Greenwashing and the Lawn Industry

Greenwashing and the Lawn Industry: When we look at success in lawn care, what does that mean?

The very best people in the turf and grass care industry view grass in a way where we, as keepers of grass, are playing a small part in allowing grass to do its thing, and when done well, take the credit.

Greenwashing and the Lawn Industry

Greenwashing and the Lawn Industry

We have a grass-covered countryside and millions of lawns and patches of grass that look after themselves with almost no intervention, yet lawns that seem to have endless hours spent on them fail year after year. Now, of course, there are some simple reasons for that yearly failure, but ask a business that keeps growing quickly, and you’ll see a company that thrives off that endless failure, using it as a blueprint for success.

Step up, the lawn franchise business model and the products-based sales companies thriving off that, where it relies on failure and thrives on the temporary success of new grass, only for it to need the same renovation year after year.

Now, any lawn failing in the UK has a few reasons why it happens, but this ‘template’ has become a success story for lawn companies across the UK.

So, how on earth did this happen? It’s quite simple really and stems back to gardening in general washing their hands of lawns (correct me if I’m wrong), deeming them too bad for our environment (when they happily take company sponsorships of course), allowing companies selling products to become the go-to experts, and ultimately allowing a failed business model to cloud the already mystical world of lawn care even further.

Fertilisers made of plastic, seeds that will fail in your lawn, and a whole lot of clever PR push this as the way forward.

New-build lawns are also to blame. Their poor construction, poor grass species choice, and little understanding that a plant must thrive to survive have led to this lack of education.

And the poor advice, when it does arrive, has allowed monstrosities to thrive like plastic carpets, lawns to be removed for tarmac drives, and a whole lawn company business model to allowed to flourish off this.

Of course, in the world of business, it’s seen as a success: so much work, so many lawns constantly failing, and a whole load of repeat business based on failure. It’s so clever you wonder if those who started it even knew how good it could be for their business.

But is failure and a way to make money how we should teach lawn care?  Are prolific seed and dressing sales good for the environment? Because, when education is poor, it’s easy for anyone to believe anything: the best new seed variety, the fertilisers used at glorious sports venues, the must-go-to product that has been paid to be ‘on trend’. Teaching people how simple lawn care should be is always tricky when so many are focused on making money.

The art of greenwashing or embellishing facts towards more and more sales, is considered a success, but how does that financial success compare to simple, skilled lawn care where the grass does the work, lawns look after themselves, and the word ‘green’ has actual meaning?

  • Slow-release fertilisers are often used when in truth, it means polymers poisoning our natural soils for no reason at all, for hundreds of years.
  • The ‘top grass seeds’, as used by premier league football, when the truth is premier pitches only last 6 months before being replaced with more plastic contamination and harm.  How’s that good for sustainable lawn care?
  • ‘Heavy wear’ or ‘family lawn’ grass seeds being the answer to your thinning lawn, when in fact, the public is sold two grass species that contradict each other, leading to natural thinning and muddy lawns for months over our wet winters

You see, with business comes a drive and a desire to make more money. How do we get the public to think their lawns fail because they haven’t used this new product?

Within the constant merry-go-round of temporary success when the sun comes out, can anyone evaluate what works at all?

And everyone has advice.  A billion or so pages on Google. So advice is more often than not, an opinion, and if all you have learnt is the failed way, then that’s the advice you are going to give. Regardless of whether it failed twice in a year or not (they keep those bits quiet).

Greenwashing always comes at a cost, whether to a homeowner who pays for failure or to our beloved environment, and lawn care today is full of those who put profit and greenwashing far ahead of our environment.

I don’t look forward to seeing more of this in 2025, but I know the pens of many marketing teams are slowly filling themselves in preparation.

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