The Truth about the Lawn Care Cult
In the wake of WWII came the rapid construction of suburbia
americana, bringing with it the rational European
decorum of the "lawn:" broad expanses of monoculture
grass maintained by mowing, weeding and above all, chemicals.
Lots of chemicals. The overt purpose was to create a soft,
cushiony surface upon which frolicking children might
not harm themselves. The manicured lawn also assured that
one did not lose the croquet ball (or golf ball). Other
benefits included eliminating hiding places for small
animals, dead bodies, criminals, mischievous children
and junk. It was the best in outdoor cleanliness and safety.
A well-kept lawn was a sort of carpet for the outside
of the home, extending the clean, controlled environment
of the home to the property lines and curb.
The marketing of chemical aids, combustion motor mowers
without emissions controls and a myriad of lawn care implements
fueled an amazing, unspoken competition between neighboring
bourgeois males to make their contribution toward converting
the neighborhood into an idyllic golf course with rambler
homes replicating themselves across the landscape.
Success in such a transformation signaled higher raising
property values (set by other devotees of Ortho and Lawn
Boy). It also meant that most perennial flowers
were considered weeds, while annual flowers became the
norm. Not surprising since annuals die back during
the winter, don't spread into the yard, and are usually
less than a foot high, thus blending well with the close-coiffed
look of a manicured lawn.
As to whether or not any of this was planned, I am unsure
and don't really care. The dark shadow of this cult includes
a long list of serious problems including:
1) The majority of the world's water is used for artificial
irrigation. The majority of that is used for the cultivation
of grass lawns. There are golf courses in the desert Southwest
of the USA and even in Saudi Arabia. These freakish
amusement parks dot the deserts, jungles, mountains and
plains of the world now, sucking up enormous amounts of
water. Add to that the irrigation of food crops,
and you can see that the majority of our water is being
poured into the earth where it washes through layers of
petroleum based fertilizers, hormonal herbicides and insecticides
based on formulas used by the military as nerve gas.
"In the last 40 years, the use of water per capita
has tripled. The largest water users are the US, China,
India, and the countries of the old Soviet Union. Irrigation
is a large global water use. 63 percent of the water
withdrawn is used for irrigation. In the Western U.S.,
85 percent of the water is consumed by irrigation (including
lawn watering). Irrigation to grow forage crops accounts
for 50 percent of that use. Irrigation water in the
west is heavily subsidized so users do not pay the direct
cost of water use. 23 percent of water is used in energy
production and industrial processing and about 7 percent
is used domestically.
Most of a person's daily water use is for watering
the lawn (108 gallons/day)."
(Source: Utah State University
agsci course web page [page no longer exists]. Their
dept. of Plants, Soil and Biometeorology contains lots
of info and links.
2) Vast amounts of land have been converted from wilderness
or regrowth woodlands and meadows into enormous expanses
of three inch grass, trees, piles of sand and lakes without
swamp growth. The arcane sport of golf is played on these
huge tracts of poisoned land, where people pretend that
swinging sticks at balls and riding around on electric
and gas powered carts is actually a form of exercise.
These golf courses have an enormous impact on wildlife
populations by eliminating food supplies and shelter for
a significant portion of the natural food chain.
3) Monoculture cultivation is the most rational approach
to grain production for humans, but the notion of growing
millions of acres of grass whose seeds are cut and discarded
is a waste of potential farmland. Intensively-controlled
zones of vegetation should be limited to the production
of resources more valuable than providing elitist playgrounds
that don't even contribute to physical fitness.
4) Pollution and even genetic damage have clearly been
traced to the chemical usage of the lawn care cult. Even
the farmers were swept up into the War on Weeds. Nitrate
levels in lawn runoff have turned lakes (whose wetland
shorlines were destroyed) into warm, stinking algae soups
devoid of desirable fish and incapable of purifying themselves
by natural means.
5) Gas-powered
lawnmowers produce enormous amounts of pollutants.
Their engines, lacking emissions controls, create more
greenhouse gases in a couple of hours than the average
automobile produces in a week. Leaf blowers and other
two stroke gas motors are even worse polluters. Manual
and electric mowers are a far more intelligent sollution
to lawn maintenence. Besides, if there is too much lawn
to mow with a push-mower and weed by hand, perhaps you
should consider letting the rest of your yard become a
prairie, meadow, woodland, or xeriscape.
6) Large lawns and golf courses represent an elitist
conspicuous consumption of resources and LAND at
the expense of those who lack the wealth to control and
dominate large pieces of land for such non-productive
purposes. Suburban sprawl is all the more sinister
in light of the fact that these bourgeois debt slaves
are cutting down forest and taking up farmland so they
can surround their overinflated pseudo-Victorian monstrosities
with three acres of chemically treated bluegrass and contrived
tree plantings. To top that off, these strange homes
with fifteen foot ceilings to waste heat are built with
more garage doors than windows so that a passerby might
make the assumption that these oversized homes were built
for cars instead of people. In the old days, a home
was built so that the front door beckoned the visitors
to walk up to the porch and into the home. The garage
was hidden around back, or it was a small attachment to
one end of the structure. Now you get the feeling
that you are supposed to drive up to the door and honk
your horn so that you can enter the shuttle bay, enter
a lift tube and be transported to the upper decks where
the humans live. It's a world built around automobiles,
speedboats and golf. They live in areas where
water must be pumped from wells or reservoirs. They
are subject to shortages and restrictions, yet they waste
water on their ridiculous lawns instead of letting nature
do her own work.
I leave you to decide for yourself what to do about this
problem. Sandy and I have decided to turn our urban yard
into a haven of biodiversity, not play golf and post this
web page. Our water comes from the boundless Mississippi,
so we never have shortages here. We do use irrigation
water to keep our garden, but at least 90% of our garden
is ornamental, providing food for birds and insects.
It's amazing what the increase in botanical diversity
in our neighborhood has done in terms of bird and insect
populations in the last five to ten years. In spite
of being in the heart of a major city, we are now attracting
unusual songbirds and new species of insects. We
feel that turning our little yard into a haven for 170
different species of plants is a valid justification for
our water consumption. We also capture rain water
in barrels so as to minimize our municipal water usage.
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