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Farewell to the Lawn
Social conformity just happens. We do things because they've always been done that way. How we live is shaped by a zillion unwritten rules and regulations. To ignore these inherited protocols is to run the risk of being labelled eccentric.
For Henry and Vera Jones, their refusal to conform amounts to downright anti-social behaviour, at least according to the strict codes of conduct in suburbia. The Joneses, as the Citizen reported this week, outed themselves as social radicals by publicly rejecting the ideal of a manicured lawn.
The couple have a big backyard in Constance Bay and some months ago decided to hell with watering, fertilizing, cutting and weeding. Henry is a former Fisheries and Oceans scientist who has some understanding of ecology, so he and Vera decided to create a natural green space in lieu of a lawn. They would let the grass grow, plant an assortment of butterfly-friendly plants and allow a mini-meadow to emerge.
The neighbours were not impressed. Someone complained to the city's bylaw officials, who then sent the Joneses a letter threatening to come down there and cut the grass if the couple didn't do it themselves. Unmowed lawns in Constance Bay will not be tolerated. The resistance must be put down. Order will be re-established.
The neighbours deny that this is about anyone's refusal to conform. They say the Jones garden is attracting too many insects and critters to the area and thus diminishing the ability of others to enjoy their own properties. Still, it's clear that the Joneses are in equal trouble for breaching a strict code of suburban etiquette. "It looks just awful," said one disapproving neighbour.
The central irony of suburbia is that we give the streets names like Meadow Grove and Orchard Drive while ensuring that all traces of meadows and orchards are erased. The appearance of an actual meadow is an act of rebellion.
More than a decade ago, the Canadian cultural critic Robert Fulford observed that the suburban lawn had become an instrument of public shaming and social control.
"[A] dandelion's appearance on a lawn indicates that Sloth has taken up residence in paradise and is about to spread evil in every direction," he wrote. Weeds demonstrate a "weakness of the soul," announcing to the world that "the owner of the house refuses to respect the neighbourhood's right to peace, order and good government."
They say that clothes express the man, but in fact it's the lawn that does. A large expanse of flat, weedless grass in front of your house conveys a bunch of social messages. It suggests discipline, an ability to tame the natural world. As Fulford says, lawns express an "imperialist personality."
The most interesting aspect of big green lawns, especially front lawns, is that they are unused pieces of property. Sure, the children might play on the grass while you wash the car in the driveway, but a lawn is generally a place devoid of activity. Lawns are not living space.
The Canadian-trained architect Rufina Wu has said that the lawn represents "an extreme devaluation of space." The artifice of suburban lawns requires a considerable investment of resources -- an investment in something that has mainly aesthetic value.
Lawns are examples of conspicuous consumption, and like other such symbols have status attached to them. The more wasteful your lifestyle, the more money you are seen to have.
Maintaining a large velvety front lawn is not as excessive as keeping a private jet or killing an elephant for its tusks, but it is a symbol of waste nonetheless.
Urban planners have begun to wonder whether the fetish for big green lawns is sustainable.
The lawn came about as an accessory to a particular style of living, namely, the detached single-family house. But single-family houses, and the sprawling suburbs they produced, where life revolves around the automobile, are becoming obsolete, owing to the scarcity and high cost of energy.
The need to build denser and more efficient communities could spell the end of the road for the big green lawn. The environmentalist impulse behind denser communities and smart living has already interfered with lawn culture, in the form of pesticide bans. Without chemicals, the effort required to maintain the equivalent of a putting green on your property becomes much harder.
For some homeowners, the cost of doing so, as measured in time and money, outweighs the benefit. Henry and Vera Jones seem to have arrived at that conclusion.
As we become more sensitive to how we live, it'll be interesting to see whether perfect lawns begin to acquire reverse status. The large manicured lawn could soon transform from a symbol of good taste and discipline into one of personal irresponsibility, a bit like owning a Hummer.
Right now the Joneses are being derided as non-conformist troublemakers. Someday, they might be hailed as trendsetters.
46 Comments so far
Show AllGood article. Of course a good half step to letting the yeard turn completely wild, is to reduce your mowing (I use a push-reel mower) and encourage edible weeds to grow.
