Letting Go of Green Lawns

Lush Yards Once Defined the Southern California Dream, Today Grass Means Fines and Disdain

“Here, it was two stories and a lawn, two stories and a lawn, two stories and a lawn”
– Carolyn See from The Handyman

Sometime during the last-blast furnace heat of September, as I made my turns on foot around my San Gabriel Valley neighborhood, I began to take careful note that the term “conservation” was widely open to interpretation.

Evidence was everywhere. Street to street, lot to lot. Each week, I’d push a little farther outside my core neighborhood, comparing and contrasting.

Many residents let their square of lawn “go”—in …