Turfed: Reimagining the Front Yard

Building Community One Front Yard 

at a Time

Plenty of evidence shows that grass is a poor, environmentally damaging ground cover that has been overused and consumes an unreasonable amount of resources, like time, chemicals, and water. In response, a growing number of suburban homeowners are replacing their turf lawns with alternatives, such as wildflowers; edible, pollinating, and rock gardens; native shrubs; and perennials. 

This Dundas homeowner replaced their front grass with wildflowers and native perennials. Lots of people stop to chat about the change and compliment them on how it looks.

But in addition to addressing environmental concerns by replacing the idle grass that has typically appeared in front of their houses, suburban homeowners have responded to basic human social and psychological needs by altering the way they use the space in front of their homes and making it more personal and interactive. The pandemic clearly strained our ability to socialize and highlighted the inherent drive to feel part of a community and connect with and help others. To satisfy these fundamental needs, people instinctively reached out with small gestures that capitalized on the liminal space of their front yards, a space which belongs to them but faces outward in a publicly available way.

Although visits to Little Free Libraries dropped off at the beginning of the pandemic because of the fear of Covid spread, in many communities, the number of these libraries has grown since 2021. The boxes provide a place to exchange not only books, but other items, like hand sanitizer and non-perishable food items. They are a reminder to passersby that they are not alone and the community cares. 

I noticed an increased number of people purposefully seeking to engage the public over the pandemic. The first sign of people coming together was the 7 pm nationwide initiative to head out front and bang pots and pans to show appreciation for healthcare and other frontline workers. Another example is the increased number of Little Free Libraries appearing at the edge of people's front yards. These give-a-book, take-a-book exchanges have been around since 2009 but grew in popularity — more so in the second year of the pandemic after the initial hyper-cautiousness about Covid had diminished — as a way to build community and spread good will. According to the Little Free Library website, the structures are intended as mini-town-squares that help residents meet, and make neighbourhoods feel friendlier. In addition, according to a Los Angeles Times article, residents have been using their existing libraries or building similar units, like "Blessing Boxes," to share non-perishables and pandemic supplies like hand sanitizer or toilet paper.

"Who stole the soap out of the bathtub? The robber ducky!"

Amid the pandemic seriousness, one creative Dundas homeowner gave neighbours a daily guffaw by posting a riddle at the edge of her front yard.

This inclination to connect to our fellow human beings, especially ones that live in our everyday space is basic but has gone largely unaddressed by post-war architects and urban designers who centred their creative efforts around the home's interior where all the creature comforts, like TV and air conditioning, could be enjoyed. In addition, the front porch — that perch from which to view the world and be viewed by the world — has all but disappeared. Front porches provide an ideal setting for safe, brief encounters with passersby, both strange and familiar, or a place to sip a drink, read a book, or otherwise live your life as a visible member of the community.

James Howard Kunstler points out the bias that privileges indoor over outdoor life, and in particular the disappearance of a useful front porch, in his Atlantic article, Home from Nowhere, which examines the crisis of urban sprawl and supports New Urbanism principles to bring back human-scaled public spaces. In the article, Kunstler says,

Likewise, the front porch is an important and desirable element in some neighborhoods. A porch less than six feet deep is useless except for storage, because it provides too little room for furniture and the circulation of human bodies. Builders tack on inadequate porches as a sales gimmick to enhance "curb appeal," so that the real-estate agent can drive up with the customer and say, "Look, a front porch!" The porch becomes a cartoon feature of the house, like the little fake cupola on the garage. This saves the builders money in time and materials. Perhaps they assume that the street will be too repulsive to sit next to.Why do builders even bother with pathetic-looking cartoon porches? Apparently Americans need at least the idea of a porch to be reassured, symbolically, that they're decent people living in a decent place. But the cartoon porch only compounds the degradation of the public realm.

The need for human interaction is so basic, perhaps we take it for granted; but the truth is creating spaces that facilitate social behaviour is not necessarily easy or a priority for architects.  Jan Gehl is a pioneering Danish urban planner who observes that it is "inherently human to want to be around other people, that being in the presence of other people is highly interesting, and we should build our cities accordingly — at the human scale" (listen to Gehl discuss his urban planning philosophy on SPACE10 Design Lab's Imagine podcast). For his more than 50-year career, Gehl has focussed on creating spaces that are "good for people."  Gehl describes his architectural education as preoccupied with interior spaces:

Everything I was taught in architecture school was about life inside buildings. It was always believed that by changing the inside of buildings, people could have a better life. Then we started to think, maybe ‘good for people’ is not inside the buildings, but also outside the buildings. Maybe, ‘good for people’ is very much what is happening between the buildings and not in the buildings themselves.

In our neighbourhood, where porches and verandas are rare, homeowners took matters into their own hands during the pandemic and worked a desire path* back to their front yards, finding ways to use this space and thereby interact with their community. Anecdotally, I've heard people say they met people during the Covid shutdown they never even knew were neighbours. After all, a sense of togetherness, belonging, and community are important factors to being happy, and in the case of the last few years, people got creative to stay social. 

* Desire paths are unintended trails or walkways that emerge naturally, usually skirting the formal paths installed by indifferent officials. A sitting area created by the homeowner in the front yard is a type of spacial desire path that addresses an unfulfilled need intuitively and creatively. Listen to the wonderful 99% Invisible podcast discuss desire paths. 

Many homes in the "Sherwood Forest" neighbourhood in Dundas lack front porches. Their midcentury modern style tend to feature carports (a bit strange given the climate), but no porch. The owner of one of these homes likes to sit in the front yard because it is more interesting and gives him the opportunity to chat with neighbours and enjoy his perennial garden. In 2021, he hardscaped a section of his front yard and situated two Adirondack chairs where he and his wife often read or talk.