The back door of my building leads to a cemented area that I might call a patio if it weren’t littered with years of debris. It hosts a single broken chair, its seat cushion bursting through its apron, and a row of wooden doors on a shingled granite storage block, the contents of which I suspect haven’t belonged to any of the building’s inhabitants for a decade or more. On the right-hand side is a cement staircase between two rusty railings supported by plain square spindles. The staircase leads to a large, walled-in triangular lot, accessible from my building and three others, with twelve rotary clothes lines (“whirligigs,” as they’re known here). Of those twelve, four are broken poles with no “lines” to speak of, and at least three are completely inaccessible among the brambles.
Brambles (wild blackberries) cover at least a fifth of my backyard, and other wild growth makes up the rest of it. Some of my neighbors do use the few accessible and functional whirligigs, navigating paths worn through tall grasses. Along the near edge of the triangle, a mangled narrow pavement leads to the corner furthest from the stairs, though the overgrowth there is still thick and barely usable.
No one is responsible for this land. Someone owns it, I guess, but they clearly have no duty toward it. Its position is virtually inaccessible to any heavy equipment, and the population it serves—primarily private renters on an inexpensive block—have little incentive to invest time or money into this daunting corner of land.
It’s fantastic.
In autumn, I can collect buckets of brambles for all manner of pies, jams, glazes, and cocktails. The spring dandelions can become salads, syrups, wines, and salves. If I were a more confident forager and food-preparer, I might figure out how to concoct treats from the clover, summer lilac, hogweed, vetch, and white stonecrops growing around the garden. For now I leave them, along with toxic-to-humans blooms like ragwort and bitter nightshade, to the fluffy bumblebees that happily populate the yard.
This lot is perfect for foraging: it isn’t exposed to any direct exhaust from cars, lawn mowers, or residential ventilation; no dogs relieve themselves among the bushes; I don’t have to worry about the opinions of nosy onlookers. No one waters or weeds or pays any attention to the flora’s health. These plants simply grow, unimpeded, in ways that suit people and creatures alike.
Not every lawn is so protected, but more wild space can and should replace inhospitable, infertile grass. The norm in most places is to guzzle gas and seep sweat in a loud, pungent grass-versus-lawn mower tussle every seven to eighteen days. Yet that land could grow freely, perhaps aided by a good Samaritan sprinkling native wildflower and clover seeds or even planting food-bearing shrubs and trees that thrive in the local environment.
Increasing biodiversity can improve water cycles, rejuvenate habitats, make for happier bees, do everything the anti-lawn memes promise—and it can feed us. Given some effort, I could turn that back lot into a year-round greengrocer: blaeberries, wild strawberries, sloes, and rosehips; flavorful wild garlic and medicinal dead nettle; gorse flowers and hawthorn buds; hazelnuts, chestnuts, and walnuts; the seasonal delights of elderflowers and elderberries.
Lawns do have advantages. You can lay out with a book, set up a badminton net, hang laundry without scratching yourself on bramble thorns. Perhaps there’s a balance to strike between barren, overtilled, sometimes-functional space and rich, biodiverse, bug-and-belly-friendly native growth. I find that public parks can offer both, with grassy meeting spaces fronting on local plant life, some ripe to snack on or gather to prepare at home. Private properties, though, need a reckoning: how is this space being used? How could it be used for the flourishing of the community?
Perhaps, too, there are already more foods around you than you know. I recommend dipping your toes into foraging with Alexis Nikole (in the US midwest) or the Woodland Trust (in the UK) to get a taste (literally) for the foods in your yard, local park, or wherever you find yourself curious and peckish.