The small lawn at my home produces Wild Violet (colorful and good antioxidant-packed salad green in the spring) and Dandelion. One corner of the back lawn produces Spearmint and Sage. Flower bed weeds include Purslane - a very tasty vegatable on omlets or sauteed. An edge of a paved area produces Mullein - a medicinial herb for colds and flu.
The front-yard flower bed area has been enlarged and switched over to vegatables, except for perimeter fringe of Marigold, which helps control insects and, a just in case measure to keeps any neighbors from complaining. Fortunately I live in a laid-back blue collarish kind of neighborhood, where no one would put up with any kind of these restrictive rules seen in rich neighborhoods.
just show em the dictinary.Tony
Main Entry:3lawn
Pronunciation:*
Function:noun
Inflected Form:-s
Usage:often attributive
Etymology:alteration of laund
1 archaic a : an open space between woods : GLADE b : a level stretch on a mountainside
2 : ground covered with grass and not tilled; especially : ground covered with fine grass kept closely mowed especially in front of or about a house or as part of a garden or park
Most people acknowledge the norms in an area when they buy there. I find his "up yours" attitude selfish. Conformaity is apparently only good when it suits the self appointed morality police.
Henry8
Is you CD handle a reference to your IQ?
No, he's a rare centrist on this site. Please be nice.
You should read the "forget shorter showers" article posted yesterday, and the very long discussion many of us had. It's time to change the kinds of 'norms' that require the use of fertilizer for something that is basically lifeless.
Henry8, hey, a rare occasion, I agree with you, but less lawn and more interesting flowers and shrubs (and veggies) is preferable in most ways.
Get near my lawn and u die!
Lawns are a resource sucking luxury that are becoming much more trouble than they are worth. In my local area, Southern California, the on-going water shortage is phasing out lawns in favor of landscaping consisting of native plants. After the initial investment of plants and labor, the landscaping pays for itself in water savings, as native So. Cal. plants need much less water than lawns.
Cheers to you NateW, for your rare acknowledgment of the improbable reality we find ourselves in. Flying into SoCal on a clear day is one of the most startling experiences I know; here is a desert--really, a desert--that people have, in the face of all logic, presumed to inhabit, necessarily redirecting water resources from their natural courses into this otherwise scorched land, so they can throw down an acre of sod and sprinkle, sprinkle, sprinkle our precious water away--never mind the swimming pool. There's a documentary called "Flow" that takes a look at the coming water shortage, and how corporations fight to own the rights to our future, essentially. Watering the lawn is obscene.
I may need to use my lawn someday so I will be able to put food on my family. What then?
As far as I am concerned my lawn is my property (land) and I have a right to do whatever I want with my land. Everyone who has a lawn had better consider learning how to grow food again instead of wasting it on a meadow and other such nonsense (including landscape competitions with your neighbors).
My lawn is fairly diverse with as much of the green coming from dandelions, buckhorn and clover as from grass. In the spring the bright yellow blooms of the dandelions forms a beautiful random pattern of golden polka dots on a velvety green canvas. As summer progresses most years the lawn goes dormant from heat and drought giving me as much as a six week break in mowing it until cooler temperatures and fall rains bring it back to life. Since no pesticides are used on the lawn wrens, flycatchers, martins, barn swallows and many more birds find lots of bugs to feed on and moles seem to like the grub worms and night crawlers.
Three flower beds add a burst of color and tasty herbs and a vegetable garden provides ample harvests of several varieties of tomatoes, green beans, several varieties of bell peppers, kohlrabi, egg plants, cucumbers, pickles, green and golden zucchini, and winter squash. Tomatoes, pickles and green beans are canned for winter, zucchini and bell peppers are frozen and winter squash store in the basement until spring. Meadows that are not mowed provide wild black raspberries and blackberries that, when juiced and combined with pectin, a dash of lemon juice and cane sugar make jellies far far superior to store brands.
The vegetable garden is protected by a seven foot tall electric fence that would bring the down the wrath of suburbia upon me if I lived near town as I have seen as many as twenty white tail deer in my yard at one time. I need to make a rabbit proof area for the garden crops the bunnies prefer, the raccoons make growing sweet corn impossible.
While I don't make my own jam (or grow any of my own food unfortunately), I do buy a type that has nothing but wild blueberries, cane sugar, and fruit pectin. It's far tastier than any of the crap with HFCS in it. Can I stop by for dinner?
