Now we have to be worried about having the ‘wrong’ lawn

Long is the new short when it comes to our grass – and apparently brown is the new green, writes Janet Street-Porter

Lawns etiquette is changing (iStock/Getty Images)

The humble garden lawn has become a danger zone, something that you can be pilloried for getting “wrong”. It’s right up there with liking statues of war heroes and getting the initials LGBT+ muddled up in company.

A first-class lawn has always been a British gardener’s goal. Pristine, weed free, cut shorter than a squaddies’ trim. Smooth enough for a game of billiards. A glaring bright green, Manicured, primped and picked over until it’s unnaturally perfect.

Now, there’s a new set of rules. First, Monty, the Don of gardening, dared to break ranks with traditional horticulturalists (like my late father), letting slip that he thought mowing was “unnecessary” – and almost a bit macho.

We’re expected to let our grass get untidy. Like those artfully contrived “messy” hairdos – ie the “down” up do favoured by celebrity brides that requires a top hairdresser to pin your hair up as if it’s falling down and you’ve been having wild sex all night (when you’ve actually spent hours with your hair in rollers).

The fashionable and eco-conscious lawn is in the same category. If you don’t mow it, you might be saving energy and encouraging butterflies and wildlife, but to look really good, you need to carefully do a subtle trim here and there with shears. I’ve paid someone to do just that, creating a rustic pathway to my garden table and chairs.

Of course, it will look crap in a week or two, but it’s insta-perfect right now. Daisies and forget me nots sprouting in profusion.

Back in the 1960s, my dad mowed our lawn in regimental stripes, and watered it every couple of days in summer. That regime couldn’t be more frowned upon by the modern gardening fraternity.

Now, the Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) has entered the tricky territory of the fashionable lawn. Going against traditional advice, they’ve decreed that using mains water to keep your lawns green is no good for the environment. The RHS wants us to switch off our hoses and use rainwater we’ve captured in a water butt. Or we can just wait for rain and let the lawn get parched.

So brown is the new green?