Well...I guess I'm in the team lawn side... I could more easily not have it...[ and didn't have any to start with..]... but it's more work and expense.. and I'll always choose the more expensive and harder to attain choice.. like in the garden. ..
it would be so easy not to have any..just as it came .. or grow perennials.. or evergreens .. but I grow tropicals .. and exotics... and things way out of my zone...
Making the outside look like inside the house.. and inside the house look like the outside... has always been a joy for me.. and goal of mine.. for the last 40 years.. when I had my first inside lawn area... [ did you read the book... Stranger in a Strange Land... the 1961 science fiction novel by American author Robert A. Heinlein. It tells the story of Valentine Michael Smith, a human who has come to Earth in early adulthood after being born on the planet Mars and raised by Martians.... he had a lawn inside his house... ] this thought is slowly being taken up as the new look by the architects.. of both the houses and landscape variety.. and trickling down into convention... but the bigger camp is the no work / no expenditure side ... in these fields as well
The lawn here returns many times the expense [ perhaps not factoring in effort and time or accessores ] ... as savings in the heating and A/C loads.. but it is maintained soley for the asthetcs..
The sod came from a company making Yankee Stadium look green... hince the white marble stepping stones... like bases of the stadium... it's a home run ... it's out of here...
the first 10 years or so the lawn was laid on a bed of sand.. for drainage.. but it eventaually the dirt infiltrated the sand and stopped the drainage.. and it stayed wetter longer than was helpful... this lawn sits on a plastic egg crate layer.. covered n a felt pad .. this allows water runoff to drain underneath it.. but catches water on the top of the egg crating.. watering the grass... inbetween rains..