A while ago I walked past a house in Leeuwarden that has been completely gutted in recent years and then rebuilt. Beautiful, I thought. And what a wonderful place to live, with a view of the water and behind the city. But as I walked closer, I fell from amazement into amazement. That lawn looked really neat. Too neat. Unnaturally straight and also very green. Yes: artificial grass. What is it with the Dutch and maintenance-free gardens?
Besides the love for artificial grass – some people vacuum it weekly – there is also a widespread preference for fully tiled gardens, often dark gray or pitch black (imagine that under your bare feet during hot summers) and with just as much natural appearance as the average parking garage. Look up the account @onderheidsarmoe on Instagram, an ‘anthology on the hazing of NL’. At first it’s still funny, but after ten, twenty, thirty photos it’s actually very sad.
Birds, hedgehogs, bees and butterflies need plants and flowers to survive
It is possible to argue about taste, but that does not apply to biodiversity. The surplus of tiles and a growing lack of greenery in our living environment is dramatic for birds, hedgehogs, bees and butterflies. They need plants, flowers, shrubs and insects to survive. In a green garden they find a safe shelter, sufficient food and nesting material. In a garden (can you still call it that?) that mainly or exclusively consists of square meters of stone, they find exactly nothing.
Ironically, the supposedly maintenance-free garden often takes longer than expected – the tiles have to be scrubbed, the weeds removed from quite a few joints – while a garden that lends a hand to biodiversity does not have to be time-consuming at all. In fact, leaving things a little more is usually the advice. Since we bought our house three years ago, we have usually been muddling around. Mowing the grass once in a while, sowing or planting something new every now and then, pruning if necessary: it doesn’t cost us much more than a few hours a month. Yet every year our garden becomes a greener, more colorful and nicer place. For us as humans, but also for other ‘residents’.
Yes, the lawn is full of dandelions
As I type this, I’m sitting in the shade of a lilac, with a peony full of buds to my right, a butterfly bush that will soon be full of beautiful purple flowers again, and a little further on a growing collection of forget-me-nots. Yes, the lawn is full of dandelions, the joints between the cobblestones of the garden path and the terrace are mossy and weeds occasionally appear in places we would rather not see them. But I’m already looking forward to the time when we get regular nocturnal visits from hedgehogs, the lilacs are often full of great tits and sparrows and I’ve already spotted the first bees.
It doesn’t have to be so neat, that garden. Live and let live, just like in nature.