We spent a spring removing the most expensive thing we owned: the lawn. Here's why it was the best decision we ever made, and the exact moment we knew it had worked.

Lawns are loud

A lawn looks quiet but it's the noisiest thing in the garden — mowing, scarifying, feeding, watering, weeding, feeding again. All that effort, and the result is a plant community of exactly one species.

The moment it worked

It was the third week of june, and a meadow brown butterfly landed on an oxeye daisy that hadn't existed in that spot the year before. That was the whole argument, on a single stem. We never looked back.

What it cost

One scarify, one sowing, one cut a year. Less money, less time, and a corner of the garden that now does its own gardening.