...this is absolutely horrifying, they might as well have paved the place over. Wtf. https://twitter.com/BeforeAfterPixs/status/1264057574133051394

People keep saying "this is in Wales there was no drainage" but you know what? Plants with deep root systems improve soil permeability, which improves surface drainage by allowing water to perk down lower.

The problem here is that like every fucking useless lawn everywhere, they had nothing but sod with a useless little 2" of roots all matted up because they were clipping the grass short as fuck.

Your lawn ALSO has shitty drainage.

You have a lawn because wealthy Europeans in the 17th century wanted the look of grazed sheep meadows but without the sheep. So they hired people to cut the grass with a scythe.

Because having a goddamned lawn was a mark of wealth and status, lower socio-economic classes started doing it when they could afford homes, on down through the centuries and continents to the US middle class.

And here we are, with malnourished soil under malnourished sod. Grass will sink its roots quite deep if you're not cutting it to the ground and forcing it to regrow its leaves on a weekly basis.

Chicory and dandelion and other plants with taproots will open spaces in the surface of the soil. When the plant dies, the root rots there and nourishes the soil and allows new plants to grow from the nutrients it provides.

Clovers are legumes that fix nitrogen from the air into the soil, feeding other plants.

Your close-clipped single species of grass monoculture lawn is doing fuck all for the environment and in fact is just as harmful as monoculture fields of soybeans and corn in terms of habitat destruction.

And also it has shitty drainage.

Here is a beautiful root depth chart for US native prairie plants vs turf grass. Turf grass is the sad ass little hyphen looking thing on the left.

Many of these, including Big Bluestem (a native grass, ask @PasturesPolitic how it can feed your livestock!) come in ornamental varieties!