Sure, but you will have to earn it, I'm currently landscaping around a new 28ft X 56ft garage/barn/patio and could use a hand.
Your situation is not that different from mine in SE MN. Rabbits and deer are our biggest pests. I spent $100 for an electric fence around the sweet corn: 2 strands, one up 6-8" and one at 15-18". It works great.
While there are far fewer fences here in the Midwest than there used to be there are still enough around here that the deer learn to jump them. I live in the moraines left from the last ice age so there is a lot of marginal farm land that is in conservation programs...(plus lakes, wetlands, and woodlands)...so there is plenty of wildlife habitat...so there are plenty of critters.
Standard field fencing is around five feet tall and a deer can jump it with ease. The seven footer seems to be above their limit.
Raccoons, the little masked bandits, are really smart and they could break through the fences at Leavenworth Prison for a chance to munch some sweet corn. Around here the farmers plant a few rows of sweet corn along the edge of their regular corn so there is more than the raccoons and deer can eat. A small garden plot doesn’t stand a chance and you can buy sweet corn from the farmers at a reasonable price most years.
I have quite a few acres of woods also with lots more from nearby neighbors. I kid you not about the electric fence and sweet corn, it works. If you don't believe me, do a little digging on Google, you'll here raves, and you won't be disappointed now and then getting some too long ago picked corn off somebody's pickup.
My low wire on the electric fence may be too high and the raccoons are going under it. I placed it high enough to run the mower deck under it. I didn't want to have to trim it with the string trimmer.
I have enough wire and insulators left over to add a couple more strands next year.
When I built the fence originally I used 7 foot tall nylon deer netting suspended from a wire attached to 10 foot 2 X 4's dug into the ground 18 inches and set in quick-crete and attached to the ground with tent stakes. After two years the netting became weak from UV exposure and the deer soon learned that they could run right through it.
I removed it and converted the fence to an electric fence and it has kept the deer out very well.
Raccoons and rabbits are a different matter that will be addressed next year.
great article.
Canada Thistle is classed as a weed. If you let it grow, you find:
Beautiful, fragrant, violet flowers, which many species of insects, and birds (American goldfinch for one), feed on, and prefer, over commercially available "butterfly attracting plants"
Nothing lives on a lawn, it's a wasteland.
and, if you don't like dandelions, just let your lawn grow long. Grasses easily outcompete and choke out dandelions.
I am amazed by the sight of my neighbours toiling in their gigantic yards, it seems as though they hate the grass.
While it's clear that biodiversity tends to be lower in lawns than most undegraded wild places, it's surprisingly high even in the most abused, pesticided and geometrized lawn, which you find out when you actually look at it closely. It's amazing how many different species of plants, insects, arthropods and other critters live there. As part of my training as a naturalist we each laid out and led 3 classmates on a foot-long nature trail with 10-12 stops in it; at each one we talked about a species and its relationships. Every trail was completely different.
Get a couple of field guides and see how many are in your lawn.
The last two house we owned had large lawns. I never watered, fertilized, or wed them. I personally prefer the appearance of a natural looking lawn with different types grasses and weeds/plants growing in it.
I just try to keep the whole lawn thing as cheap and simple as possible. If grows in our lawn gets mowed with my big old National reel lawnmower. It's 30 years old and still runs fine. It cuts 7 feet at a shot so I can blast through the yard pretty quickly.
I look at our lawn as a natural habitat. Over the years I have seen deer, bob cats, bear, birds, rabbits, squirrels, woodchucks, skunks, snakes, turtles and countless other critters enjoy our lawn along with us.
If you had all those animals on your lawn, it was because nearby there were unmowed, non-lawn, natural areas where they could find things to eat and places to live. If there had been nothing but lawn and pavement for miles around, as is often the case these days, you would have had none of those animals.
I think his point is he enjoyed having those animals on his lawn.
I want to see some REAL solutions posited to this problem. We need green spaces. We also need to control for erosion, so don't tell me I should turn my lawn into a rock garden because that won't work, come the first big May thunderstorm, it'll all wash away. Also, we actually USE our lawn for extensive outdoor activities. Now I understand the uselessness of lawns for the people (who seem to be the majority these days) who go to work all day and then come home and plop their butts on the couch in front of the TV and never set foot outside, but there are some of us left who believe that human beings should be outdoors in nature most of the time.
