Oliver Milman writing for Noema on the cult of the American lawn:
“The American lawn is a thing, and it is American, deeply American,” Paul Robbins, an expert in environmental studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the author of the book “Lawn People,” told me. “There becomes a kind of local social pressure to make sure you’re not letting down the neighborhood — you’re keeping up the property values. Those then become morally normative.”
This devotion has turned the U.S. into the undisputed global superpower of lawns. Around 40 million acres of lawn, an area almost as large as the state of Georgia, carpets the nation. Lawn grass occupies more area than corn. Each year, enough water to fill Chesapeake Bay is hurled collectively onto American lawns, along with more than 80 million pounds of pesticides, in order to maintain the sanitized, carpet-like turf. In aggregate, this vast expanse of manicured grass rivals the area of America’s celebrated national parks.
The typical suburban lawn is zealously mown, raked and bombarded with chemicals. Flowering plants that would typically appear in an untended meadow are sparse. For insects, reptiles, birds and many other creatures, these places are hostile no-go zones. Closely cut grass is neither habitat nor food for most insects.
Most of the houses around us are zealously mowed and bombarded with chemicals by landscaping companies, but not ours. We’ve surrendered to the dandelions, Creeping Charlie, wild violets, burdock, and other weeds because we simply don’t have the time or energy to fight them, nor the desire to use pesticides. Luckily our neighborhood isn’t fancy enough for that to matter much (though shoutout to the empty-nester two doors down who dotes on his pristine, carpet-like turf).
Would I love my lawn and garden areas to be as pristine as his? Absolutely. But the cosmetic appeal is rather fleeting compared to the costs in time, money, wasteful water use, and/or chemical exposure. I’d also love to transform at least part of our sizable lawn into a biodiverse garden, but that too takes an immense amount of work and dedication that we just don’t have in this time of life. So a weedy, grassy yard it is!
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