The Working Lawn

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A step beyond an expanse of green.

Our transgression?

Lawn care.

Every weekend finds many of us trudging reluctantly to the garage and fighting to start our reluctant, gas-powered rotary mower. Then we push the snarling little demon over wet, slippery grass, never minding the half-inch thick cutter blade whirling at 2500 rpm just inches from our tender toes. We plod back and forth to trim a fraction of top growth from the lawn-a monoculture of alien sod grass. Thus, we carefully tend this unnaturally uniform carpet of an immigrant plant species that evolved on the savannas and plains of the world to serve as nourishment for grazing animals.

This Kentucky Blue grass (Poa pratensis) immigrated to the New World via England from its origins in a cool, wet part of Europe or the Middle East. To stay green through our summer heat and dry spells, it needs twice-a-week soakings totaling 18 to 20 gallons per cubic feet each year. This is enough to fill a swimming pool, as Jennifer Bennett observes in her book Dry-Land Gardening. To thrive, our lawns also need doses of nitrogen-rich chemical fertilizers, broad-leafed herbicides (to eliminate competing vegetation) and broad-spectrum insecticides to get rid of unwanted insects (and, unfortunately, beneficial bugs as well).

All this work - and most of us hate doing it. Sure, we relish that first whiff of freshly cut grass, but after 20 minutes or so of shuffling along at mosquito-bait speed, most of us are bored silly. The discomfort factor is pretty high, too, when you consider summer heat, exhaust pollution and the ear-shattering din of the mower's engine.

Why do we do it? And how can we stop doing it?

Our lawns are rooted in the longoutdated Renaissance idea that man's moral duty on Earth is to improve on wild and chaotic nature. This is compounded by the uniquely American "Manifest Destiny" - the need to settle and civilize a wild and savage land. Perhaps we wish to recreate a small scale Western ranch, manicured like the set of a 1930s cowboy movie. Maybe we strive to emulate the great lawns and formal gardens of Europe's country estates from days of yore. We might also be following along blindly in the more modern context of suburban competition. For such a relatively modern home accessory, the lawn has acquired mythic status.

Today, however, the long-forecast but widely doubted limits on our supplies of petroleum and water have become realized: Witness the drought in once-lush southern Florida, the power shortages in southern California and natural gas price hikes nationwide. Being purely ornamental and resource-hungry, expansive residential lawns are no more consistent with a resource-conserving ethic than Lincoln Navigators or Chevy Suburbans.

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