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![]() Desert Lawns: require water brought from long distances (California aqueduct), 1995
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Kathryn Miller Lawns in the Desert
1995 (collaboration by Kathryn Miller and Michael Honer) The Desert Lawn Series questioned Southern California's insistence on maintaining thick, green, heavily watered lawns as central to the ideal landscape. Lawns are a compulsory landscape element to any suburban and corporate image. But underneath this seamless green carpet lie significant and serious economic, environmental and social costs. This is especially true when you live in a semi-desert where daily temperatures in summer easily soar over 100 degrees F. To keep a section of lawn 12 inches by 72 inches in size alive for a year in Los Angeles, it needs a minimum of 220 gallons of water. In general 60% of urban water is used to water lawns. Much of this drinking grade water is brought to LA from a distance of up to 400 miles. To keep it green and perfect also requires regular chemical prescriptions that ultimately enter the groundwater, or flow into rivers and the ocean. Native plants can be used much more appropriately and do not need the extra water, chemicals and gasoline powered equipment to maintain them.
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