Summer is the season of days at the beach and backyard barbecues. It’s also the season for a chore that many a homeowner is no doubt familiar with – mowing the lawn.

How about keeping a pair of pet wallabies instead?

I know some people, mostly men, who actually enjoy mowing the lawn. (All the better if the lawn is big enough to justify a ride-on mower). Most of us, however, would probably rather not.

Besides, conventional gas-powered lawnmowers are dirty and polluting.

Wallabies not to your fancy? You might try goats. (Google even has goats mowing its lawns.) That said, I’ve been acquainted with a few goats in my time and they are obstreperous creatures who will eat anything, so forget having a garden or hanging clothes outside to dry. Perhaps you’d better stick with wallabies.

The creatures are just like a kangaroo, only smaller and less aggressive. In Britain, wallabies are an increasingly popular backyard pet. They are gentle, intelligent and, you guessed it, they keep the lawn trim.

Wallabies are sociable creatures so they are sold in pairs and breeders say that they are no more difficult to keep than rabbits.

Unlike cattle, which are blamed for a significant percentage of the world’s greenhouse emissions in the form of methane-filled burps and farts, wallabies and other marsupials possess rather more genteel digestive systems.

Alternatively, why not have a meadow or patch of prairie instead of a lawn? Lawns require a lot of water to keep them green (green in colour, that is), especially in hot climates.

You can’t just stop mowing and watering or the grass will turn brown and the yard will quickly become infested with weeds. But with the right ground work, you can have wildflowers and native grasses instead, surviving on natural rainfall and providing valuable habitat for birds, bugs, frogs and small mammals.

Images: law_keven, Martin Pettitt

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