Grass is a political choice to support colonial oppression, class structure, and corporate dominance

A neighbour recently commented on my lavender and how it’s thriving and teaming with bees. I told him my garden is a political statement. I'm used to the blank stares I get when I say that.

Garden: a small piece of ground used to grow vegetables, fruit, herbs or flowers.

I really like this definition because it places vegetables, fruit and herbs front and center – and there is absolutely no mention of grass.

Grass: Poaceae or Gramineae (/ɡrəˈmɪniaɪ/) is a large and nearly ubiquitous family of monocotyledonous flowering plants commonly known as grasses. It includes the cereal grasses, bamboos and the grasses of natural grassland and species cultivated in lawns and pasture. The latter are commonly referred to collectively as grass.

Lawn: A lawn (/ lɔːnˌ loʊn /) is an area of soil-covered land planted with grasses and other durable plants such as clover which are maintained at a short height with a lawn mower (or sometimes grazing animals) and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes—it is also commonly referred to as part of a garden.

The word lawn is actually Old French, or Middle English, for barren land. Lawns were, and continue to be, symbols of status and nobility because only the wealthy could afford to have someone plant, tend, and water a ‘plant’ that consumes massive amounts of resources and labour yet yields no tangible assets and is continuously cut down before it can seed.

In fact, most of the grass and grass seed purchased in Canada is Kentucky Bluegrass which thrives in cooler temperatures and goes dormant, aka brown, as a means of survival when temperatures rise.

Not only does that make lawns particularly unattractive during hot, arid summers, but it means watering during the very times when we should be conserving that resource. It makes absolutely no sense if you’re an ethical environmentalist.

The huge amounts of energy spent powering gas or electric mowers, leaf blowers, and producing, distributing and applying petrochemical based fertilizers, herbicides, and pesticides to lawns is absolutely criminal. Not to mention the air pollution and run off contamination of ground water and the sewer system which flows into Lake Ontario.

Since 2003 I have had no grass in my front yard and none in the back for the past seven years. Instead, I have mainly native and heritage vegetables, flowers and trees.

My plants have to live on whatever rainwater falls so I find each year a different perennial does really well. I fill in the blank spaces with self-seeding annuals like poppies, flax, sunflowers, and vegetables.

My front garden has columbine, bulbs, milkweed, yarrow, garlic, tomato, kale, lettuce, peppers, black-eyed Susan, purple cone flower, amaranth and hollyhock. My boulevard is awash with lavender.

The back has a wide variety of perennials including hibiscus, lilies, a grape vine and bulrushes.

Needless to say, there’s a wealth of insect life including fire flies and many types of dragon flies, birds, rabbits, and even an opossum, racoon and skunk that visit at night.

My yard is alive!

A neighbour recently commented on my lavender and how it’s thriving and teaming with bees. I told him my garden is a political statement. I’m used to the blank stares I get when I say that.

You see, around 2001 I got a new next-door neighbour. One spring morning while my family was having breakfast on our porch, he brought out a huge tank with a spray nozzle and began spraying pesticides all over his tiny front yard.

The smell was overwhelming and we moved in doors.

When I asked him what he was spraying he told me there was no law that said he had to tell me. He was absolutely right about that. However, having five young kids at the time -- including one with asthma -- I needed to know what he was spraying.

By the summer of 2003 things were worse. He would spray when we were eating in the backyard and when the kids were playing on the front yard.

So, that summer I had the grass taken up and a small retaining wall installed to corral the native and heritage garden I planted.

I preemptively called the city to make an appointment for a by-law officer to come to see my garden. When he arrived, he found nothing amiss.

When I told him the neighbour was demanding I take down part of my wall so he could maneuver his lawnmower over that part of my property and down the side of the house into his backyard – there was a sidewalk and a gate on the opposite side of his house, but he liked to take his lawnmower down my side – the officer said that wasn’t necessary.

Instead, the by-law officer said that if my neighbour continued to insist the wall be removed, he would suggest the neighbour remove a section of his own low wall that ran the length of his porch preventing him from accessing the side of his house he preferred to use.

Then, I filed a lawsuit in small claims court for the maximum amount citing loss of enjoyment of my property due to continued use of unknown pesticides, or more precisely, poisons.

I did not anticipate being awarded any money and I wasn’t. But by applying for the full amount of damages I figured the neighbour would stop spraying until this went to trial. And, it worked.

About 16 months later Justice King heard the case and decided that my neighbour had to inform me in writing what, and when, he was going to spray. I was to receive that notice 24-hours before hand either by registered mail or taped to my front door.

This was a win not only for me and my kids, but for the Regional Health Department; Ministry of the Environment; the Canadian Association of Physicians for the Environment; and all of the grassroots organizations who gave me advice like Oakville Community Centre for Peace, Ecology and Human Rights (OCCPEHR) as well as individuals with lived experience in this area who informed my decisions and supported me along the way.

It would be June 2006 before Canada banned the use of cosmetic pesticides.

Despite being in the midst of an irreversible climate crisis, my neighbour now has a lawn service spray his yard with an iron-based herbicide. He then spot-treats areas himself with Roundup right next to my organic garden. Unfortunately, far too many Canadians continue to embrace this ritual of death and destruction.

Hear Vandana Shiva’s take on Roundup. Despite the growing body of research showcasing the harmful effects of Roundup, it has only been banned in Sri Lanka, Germany and potentially France with restricted use in the Netherlands, Austria, the Czech Republic. While there’s no national ban in Canada, class action lawsuits are underway across the country.

This entire situation is really just a repeat of the scenario that played out with the cigarette industry gaslighting smokers and smokers resigning themselves to cognitive dissonance so they could disregard the scientific studies and continue smoking.

And, just like second-hand smoke harmed non-smokers, second-hand pesticide pollution, run-off and residue harms innocent individuals as well as causing biodiversity loss by contaminating soil and water sources and destroying beneficial microorganisms, insects, plants, fish and animals.

The real question remains, when will people realize that this archaic symbol of wealth and class has been literally killing us since its inception?

When I was working to get a cosmetic pesticide ban in Burlington 20 years ago, a woman contacted me to tell me that her husband not only worked at a golf course in Burlington, but the family’s home was directly across the street from the course. It was no surprise when she said that her husband had testicular cancer. Anecdotal evidence to be sure, but this scenario has been backed up by numerous scientific studies.

Perhaps if more men woke up to the fact that certain pesticides used on golf courses, and for food production, lead to testicular cancer then we’d see a more rapid shift away from their use.

Time to revolt and take up that symbol of oppression that helps fuel the climate crisis. Improve the genetic diversity of your neighbourhood by planting vegetables, fruits, edible grasses, herbs, and plants for natural dyes and teas. Not quite ready for that? Then, use a native ground cover that can survive the heat and needs nothing but rainwater.

Create a welcoming, safe space for insects, birds, small animals, and children to thrive. And, put poison producers like Monsanto out of the cancer-causing pesticide/herbicide business once and for all.

Watch the documentary, The Seeds of Vandana Shiva, to lean more about this amazing, unrelenting ecofeminist.