Lawns

An odd symphony, a mix of several monotonous hums that alternately approach and recede, fills the air. The smells of cut grass and motor exhaust waft in through the open windows, forcing me to recognize that it's Tuesday; the gardeners are here. Watching them swiftly move from house to house, I think about the time, effort, and resources put into the upkeep of the shimmering green lawns that they tend, and wonder where the tradition of keeping a neat little patch of grass in the front yard came from.

A quick glance at wikipedia satisfies my curiosity. Predictably, the history of the lawn can be traced to England, where plentiful rain watered the grazing fields for various livestock, which kept the wild grasses of the "lawn" trim and neat. In the 17th century, lawns became an important element in the gardens of the elite, who had their labor-intensive gardens maintained by paid laborers. The infatuation with the low-cut, green patches slowly spread to all classes of people, firmly entrenching the lawn's position in the minds of westerners as an essential part of the garden. Thanks to industrialization and complex irrigation systems, a spacious, lush lawn occupies the front and back yards of my parents' home in arid Southern California.

The seemingly thoughtless acceptance of the lawn's place in the garden, particularly in places unsuitable for water-hungry grasses, intrigues me. In Los Angeles, to keep lawns green in the middle of a desert, households use an average of 500 gallons of water a day, a third of which is wasted in the form of runoff (according to this interesting LA Times article). To speed up work, gas-powered tools, both noisy and polluting, are employed to keep the grasses clean and pretty. A crude calculation shows that lawns occupy somewhere around five percent of the LA metropolitan area, perhaps significant when considering urban sprawl. At such an environmental cost, what value do lawns bring?

Many people argue that they provide psychological comfort and provide space for children to play. The beauty of a lush green lawn gives a sense of home, or perhaps one of an oasis, buffering the mind from worldly troubles. Not to mention that children can be let loose on the forgiving surface. However, these lawn advocates implicitly downplay the beauty of gardens made with local vegetation and ignore the possibility of using public parks. Regardless, even if the benefits do outweigh the costs, Americans have so thoroughly supplanted (?) lawns in their front yards that they cease to be aware of them at all. Like so many other luxuries we take for granted, they have become an accepted necessity in our lives, and we are forced to seek further novelties in a never-ending cycle of wanting, getting, and then forgetting; a vain attempt to satisfy our all-important and never-ending needs. (hmm, sort of random)

Maybe I'm taking it too far in suggesting that it's a result of a deeper problem, our inability to question our innate, nagging demands; our busy minds that can't see through the untamed thoughts and desires to the reality that stands before us. (fix that) Maybe it's a much simpler issue. Still, I think it's worth a thought.

A house has a garden, and a garden is a lawn.




(join me here on my quest to convert a portion of my parents' back yard lawn into a vegetable garden! [ADD LINK])