreading education about biodiversity and teaching people about nature is the best way to get rid of this problem, and many other problems.
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The Palace of Versailles reduced to a big box garden shed on a pocket handkerchief lawn. With a token lollipop. Ouch.
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Where do modern landscaping practises come from ? According to wikipedia, portable chain saw was patented in 1918. and it may take a few years before its use became widespread. so I guess it became more common after WWII. Gas operated lawn mowers probably is earlier. These inventions might occur after advancement in modern crude oil processing.
I live on an island, an ex-colony of the British empire. so in my part of the world, modern landscaping practises may originate from the British. They seems to like lawns. They have gardens beside the house. It is universal since the times of early man, when they settle to a place, they planted vegetable crops and have trees which would be a garden.
There was a monument called the Hanging gardens of Babylon. That was probably ancient landscaping.
Back to the days of colonialism, the Brits are explorers and they would research on plants in America and Africa, Asia and utilise those plants and animals in the territories, as a resource to extract raw materials from and to make money in trade. so we had Rubber plantations, Pineapple, breadfruit… There is a Raintree which they knew and planted here. Our roads often have Rain trees that we became accustomed to it, and seldom question why this tree is here. We are practical. We don’t go for the kill on all non-native plants. It is fast growing, doesn’t need fertilizers, and provide good shade. However, the space these trees are going on has become narrower. The local tree experts have devices to check for internal rot, very occasionally, accidents occur in big thunderstorms. Someone could get killed occasionally due to rotten branches ( various species). As much as we want to preserve trees. It is unpredictable when it may topple, part of the cause is the roots are damaged from growing in too litttle space, foot traffic, or perhaps the lone trees are vulnerable to occasional high winds. and its getting expensive getting landscapers to prune trees, so they seems to be planting some other native trees which are slower to grow but have advantage in adapting to the soil. Trees are just getting smaller along the streets as the city expands. As like most places on earth, Capitalism, Urbanisation leads to a decrease in surrounding natural areas. All due to government policy and City planners. If the gov is a type that likes to pursue economic developments, something might happen. Some cause and effect. However, politicans are very skilled in presentations. It is extremely hard to know what they are about.
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