All that plastic grass

The horror happened on our street this week.  Truck after truck carted away trees, hostas, shrubs and soil.  All gone.  Then more trucks rolled in with herbicides to spray the ground, truckloads of screening was dumped and then  thumped into place with heavy duty machinery.  The final insult was ugly looking unreal all-plastic grass.  It’s awful, terrible, dreadful.

We neighbours stood around gobsmacked and upset.  There was not a damn thing we could do. The owners of this plastic hell can do whatever they want with their property. The trees were of small enough caliper that they didn’t need a permit for removal. And no one cares about that other stuff.  It’s legal and we can just mind our own business.

But what no one has taken into account  is how this is going to change the ecology in our area.  We live on underground streams from the  Taddlecreek system which runs through downtown Toronto.  This water eventually ends up in Lake Ontario.  What we dump on our gardens will end up there too.  We are on a flood plain which means the ground water rises dramatically  in a year like this one and floods everyone’s garden.

Well this stuff plastic stuff is supposed to be permeable but when you see them pounding limestone screening into the ground, what comes to mind is cement.  The water that would normally rise and then fall is going to tumble into the gardens on either side  of this awful green horror.  What’s there for birds in this wasteland?  Where will the millions of  animals that make up the soil go? It will have the smell of death about it forever.  Nothing will change.

I understand it when put plastic grass (and there some good products) in a small area, say around a swimming pool.  But to completely destroy an entire yard for plastic is unconscionable.  You can bet this home owner will get a leaf blower to remove any offending bits of nature which might stray on to his property.  Why isn’t there something we can do about it?  It’s all perfectly legal.