Stop Fighting the Grass – What We Choose to Grow

For the first three years we lived in our current home, I spent an ungodly amount of time trying to keep grass out of our flower beds.

I wanted the neatest yard on the street. And apparently, I had decided that meant absolutely nothing could grow where I hadn’t personally authorized it.

So I fought the grass.

I ripped it out by the root. I used terrible chemicals. I laid down rubberized mulch. At one point, I even used tarps beneath the beds instead of weed barrier, determined to keep anything from finding its way through.

Some of it worked.

Temporarily.

But the grass always came back, and - just as importantly - everything else I tried to grow in the beds struggled to stay alive.

So last winter, after reading Braiding Sweetgrass and feeling a real challenge to begin creating a deeper level of reciprocity with the natural world, I decided to try something different.

Instead of asking, How do I stop the grass from growing?

I started wondering:

What would happen if I focused on creating an environment where everything else could thrive?

And from that, I changed course.

The tarps came out. The rubberized mulch came out. I added fertilizer and organic mulch. I began filling the beds with native and adaptive plants, with a particular emphasis on things our local pollinators would enjoy.

I even removed an entire corner section of our sod to create a tea garden in place of the grass.

And then something remarkable happened.

The environment thrived.

The salvia spread. The lantanas filled out. Mistflower, daisies, and purslane began taking up space.

And life returned with them.

First came the hummingbirds, bees, and dragonflies. Then more insects, several different types of birds, and so many beautiful butterflies.

All the signs of a healthy ecosystem.

This morning, two butterflies fluttered around me while I stood in the front yard. A bright green grasshopper leapt across the flower bed. And for the first time, I spotted a praying mantis tucked among the salvia.

The garden felt alive.

And somewhere in the middle of all of it, I realized something else:

I hadn't once thought about the grass.

It’s absolutely still there – a few long blades extend through the other plants where they can find a break to reach the light. To be honest: if I look closely enough, I can find plenty.

But it no longer commands my attention.

What are we trying so hard to eliminate?

I couldn't help but see the metaphor. How many things in our lives do we become obsessed with removing?

Uncertainty. Fear. Distraction. Stress. Self-doubt. Imperfection. Difficult people. Unfinished work. Habits we'd rather not have. Parts of ourselves we'd like to outgrow.

And sometimes they do require action.

But other times, we can devote extraordinary amounts of time, money, attention, and energy trying to eradicate something that may never disappear completely.

We keep pulling at the grass – and spraying and building barriers – until maintaining control becomes its own exhausting project.

We imagine that eventually we'll reach a point where everything is sufficiently managed: our calendars organized, our insecurities resolved, our habits optimized, our relationships uncomplicated, our work under control.

Then, perhaps, we can finally turn our attention toward the life we actually want.

But what if we have the order backward?

What grows when you stop fighting?

Sustainable success, to me, increasingly looks less like creating a life without weeds and more like becoming thoughtful about what we cultivate in their place.

Where do you want your energy to go? What deserves more nourishment? What could begin to thrive if you shifted your focus from weeding to feeding?

This isn't a call to ignore the real problems or to stop putting effort into drawing boundaries, reducing toxicity and improving your life experience.

I still pull grass occasionally, and I think it's important we all do.

But perhaps one measure of sustainable success is not whether we've managed to eliminate everything that bothers us. Perhaps it's whether we've created enough of what matters that those things no longer occupy the center of the picture.

There will always be some grass: in the form of uncertainty, stress, disappointment, fear – all the parts of life that refuse to behave exactly as we prefer.

But we also get to decide what grows beside it.

And sometimes, if we give enough attention to what we want to flourish, something beautiful happens.

The thing we were fighting doesn't necessarily disappear.

It simply becomes much harder to see.