The Typical Suburban Lawn
This is the falsified appearance of a typical suburban lawn. Underneath lies a complex truth that may change your view on lawns the next time you drive past a perfectly green front yard and wish that you knew that homeowner's secrets.
Forage or Turf Grasses defines the traditional lawn as turf grass because it is "usually low growing and often stoloniferous (bentgrass, bermudagrass), or rhizomatous (bluegrass), or are seeded at such high rates that the individual plants form a firm sod (as with ryegrasses)." It is also mentioned (and important to remember for later) that turf grass root systems are very shallow. Turf grass is a monoculture crop - a single crop in a given area- that serves no benefits to people as a food or energy source, or to pollinators, or as a filtration system. In a 2005 study it was estimated at that time turf grass in the United States covered a combined land area three times larger than any irrigated crop. Over fifteen years later, we can assume the statistic has grown.
Why is the United States expending roughly 2% of its land on maintaining a monoculture crop that has little to no practical use? The answer, lawns have become a cultural sensation across the United States. The combination of societal, political, and economic conventions has placed lawns and lawn care on a pedestal that drives consumerism and consumption.
The Great American Lawn: How the Dream Was Manufactured is a concise video from The New York Times if you are looking for a brief, entertaining visual explanation of the rest of this post. If you are content with a surface view of lawn history, this is the video for you. I do highly recommend that you take a few minutes to watch the video and then return to finish this post for a more fundamental understanding.
The American Lawn: Culture, Nature, Design and Sustainability by Maria Ghys was my go-to source for the remainder of this post. If by the end of my interpretation of this post you are wanting to know more, I encourage you to read the full work itself.
Lawns originated in medieval Europe as gardens with the purpose of either entertaining and social pleasure or producing medicinal herbs and plants. Soon after the garden lawn became an art form, a representation of economic standing and control over the land they resided on. Bigger was always better, and garden lawns gave way to expanses of carefully curated lawns. This aesthetic traveled with colonists to America and only thrived with the abundance of land in the newly obtained country. Only portions of the population were able to recreate the landscapes of Europe, those in the government and those in positions of personal wealth. The rest were left to be surrounded by yards of dirt and weeds, their small grassy areas necessary for livestock instead of pleasure. This created an almost instantaneous visual divide in economic class that permeated into the blooming culture of America.
At this point lawns have reached the 19th century and advertisements have created the perception that a "beautiful", uniform lawn is a symbol of a healthy outdoor living space. This developed the economic pressures of the turf lawn care industry, which has expanded to circulate forty billion dollars a year. Post-WWII the suburban expansion of America and the creation of a distinct middle-class in the country's economy gave turf lawns an unshakable foundation within American society.
Now we know how we got to this point of giving turf grass lawns a spotlight in our society and what it has meant culturally throughout time, but where -and more specifically, what- is the problem? The next post, Environmental and Economic Impact will explain the issues of the cultural phenomenon that is the typical suburban lawn.
Milesi, C., Running, S.W., Elvidge, C.D. et al. "Mapping and Modeling the Biogeochemical Cycling of Turf Grasses in the United States." Environmental Management, vol. 36, 426–438, 2005, doi.org/10.1007/s00267-004-0316-2
“The Great American Lawn: How The Dream Was Manufactured.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 9 Aug. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/08/09/video/lawn-grass-environment-history.html.
Ghys, Maria, "The American Lawn: Culture, Nature, Design and Sustainability" Clemson University Tiger Prints, All Theses, 1614, 2013, tigerprints.clemson.edu/all_theses/1614
Oregon State University. "Forage or Turf Grasses." Forage Information System, n.d., forages.oregonstate.edu/regrowth/how-does-grass-grow/grass-types/forage-or-turf-grasses
Picture Sources:
thefloridavillager.com/2020/07/20/lawn-care-tips-to-keep-your-grass-healthy-and-beautiful/
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