Lawn Care/Gardening

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Lawn Care/Gardening

Where the American settler had wilderness at his or her doorstep, the contemporary American has created the lawn, a buffer of pseudo-nature between the public and private domain. Tending this landscape ornament has grown into an American pastime and supports a multi-million-dollar industry. Its surrounding green turf defines the American home from those in most other nations. These lawns joined together create what some critics refer to as the "American Savannah," covering 25 million acres, an area slightly larger than Pennsylvania.

Despite its kitsch embellishments (such as pink flamingos and lawn orbs), the American lawn grows out of a serious tradition in landscape architecture. Andrew Jackson Downing and others who imported garden design and planning from Europe in the mid-1800s determined the green "setting" around homes to be majestic, utilitarian, and unique. The planting of grass defined the leisure household of the upper classes, who had more than enough land on which to situate a home. The grass thus became the background for landowners to incorporate more ornate garden designs.

From this point, the lawn and garden trend becomes entwined with growing suburbanization. As developers and designers in the early twentieth century tried to perfect a form of housing that was simple, cheap, yet dignified, the lawn became part of the basic landscape form of the American home. The design suggests changes in terms of attitudes toward the private and public self: often, the suburban design includes a front, communal green-space intended to enhance visual presentation of the home and a rear green-space for private playing and other activities. These tendencies became increasingly ubiquitous as the suburban home spreads itself throughout the United States.

Home building exploded from 1950 to the present, and even the most basic homes came to incorporate lawns, which have quickly become an indispensable part of American culture. For instance, when William Levitt perfected the minimalized version of the prefabricated home (of which thousands can be constructed in only a week) following World War II, a lawn remained integral to the design. While residents appreciate the green space's visual appeal, particularly in the suburban development, tending one's lawn or garden becomes the remnant of a fleeting human connection with nature. The geographer Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that the garden and lawn might be seen as the equivalent of a "pet." Other scholars view it as the American connection with the "pioneer spirit" of westward expansion through a continued proximity with nature—albeit a quite manufactured version of nature.

Whatever the motivation, lawn and garden care became a multi-million-dollar industry after the 1960s. With the growth of the middle class in the twentieth century, males often found themselves with leisure time that could be channeled to activities and hobbies such as tending the garden and lawn. These practices became aesthetically and socially connected to the growing popularity of golf and defined much of middle class male persona, such as that seen in television's Ward Cleaver or Tim "The Tool Man" Taylor. More recently, efforts have been made to simplify lawn care through the use of chemicals and "lawn management" companies. This shift to the "industrial lawn" has led some Americans to view this green space more as a burden than blessing.

In recent years, the image of the lawn has changed, as many Americans refuse to blindly adopt landscape forms not of their own choosing. This is particularly true in arid and semi-arid portions of the United States, in which lawns require a significant amount of limited water resources. Naturalist Michael Pollan speaks for many environmentalists when he refers to the lawn as "nature under culture's boot." Such sentiment, though, has not altered the American interest in maintaining a natural zone between home and society. Critics of the lawn have often turned to xeriscaping and other alterations that involve regionally native biota and no turf grass. Most have not adopted concrete, which shows that Americans place a unique importance on maintaining some kind of natural environment around their homes.

—Brian Black