AS SHE OFTEN DOES, naturalist and nature writer Nancy Lawson—perhaps known better to some of you as the Humane Gardener after the title of her first book—caught my attention the other day.
The world’s ugliest lawn has been found and Diarmuid Gavin says it’s ‘soulful’
11.01.2024 - 14:45 / irishtimes.com
It is not so much a lawn as a moonscape: pitted craters dug by bandicoots, exhausted tufts of withered yellow grass plucked by wallabies and pitiful plants shrivelled brown under the Australian sunshine.
But Kathleen Murray is the proud winner of the first World’s Ugliest Lawn competition after the Swedish contest to encourage water-saving, environmentally-friendly gardening went global.
Ms Murray’s lawn in Sandford, Tasmania, beat competition from parched grass patches in Germany, France, Canada, Croatia, Sweden, the US and the UK.
“It’s pretty shock-and-awe,” said Murray of her lawn. “The bandicoots love digging – that’s how they find their favourite food. Now my back yard looks like a real-life Hungry Hungry Hippo game. I also have an echidna that helps, and some chooks.”
She lives in an area without mains water, and so rainwater collected in tanks is too precious to waste on the lawn. If she and her four teenage children run out of water in summer, it can be a two-week wait before more water is delivered via tanker.
“I used to think the bandicoots were wildlife of mass destruction invading my lawn, but now I see that they’ve actually liberated me from ever having to mow it again,” said Murray, who is the proud owner of the inaugural trophy – a commemorative T-shirt. “I’m all for guilt-free weekends, especially since my ex-husband left with the lawnmower back in 2016.”
The competition began in Gotland, Sweden, two years ago, after the popular holiday island came within hours of running out of water the previous summer.
The contest, devised by the municipality of Gotland, became global news after the Guardian picked up the story. Water consumption in Gotland has fallen by 5 per cent thanks to the competition and other
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