I have no respect for landscaping in it's current shape and form.
I loath the very idea of it and I'm sorry to those who who turned it into their livelihood. My issue however is not with people but with ideas and I believe there is room for sensible land conservation without job loss. Furthermore, seeking solutions to the current state of land maintenance could create more jobs.
It’s arrogant to think we can come in and transform the land that was doing just fine before we showed up. Our rush to “improve” things and other people already caused enough trauma. But we keep turning deserts into water parks, forests into golf courses, meadows into carefully trimmed French gardens, French gardens into deserts.
We travel far to change landscapes and people to our liking.
We convert everything because of a whimsical impulse or because we “don’t want that tree over there!” or because we “want a trimmed hedge over here!” or because “those people’s way of thinking and lifestyle needs some improving”.
Every single grass mowing session is a killing spree - it kills insects, it kills rodents and did you know some birds are nesting in tall grass? Just because men like golf, they somehow got the idea that it would be great to have a golf course outside their window.
It’s hard to blame them. Golfing is the closest thing to being in nature they ever knew but mowing the grass in their backyards is often the only time they get to "enjoy" outdoors. There is no time for anything else. There is a whole list of other pointless tasks to complete.
The amount of noise, gasoline and toxic chemicals it takes only to end up with a quaint look of a fake diorama in front of the house is literally breath taking. The disruption of ecosystems is apparent even in the smallest acts of transformation. (See this post)
Giving a "neo-nazi haircut” to a lawn takes away nutrients from vital pollinators and with lawns on the increase the area where those vital plants can grow is getting smaller.
It also wastes huge amounts of water. Sweeping up leaves with noisy blowers and placing them in bins to be taken away, robs the local area of native insects that are hibernating at that time of year.
Dead leaves improve the bacterial flora of the soil but they are not welcome because they ruin that quaint fake diorama look. There is always Ammonium Nitrate, Ammonium Phosphate, Superphosphate, and Potassium Sulfate that can be used for "improving" the soil!
In short, it’s not just about shaking my fist at leaf blowers because they’re annoying and pointless. They really are! There is a larger picture behind it and it has to do with the way of thinking we acquired during the age of conquests. That famous biblical quote about subjugating the Earth? Guess what! We did that for as long as the Bible was around.
It nearly killed us.
It might still kill us!
We are here only for a while as guests. We don’t own the land we come into despite of what we might be telling ourselves. We don’t have a right to upgrade it to our liking because no matter what we do, even the smallest intervention adds to the damage. Landscaping is not only bad for bees.
It harms us too.
We might as well just stick those leaf blowers up where the sun don’t shine and fire away!