Is it time to say goodbye to pristine lawns?

Let’s talk about what the American Dream looks like. I’m not talking about the idea that every person has the opportunity to build a better life for themselves through hard work and opportunity. I’m talking about what the American Dream literally looks like.

The most recognizable symbol, perhaps, is the white picket fence. Behind that fence you’ll be able to picture a single-family home, some rose bushes, a cherry tree, perhaps. All pristine, and all sat behind, beside, or in a beautifully-manicured lawn.

The big problem, however, is that in an age where access to water is increasingly scarce, lawns require an abundance of water to stay alive.

While the concept of a lawn originated from European ideals brought to America, it was brought to the public en masse during the post-WWII boom of suburban housing and was then widely adopted as the goal.

It is also a public symbol of success. Not only can you afford your own home, but you can purchase large quantities of water to grow grass for the fruits of your nuclear family to learn to catch a ball on. It also shows that you care about your neighbors enough to provide a beautiful patch of grass for them to admire. It shows civic pride.

But these hundreds, thousands of square feet of American Dreams, have become problematic.

LA is parched and lawns are thirsty

Lawns require around an inch of rain per week to stay healthy, so in northeastern United States, where average rainfalls are around 45 inches (114 cm) per year, watering is really only required in the summer. In the American west, however, an annual rainfall of 15 inches (38 cm) is the average. In Los Angeles, with its 263 days of sunshine for instance, you might need to water your lawn all year round. Is grass the wisest thing to plant?

Some green-fingered individuals are proud of building an alternative future, though. Like a lawn, a native garden helps with cooling and reducing the urban heat island effect compared to concrete yards (or plastic turf), by both shading the ground and via evapotranspiration. But compared to a lawn, a native garden requires four times less water each year.

Sophie Pennes makes her living helping people get rid of their lawns (don’t even get her started on fake grass). “Our parents would purchase water from the city, water their lawns, the lawns would grow too much, they would cut the lawns down, and every time there’s rainfall, that water goes down to the street to the ocean” says Pennes. “The system is nonsensical.”

Some argue that local government deserve a share of the blame for how people water their lawns. “It’s not the grass’ fault,” says Jim Baird of UC Riverside, who works on developing more drought-tolerant grass, in a 2022 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “People waste the water. Government officials tell the public to water their lawns once a week. People then water for hours at a time and waste far more than they would’ve if they were left alone. You want to cut water use? Raise the prices. Educate.”

Another obstacle to sensible water management for lawns is homeowner associations (HOAs). Since the beginning of the suburban sprawl in the 1950s, HOAs across the US have increasingly mandated that residents maintain a grass lawn and then fine residents for not watering lawns enough to keep them green or even keeping the grass at the correct height. But recent legislation in Texas and Florida has pushed back to protect homeowners from overbearing HOAs, and even encourage the planting of meadows.

Luckily, these regulations can not be enforced during a drought, so on the flipside, there have been instances where over-watering of a lawn during times of water scarcity has been policed by the community. Police have been tasked with looking out for residences where the lawn is being watered unnecessarily, and some local water utilities have devised ways of restricting water usage.

What can you plant instead?

A simple solution is to replace traditional grass lawns with something more in tune with nature. Native meadows don’t need mowing, and add biodiversity by attracting local pollinators much more readily. The downside is that they don’t fit the desired aesthetic of some HOAs, so those who want to avoid the negative effects lawns are having on our world, may have to risk irking their head nosy neighbor. Sophie Pennes has turned numerous lawns into colorful native meadows. “I think the main hurdle is cultural,” she says.

When firefighters were tackling the catastrophic wildfires that hit LA at the start of 2025, water ran out. It would be a stretch, in the case of such a sudden and unprecedented challenge to the city’s entire water system, to put the blame on residents overwatering their lawns (or leaving sprinklers on when they evacuated, as some reportedly did). Nevertheless that image of fire hoses running dry is now lodged in our mental image of the city – alongside the tick-tick of a sprinkler.

After all, there’s money to be saved by leaving your lawn behind. Lawns require a large amount of water to irrigate the soil. And you’re paying for that water. So you’re basically paying a subscription fee to have grass around your home over the alternatives. The good news is that you can cancel that subscription pretty easily. You don’t have to stay on the phone and beg a human-ish representative to release you from a contract whose small print you didn’t read.

If you need an incentive to replace your lawn, there is the option of filing a little paperwork with your local parks and recreation services to get a rebate. The chances are that your local municipality will pay you to remove your grass – as much as $5 per square foot of lawn.

These urban planners have designed these programs to maximize water management (since they’re not able to change the main city infrastructure), and keep as much water on your property as possible. For instance, in Los Angeles, it’s just not feasible to transform the entire storm drain and sewage system which sees up to 100 billion gallons of rainwater sent out to sea during a heavy storm season, rather than replenishing our aquifers. Instead, LA is left to rely on gradual runoff from the snowpack in the mountains.

With a view to capturing as much of those 15 inches of rainfall, however, every rebated lawn in Los Angeles must also install a swale – a shallow depression dug into the soil and lined with river rocks that can capture thousands of gallons of rainwater during a storm, recharging groundwater. It seems minimal compared to how much still goes out to sea, but every single-family home that adopts this method of rain capture makes a tangible difference. It all adds up.

Time to make lawns uncool?

Sophie Pennes says: “I think it’s as simple as making lawns not cool. It’s as simple as saying you’re going to do something good, but also that it’s way cooler than what you were doing. Especially in LA, where coolness is kinda all that permeates.”

When it comes to fake grass, Pennes says: “What we’re talking about is convenience culture.” It’s like fast food, she argues: just as we’ve become more aware of how convenience comes at a health cost, we need to become more aware of what fake grass is doing to our suburbs.

“I think this is something that starts really early – an appreciation for nature, and an understanding of basic ecology,” she says. “It goes back to the culture. What are your values and what is important to you?”

At the end of it, the future is bright. Pennes sees more and more people who want to live in a world with trees for shade, who don’t want their kids to play on turf that emits microplastics, and who are prepared to make a bit more effort to build a beautiful world. In that respect, planting a native garden is an act of protest against what America has come to represent of late.

Maybe the American Dream doesn’t look like we thought it did.