I fully understand your situation. You USE your lawn. My wife and I have been thru 5 different houses, and despite all the speculation of how our kids would "play on our lawn and be safe", the street and the neighborhood park have always been bigger draws for them.
Now - FINALLY - that our youngest is approaching Middle School, I have my marriage-long dream of moving to a townhouse, condo or some otherwise less lawn-intensive living space within my grasp!
The suburbs should become villages with forest strips separating them. Each suburb-village has a village center, and residents growing food on their yards or fuel/materials plants, big houses converted to workshops, micro-warehouses, retail, apartments. Public buses run through moving people and freight intra and inter village, etc. This is all natural of course. What's unnatural is the way it is now with capitalist central planning dictating the mass solo commute to the urban centers for robotic tasks in the establishment conglomerate and collusion rackets.
Or we could respond to local conditions and each suburb could come to its own solution. For example, forests aren't the natural community in many places, and growing them would be unecological, using unnecessary water. Some suburbs, each house could be a relatively stand-alone farm, others, blocks could band together and use outdoor space communally, indoor space privately. Still others, everything could be shared. Local ecosystem, climate, size of lots and houses, culture, skills, personal preference, distance from other towns, cities and resources... it all makes every place unique, and imposing one vision on all is almost as ridiculous as growing Kentucky Blue on every lawn from San Diego to Bangor.
The more choices we present to people the more likely they are to find one they like, and the more likely they are to go along without a fight. Rather than trying to tear everything down and start over, how bout if we start where we are and study the best ways to get where we want to go?
Ideally, most lawn shrubbery should be sized such that 'natural' is a perfect fit. The hedge trimmer should hang on the garage wall as an insurance policy against the odd, unsightly branch.
A number of disagreements here:
"...an investment in something that has mainly aesthetic value."
Like, er, most art?
"Lawns are examples of conspicuous consumption... but it is a symbol of waste nonetheless."
Having grown up in a lawn-crazy suburb, I can tell you that not one neighbor ever considered their lawn proof of their status/worth. To a man - and lawn care was strictly the man's world - it was the only actual house 'decoration' for which they had any say. And, since beautiful, artistic landscaping requires both talent and skill training, the easiest thing to do was to create a golf green which, to said men, represented calm and relaxation and sport.
And we kids could play on it if we wanted to - and we wanted to a lot - unlike the guy's desert cactus layout across the street. His kids played at our house...
"And we kids could play on it if we wanted to - and we wanted to a lot"
As your food was trucked in from an average of 2000 miles away at 60 mpg per potato plus fuel supply military security, not to mention veterans admin healthcare AND the interest expense on that debt. Nice playground! Expensive!
You can't blame the neighbors for being upset. No one want a house that looks like shit on their street.
Lawns look like shit to me. So do idiotic neighbors who can't keep their noses out of others' affairs. I am thrilled to live next to a wrecking yard. It keeps my taxes really low and permits me to scavenge an odd piece of metal or two to patch my own disintegrating trailer together. If I lived next to you Cindyh dear, I would find out what you hate most and display it proudly on the mostly bare, weed-covered dirt that is NOT my lawn. Feel free to be a pretentious female canine in your own space. My space is my property free and clear, to decorate with anything I like. If that is old toilets with tumbleweeds planted in the bowls, or headless department store mannequins painted purple and arranged in suggestive poses, there is NOTHING anyone can do about it, and this is the way it should be.
That's a very sad statement to make. I didn't now that Nature looks like shit. For me it is a pretty sight. I personally think nature is very beautiful if you let it go it's way. Actually there some people on this world, living in cities, who actually pay money to travel to place that has such thing as a nature to see in the first place. Human twisted logic, I must say. The most beautiful community housing I ever have seen was in the movie "Lord of the Rings", the Hobbits.
We should all live like this!
I support mowing and mowing only if other nearby homes are keeping lawns. Mowing will take down ragweed and other pollen producers that cause allergies. Fertilization is unnecessary. Watering is optional and should be prohibited in areas where water shortages occur. Weed killers should be discouraged. But mowing--especially with an electric mower or a push mower--is not asking too much.
