Ditching Glyphosate: Transforming My Large Lawn into a Permaculture Veg Patch
Meeting Nichole made me realise just how dire the food and living environments of modern people have become.
In the United States, the manicured lawns in front of houses are an environmental disaster. According to statistics from the environmental organisation Friends of the Earth, Americans spray 80 million pounds of pesticides on their lawns every year.
When I moved to Texas four years ago, I vowed not to use herbicides in my front or back garden, and aimed to grow as much food as possible on my modest plot of land. It was then that I happened upon Nichole’s social media account and was immediately captivated by her gardens.
I. Organic Fruit and Vegetable Self-Sufficiency
Unlike the tidy, tedious suburban gardens found across much of America, her home is surrounded by a miniature jungle of food and herbs; everywhere you look, there are fruits, vegetables and medicinal plants:
A large head of broccoli grows beside an iris; a row of onions is planted in the flowerbed next to a persimmon tree; medicinal honeysuckle drapes downwards over lush purple sweet potato leaves; beside the tomatoes, pest-repelling currants bloom vigorously, while onion bulbs and zinnias create a charming contrast…
In Texas, where winters are relatively short and crops can be harvested twice a year, Nichole’s family has essentially achieved organic fruit and vegetable self-sufficiency.
One day, Nichole uploaded a photo of an apple tree in her backyard, and I jumped with excitement. The apples on her tree were green and small, remarkably similar to a local variety I used to eat as a child in my hometown of Xuanwei, Yunnan.
These apples are tart yet sweet, with a rich and full-bodied flavour—entirely different from the large, sugary varieties that later swept the nation but lack any complexity.
Since moving to the US, I have bought the most popular varieties from organic supermarkets and picked fresh apples from orchards, but without exception, they have all been bred to cater to the modern palate’s increasing craving for sweetness; they pale in comparison to the ones from my childhood.
I hurried to ask Nichole: “What variety of apple tree is this? Where did you buy it?”
She told me it was an heirloom variety. In the West, “heirloom” typically refers to old varieties collected, preserved, and cultivated over generations by gardeners or family farms before World War II. These are mostly open-pollinated varieties, rather than the high-yield strains developed by the industrial agricultural system.
I noted down the variety and how to purchase it, determined to plant this unforgettable fruit on my own land.
II. Permaculture
For the past decade, Nichole has been studying and practising “permaculture”. She even runs classes in her community, using her own front and back yards as demonstrations to introduce people to the concepts and practices of permaculture.
Permaculture refers to a renewable agricultural system designed and operated based on a holistic view that mimics natural ecosystems. It avoids chemical inputs such as fertilisers and pesticides, minimising agriculture’s reliance on petroleum products and helping the soil restore its organic matter content.
The concept of permaculture is broad and can be applied on any scale. Many Americans like Nichole, who live in ordinary residential areas without vast tracts of farmland, design the land use of their yards according to permaculture principles.
After looking at Nichole’s lawn and various educational materials on permaculture, it dawned on me: whether it is a manicured lawn or large-scale monoculture, these are far from natural phenomena; they are industrial phenomena. Both require the removal of all “obstacles” from the land to cultivate a single crop, using herbicides, pesticides, and fertilisers to ensure maximum yield.
Nichole’s yards are so pleasing to the eye because this lush, diverse, yet non-chaotic food forest is closer to the original state of the places where humans have lived for millennia.
I asked Nichole, “Since your yards look like this, I assume you don’t have a Homeowners Association (HOA)?”
“Exactly!” she replied. “My primary consideration when buying this house was ensuring there was no HOA!”
“Me too!” I said. “The thing I cared about most when buying my place was whether there were restrictions on keeping chickens in the backyard. I only bought it after the estate agent told me there was no HOA and that the city rarely interfered with the planning of front and back yards.”
One of the core values that laid the foundation for my friendship with Nichole is our mutual disdain for the obsession mainstream Americans have with neat, expansive lawns.
I mentioned my theory about this obsession to her. In ancient Europe, maintaining neat lawns and hedges was incredibly labour-intensive. The mindset of the nobility, who owned vast amounts of land, was essentially: “Look, I have so much land that I can afford to have a huge area surrounding my castle that serves no productive purpose.”
The modern American lawn phenomenon feels as though this luxury—idle grass used to signal status and position—has been scaled down and handed to the middle class, aided by lawnmowers, fertilisers, and pesticides. It is like Hermès releasing an affordable collaboration that office workers can finally afford to carry.
This should not be the so-called “American Dream”.
III. Grass and Manure, All Treasures
Nichole also knows someone who specialises in taking dwarf goats to the yards of homeowners who don’t want to mow their grass or apply artificial fertilisers. Goats are experts at managing weeds, and the urine and droppings they leave behind are excellent natural fertilisers.
Whenever I see the vast, empty lawns in many American residential areas, I think about how if these lawns were managed holistically without chemical sprays, they could actually support many grass-fed cattle and sheep. If HOAs spent their energy researching this, homeowners could receive a significant amount of grass-fed mutton every year—wouldn’t that be wonderful?
I even thought about buying sheep manure from a farm to grow flowers and herbs, because sheep manure is a “cold manure” that can be used directly without needing to be composted first; yet, many Americans find sheep manure dirty.
To find the world so inverted—disdaining livestock manure as filthy while spraying vast amounts of glyphosate on one’s own lawn—is staggering. Nichole and I sighed together over the detachment between Americans and the food production system.
Nichole is 55 and I am 37. As our cross-generational friendship, forged through agriculture, entered its third year, Nichole sold this house and moved to the rural heartland of Pennsylvania. She bought a piece of land with her cousin’s family to start a life as a self-sufficient farmer, finally having more land to put permaculture into practice.
I asked her, “Are you worried that the next homeowner might tear down ten years of your hard work and turn the house back into a bland suburban residence with a neat lawn?”
Nichole replied, “I left them dozens of books on permaculture and organic farming, as well as seeds for over a hundred varieties of heirloom vegetables and plants. All I can do now is remain hopeful and pray for them.”
I was reminded of a poignant quote from a North American homesteader: Care for the land beneath your feet, no matter how small it is. When you leave, at least ensure it is as fertile as when you first saw it.
I believe Nichole is the finest practitioner of that sentiment.
Editor: Ze’en