Beautiful, living blades sprout heroically from the soil each spring, providing vernal joy for urban residents, as all appreciate the pleasure of lush, gorgeous green grass lawns.
But hold tight, Montreal's supposedly environment-loving municipal administration Projet Montreal is proposing to replace our beloved grass, citing high mowing costs.
The proposal is outrageously obscene, of course, but particularly because Montreal falls far short of supplying the minimum hectare-per-resident municipal standard of public green space.
So Projet Montreal has no legitimate excuse for being unable to maintain Montreal's relatively small supply of grass.
Anybody who has ventured into a city of Montreal park within the last couple of years has noticed that grass has been tragically neglected, as straggling weeds sprout up where the blades once gloriously rose.
Allowing - or even encouraging such neglect - harms everybody, but particularly the poor, or any condo or apartment dweller who does not have access to their own private lawn.
Projet Montreal announced this week that city councillor Eric Alan Caldwell has been given the unenviable and futile task of finding a replacement for grass.
What on earth could possibly be better than grass? Mud? Weeds? Concrete?
And yes that's the same Projet Montreal party which for years has claimed to care deeply about green spaces and the environment.
Montrealers still suffer the consequences of the last grass mowing-saving initiative from the 1950s, as asphalt covers linear lawns designed to line sidewalks in many parts of town.
Be vigilant in your opposition to this attack on grass, or brace for a similar nightmare.
The Projet Montreal needs to enthusiastically tackle its duty to protect and nourish grassy green spaces, no dereliction of that duty should be tolerated.
Totally agree! Many streets which for decades have had a strip of grass between the curb and the actual sidewalk are clearly in danger of being concreted over; the excuse being "budget constraints" as well as the increased lazy-minded attitudes pervading our dismissive, throw-away, point-and-click society. Likewise, those streets with grass-covered medians are similarly in danger.
ReplyDeleteI have also noticed that some recent immigrants have chosen to pave over (!) their back yards and other small strips of grass on their properties rather than hire a landscaping contractor to maintain it. Bad habits die hard. I suspect that many of these immigrants had never even SEEN a lawnmover in their home countries, much less a contractor, but this is hardly an excuse and I'm curious to know what their conclusions are regarding the quality of life their children are entitled to.
Granted that landscaping fees are not cheap, but if such indifference--indeed negligence--toward much-needed green space is allowed to continue unabated, the potential for ever-spreading concrete jungles in our cities will make life unbearable for future generations.
https://www.travelandleisure.com/attractions/parks-gardens/goats-to-be-released-in-riverside-park-new-york-city
ReplyDelete>What on earth could possibly be better than grass? Mud? Weeds? Concrete?
ReplyDelete>And yes that's the same Projet Montreal party which for years has claimed to care deeply about green spaces and the environment.
you do know there are these things called plants? there are millions of species and the type of grass common here is just one of them.
I wholeheartedly disagree, Projet Montreal is 100% correct about grass. Growing, cutting, and maintaining grass is a monstrous waste of resources. Grass is dull in general, ugly and uncomfortable when there is drought, expensive and harmful to the environment when maintained (burning gas to cut lawns, herbicides/pesticides sprayed, grass decomposition from cuttings creating methane...) and provides little to no environmental benefit when compared to alternatives.
ReplyDeletePicture this- No grass anywhere, replace instead with clovers; they never grow taller than 2-3 inches and don't require cutting, naturally crowd out other 'weeds', eliminate far more carbon from the atmosphere, stay green even during drought, and bloom 2-3 times a year with gorgeous little purple and white flowers that don't produce pollen allergens. Huge improvement.