Environmentalism via Competition

Start with a shaggy garden competition

You may remember that last year I wrote a NYT story about Britain’s shaggy lawn movement.

I took the initiative to bring that competition to my village.

Now, it’s June 2026, and my town just finished its first ever “No Mow May” gardening competition. Out of a village of 2,000 people, we had about fifty entries into the competition, plus lots of people participating on the side or doing their own environmental thing unaware that a competition was even happening.

All in all, it was a big success. By June, the village was noticeably shaggier than last year. A lot of homeowners told me that they witnessed wildlife using their lawns (ex: birds finding nesting materials) more than they’d ever noticed.

The local church letting their grounds go to meadow

This all got me thinking. Might competition, even the most playful sort, be an under-utilized method for environmental advocacy?

Imagine if I just went around town just generally promoting No Mow May. I don’t think anyone would have noticed. But if you can pit homes against homes, or a village against a village, or a country against a country, you can begin to couple your environmental advocacy with things like local or national pride. Or you might just want to win a rosette. (I suggested to the charity and judging body Plantlife, for in future years, to scale the competition up by creating a “shaggiest locale” award, given to the village, town, or city that has the highest percentage of participating people.)

The local botanist who judged the participating homes made lists of species present in each lawn. Several neighborhoods in the village showed off each others’ lists with some mock brags in neighborhood WhatsApp chats. That’s the kind of playful competition we need.

here’s mine

So much of environmentalism has a doom and gloom tone to it. The planet is either turning into molten lava or freezing into a giant snowball. We humans are a planetary cancer, and we should all just curl up into our compost bins and die. Nothing is ever good enough. Flying, buying, driving all warrant your guilt.

Environmentalism needs to become playful and far less sanctimonious. That joyfulness can manifest in many ways, and one is through local competitions. Here are a few more ideas and I’d love to hear others:

The Dark Skies Cup (For the street, home, or town doing the best job to reduce unnecessary night lighting.)

The Scruffiest Verge Award (For residents, councils, churches, or businesses letting public-facing grass become habitat.)

The Unconsumption award (for household or locales that produced the least amount of trash and recycling)

Sustainable Water award (for the town who best uses water butts and xeriscaping to reduce unnecessary water usage)

The Walkable Village Award (For the village, neighbourhood, or street that makes walking feel more normal, safe, pleasant, and social.)

Sustainable city award (For all the factors you might expect)

here I am in local newspaper in my shaggy lawn

Chairing

Claudia Hammond and I

I’ve now chaired six different events at three different book festivals. Chairing does involve a lot of work and prep (reading a whole book with care), and it gets you very little money (£100), but I really enjoy it. I enjoy the buzz of being in front of a crowd, feeling like I’m part of a literary scene, sitting with other authors in a big dining room, and just being around literary activity.

At the Borders Book Festival in southern Scotland, I chaired an event for author and BBC Radio 4 broadcaster Claudia Hammond, who wrote Overwhelmed. It was a great turnout and a lot of fun. Claudia and I both really like the tartan chairs we sat in.

What else I’m doing

April-June 2026 has been about the busiest several-month period of my life: writing two magazine articles, finishing up my year as a psychotherapy grad student, getting “Aqua” training for my group fitness trainer job, organizing the lawn competition, managing a softball team, pitching schools for fall public speaking events, and being a dad. Just this week, I’ve scratched a few big things off my list, so before I start piling more duties onto my shoulder, I’m telling myself to sit in my garden, reconnect in other ways with nature, and stop being so damned accomplishment-oriented, if just for a bit.

That said, I can’t get my The Future Wild book proposal off my mind, so I find myself working on that rather than spending my off hours watching films or reading books.