If we could grow pot instead...
Also, read Masanobu Fukuoka's "Natural Farming".
As you can tell from some of the comments here, many people still can't understand what could possibly be wrong with mowing. Never mind that plants naturally grow and remain healthy, that people have lived healthily among naturally growing plants for millenia, and that mowing is a waste of time and energy. And it is amusing to hear so many "property rights" and "private property" advocates being actively hostile to people doing something as healthy with their private property as ceasing to mow. Environment and ecology-minded people have been trying to start a movement against lawns for well over 30 years, since the 70s. At first, in the 70s, it looked like it might actually pick up steam and gain some converts, what with the environmental enlightenment and back-to-the-land ethos of that era. At that time, many people still had living relatives who had lived in more rural environments, in forests and meadows, and they may have themselves grown up playing out in nature. Not mowing again looked like it might catch on in the early 90s, when native plants were getting a lot of press. But the increasingly right-wing tilt of both Canada and the US seems to have nipped any possibility of a "movement" around this issue in the bud. Oh, there are still good people trying to do the right thing, but the attacks seem to be getting fiercer and people's environmental knowledge seems to be diminishing, especially when it comes to what's natural. By the way, one of the best books on this issue is Sally and Andy Wasowski's "Requiem For a Lawnmower".
Yes, some people, like drosera, certainly are interpreting personal choice by one as attempts to dictate to all. A huge reason for conformity is that in an unhealthy society intolerant of uncertainty, difference, independence, interdependence and much more, any difference is perceived as criticism, and it is assumed criticism is followed by prohibition and prohibition is accompanied by punishment. We should all grow up. We are not 4 anymore and our parents do not have control of us. Therapy is a good way to realize that.
The people didn't choose lawns. The people didn't choose tasteless carrots. The people didn't choose 90% of what they consume. The people are like cattle in stalls. They eat what they get. This is the feature of the consumer culture that even the "progressive" press has failed to acknowledge. The elites want to choose for the people. That is the elite network. Anyone can join the network of course, if you play by the rules. The rest will take the lawns and the lawn tractors, things that ensure they will be detached from nature, for better attachment to the elite establishment, the system of private property, resource competition, and ultimately global dominance. It's the brilliant design of empire.
Entirely true. Only G-d knows (or maybe not) how much of what we are forced to suffer through in our lives was decided by one or two people in various settings decades ago. There could be thousands of instances like that Supreme Court clerk writing that the railroads were persons, and now we're stuck with corporations asserting their 'citizenship'.
For me the breakthough came when I realized that since I was neither cattle, sheep, nor goat, that a lawn was a waste of perfectly good land that could be growing the food that I as a human eat. Ditto for fruit bushes or trees instead of ornamental shrubs.
Poet
Interesting range of opinions here!
There is a new movement of landscape people (at least in New England) that is championing an organic approach to home landscapes. Grass areas are minimized, trees and shrubs, vegetable gardens and meadowland are all parts of the new regime. It is very much a part of the Green wave that we are experiencing with LocaVores and Farmers'Markets, et cetera. Very encouraging.
I followed a TruGreenChemLawn truck (custom designed for the company) up one of the rural roads here and noticed that every time it hit a bump, some kind of powdered or granular material fell out onto the road. It happened that most of the bumps were culverts where the streams crossed under the road, so the trucks were delivering whatever chemical it was, fertilizer or herbicide/pesticide, right to every stream it crossed.
In CT, we get almost as much annual rainfall as the PacNorWest, only not a little every day, we get deluge followed by drought, so water absorbtion/retention is crucial here. Well designed landscapes with the right surfaces and vegetation are key to this.
When I lived in LA, I was amazed at the profligate waste of water to keep things green. Although, 80% of the water use in CA is agricultural, that final 20% could be pared down and during drought emergencies, it does reduce slightly, but I always thought that SoCal would be perfect for Chia houses. All that stucco makes perfect niches for the seeds and the late-night-and-early-morning clouds and fog (seemed like half the year) would keep them growing. The effect would be a cooler city, cleaner air, lower carbon footprint.
But what would the neighbors say?
"The central irony of suburbia is that we give the streets names like Meadow Grove and Orchard Drive while ensuring that all traces of meadows and orchards are erased. The appearance of an actual meadow is an act of rebellion."
