more about lawns
Thanks to Linda who saved for me a New Yorker article by Elizabeth Kolbert, “Turf War.” It’s from the…um…July 21 issue. (Okay, it sometimes take me a little time to finally get around to things…)
It’s a worthy read that takes a historical look at some of the writings discussing the topic of the American lawn, beginning with Andrew Jackson Downing’s 1841 Treatise on the Theory and Practice of Landscape Gardening. Being a review of the lawn literature, it’s ripe with pithy quotes by the author and many others that show changes in American thought towards this carpet of mown grass. Read the article for all the quotes in context, but here’s a handful that I especially liked:
Among the dozen or so main grasses that make up the American lawn, almost none are native to America. Kentucky bluegrass comes from Europe and northern Asia, Bermuda grass from Africa, and Zoysia grass from East Asia.
Mowing turfgrass quite literally cuts off the option of sexual reproduction…In his anti-lawn essay “Why mow?,” Michael Pollan puts it this way: “Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.”
“A fine carpet of green grass stamps the inhabitants as good neighbors, as desirable citizens,” Abraham Levitt wrote. (By covenant, the original Levittowners agreed to mow their lawns once a week between April 15th and November 15th.)
[In a discussion on the us pesticides and herbicides on lawns:] In “American Green” (2006), Ted Steinberg, a professor of history at Case Western Reserve University, compares the lawn to “a nationwide chemical experiment with homeowners as the guinea pigs.”
Recently, a NASA-funded study, which used satellite data collected by the Department of Defense, determined that, including golf courses, lawns in the United States cover nearly fifty thousand square miles–an area roughly the size of New York State. The same study concluded that most of this New York State-size lawn was growing in places where turfgrass should new have been planted. In order to keep all the lawns in the country well irrigated, the author of the study calculated, it would take an astonishing two hundred gallons of water per person, per day.
For a developer…putting in turfgrass is by far the easiest way to landscape; what is sometimes called “contractor’s mix” grass seed is specifically formulated to provide a fast-growing–though not necessarily long-lasting–green. (Lowe’s, which sells fifteen pounds of contractor’s-mix seed for $23.52, advertises it as an “economy mixture that provides quick grass cover.”) The lawn may be wasteful and destructive, it may even be dangerous, but it is, in its way, convenient.
October 21 2008 04:25 am | Categories: gardening • landscape design • quotes | Tags: lawns • pesticides • water use
Bird on 22 Oct 2008 at 3:25 am #
It was a long time before I truly appreciated the difference between “grass” and “lawn”. I always presumed that everyone must like daisies, dandelions and clover in their grassed areas since they are so cheerful and lovely. I thought that horrible uniform green carpet was something only sports pitches wore with pride. The first time I came across a gardener who waged war on flowers in the grass I thought they were insane. Still do!
lostlandscape on 23 Oct 2008 at 1:48 pm #
I agree! I was pleasantly surprised when I encountered a an offering of seed (at seedhunt.com) for dandelions! (These are native to this area and have particularly large seedheads. I saw some out in the wilds years ago and took some slides. I’ll post them if I ever find them again…)