A homeowner has put their Sonoran Desert yard, which has no grass and plenty of plants, on display for all to see.
The Redditor posted the images on the popular community r/NoLawns, a growing community with over 168k members.
"Pond is a riparian habitat for birds, dragonflies, toads and leopard frogs," the Redditor wrote about their numerous pictures.
There are plenty of advantages to ditching the traditional grass lawn, especially in places like Arizona and the American Southwest, where droughts are becoming more severe over time.
Typical grass lawns require a lot of water. In fact, if everyone in the lower 48 states aspired to have healthy, well-watered conventional lawns, that would require 200 gallons of drinking water every single day, not to mention all the chemicals that come with the fertilizers and pesticides needed to keep lawns looking lush.
Regular lawns also require additional maintenance, like keeping the grass low. Since grass is usually not allowed to grow tall, its ability to remove planet-warming gases from the atmosphere is limited.
Transforming your grass lawn into a vegetable garden, a landscape with mixed shrubs or flowers, or any other creative alternative can bring about many advantages.
To begin with, the diverse arrangement lends an aesthetic appeal to your surroundings. Such alternatives also require less maintenance compared to traditional lawns, reducing the amount of work involved.
Furthermore, cultivating your own crops directly impacts your health positively by minimizing exposure to chemical contaminants found in canned and packaged foods.
A subtle yet more global advantage to having a garden filled with plants is that it contributes to the removal of harmful pollutants that heat the planet compared to a conventional grass lawn.
"This is my dream yard. I'm looking to convert our grass to something like this in the near future," one commenter wrote.
Another chimed in by admitting it looked "so charming" and went on to say, "excuse me while I swoon over your lovely landscaping."
Another gave an honest assessment, contradicting what many Americans tend to believe.
"So beautiful!! Anyone who thinks kids need a yard to play in would be staggered to see how much a child would enjoy a setting like this," they wrote.
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