<~ Not to mention the fact that we label strip malls with nothing but blacktop parking lots and concrete structures "Green Acres," "Pinewood" and "Willowbrook." Our tendency as creatures of the earth to venerate our natural settings is obvious with our naming practices. We WANT the vistas and the peace that comes with the natural world... but we have self-inflicted nature deficit disorder. We have the power to free ourselves, and it's so simple- food, not lawns! :-)
It is, like it always is, all about the pressure to conform. Another in the fine line of byproducts brought to you by those with an authoritarian frame of mind.
When my father moved to Sparks, Nevada he had to decide what type of garden he wanted in the front of his new house. This new housing development offered little in garden options except for deciding what types of trees you wanted and where, amidst a large front lawn. Sparks runs right up against Reno and this is high desert; cold in winter, some snow, and little rain the rest of the year. It's an area with water shortage issues yet building is still going on to this day. I convinced him (the son with the degree in environmental studies and planning) that any lawn would be unwise. Lots of water, chemicals, and time were things I don't believe he wanted to invest as part of his retirement. The developers weren't to keen on his changes which really meant anything but lawn. He had to argue with them and used some data I sent him to eventually arrive at a garden with a small area of lawn in the center surrounding by various trees, plants and shrubs.
Of course NOW the neighbors see the wisdom of his "bucking" of the system. My dad often reflects on this series of events when he sees his neighbors outside on a hot day toiling over their status symbols. He still has about a 15x15 plot of lawn which only takes about 10 minutes to mow with his push mower.
“The artifice of suburban lawns requires a considerable investment of resources -- an investment in something that has mainly aesthetic value”
I’d say it has anything BUT aesthetic value, but that’s just my opinion. I’d say it has anti-aesthetic value, it has the value of making statements about social and ecological relationship—that the fatherly denizen of the house behind the geometry submits to the dominant paradigm of dominance. He is willing to subjugate himself to the group mores, agrees with the subjugation of Nature, (which is unconsciously seen as feminine and therefore also signals the dominance of patriarchy, patriotism, and paternalism. )
How can one “own” land? If you understand biology you know we don’t even “own” most of the cells in our bodies, or most of the parts of the cells that are “ours”.* The very valuelessness of front yard lawn space signifies that the “owner” of the land devalues not only Nature but his own nature, and physicality itself, and thus will not be distracted by any notion of inner wisdom or self-feeling empathic response to other beings, which would interfere with his acceptance of his and everyone else’s place in the mechanized hierarchical bodymind attitude that is protection against uncomfortable awareness.
Besides destroying the suburbs, a very expensive, energy and carbon-intensive solution that might be better done very slowly and deliberately, another alternative might be to permaculture them. Meadows are great; edible forest gardens are great, too. Lawns with community-owned lawn-mowers are another way to go—living mowers, that is: dairy-, meat- and wool-producing sheep, or egg-, meat- and down-producing geese and ducks.
“not one neighbor ever considered their lawn proof of their status/worth.” frank1569 July 9th, 2009 3:00 pm
The fact that people are unaware of their motivations for something only proves that they are unaware, not that the motivations aren’t there. Most things are multi-determined, meaning only things that have multiple causes actually happen. Besides the abiotic/biophobic nature of the lawn it is also a reminder of the place our species lived during adolescence. It’s a bonsai savannah that is comforting in many ways—we can see predators coming a long way off, get into the trees (or house) before they get there; there’s the promise of food, (theoretical/illusory, in most modern cases, collectively unconsciously remembered but twisted and transmogrified by other needs into relative abioticism), areas of sun and shade we can, like lizards, adjust our comfort level with, and the diversity of edge effects, (again, theoretical and transformed). I’m sure there are other motivations for lawns. Discovering them and supplanting them with stronger motivations both psychological and “practical” (as if psychology weren’t the most practical knowledge of all!) is the first step toward renewing and saving civilization.
*See Lewis Thomas, Lives of a Cell, and Lynn Margulies, Symbiotic Planet
Try: food not lawns: How to Turn Your Yard into a Garden and Your Neighborhood into a Community by H.C Flores,
Forest Gardening by Robert Hart,
and Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway. See permaculture.org and do a search for permaculture