The lawn is dying, and most Australians are fine with that

The manicured lawn has long been a symbol of aristocracy, wealth and pleasurable relaxation. Rooted in 19th-century aristocratic Europe, where only the rich could afford servants to tend grass instead of growing food, the tradition crossed oceans and embedded itself deep in the Australian suburban psyche.

The problem is…there are many problems with lawns.

Lawns demand constant maintenance, leach fertiliser into local waterways, accelerate damaging stormwater runoff, and generate noise and air pollution (when mowed), and they’re incompatible with biodiversity. Lawns are largely lifeless.

So why do we still plant so much lawn? It seems mostly because of a widespread assumption that the everyone wants them, or that neighbours would disapprove of anything else. Well, new research proves otherwise.

PhD candidate Ali Babington surveyed 1,000 people across urban settings, presenting digitally altered images of identical streetscapes with varying levels of vegetation, ranging from plain lawn to layered, biodiverse “woody meadows” planted with native shrubs and trees. The results were striking: 88% of respondents approved of the woody meadow design, while 87% actively disliked traditional lawn.

The research, part of Babington’s thesis, found that people strongly preferred diverse, multi-layered, and flowering naturalistic plantings over conventional grass, not just aesthetically, but as a reflection of broader values around climate resilience and biodiversity.

There is one native bird that thrives with lawns (with a few Eucalyptus trees): the Noisy Miner. The problem is, in areas with lots of lawn, this species relentlessly mobs and attacks small birds who have no understory or cover to hide in.

When large numbers of Noisy Miners appear, all these species disappear: robins, fairy-wrens, sittellas, tree-creepers, warblers, gerygones, whistlers, thornbills, jacky winters, and small honeyeaters. Over 60 woodland bird species are known or suspected to be negatively impacted by over-abundant Noisy Miners. Noisy Miner numbers in Brisbane alone have over tripled since the 1970s.

Essentially, the more lawn area, the more Noisy Miners there are, and the more homogenised (not diverse) our bird composition. All the beautifully-coloured, melodious birds we all love are sadly much less common in our urban spaces than they used to be, and our propensity to lay down lawn is largely to blame.

So if you’re considering making a habitat garden or converting some of your lawn but worried what the neighbourhood might think, get planting because everyone will likely love it!