That’s the question many homeowners face as their dreams of the perfect lawn take a beating—whether it’s inflation that pushes overpriced lawn care options out of reach, or Drought leads to a lack of water.
Increasingly, many are turning on the spreader for the paint can, by choice A report in the Wall Street Journalfor shades of green with names like “Fairway” and “Perennial Rye.”
Where does this yin come from to transform the exterior of a home into a green, textured carpet?
A few years ago, I decided to investigate and the result was my book “The American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn. “
What I found is that prairies stretch far back in American history. Former presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had lawns, but they weren’t perfect greens. It turns out that the perfect lawn ideal—weed-free monocultures—is a recent phenomenon.
Levittown’s imperfect lawns
Its beginnings can be largely traced back to the post-World War II era when suburban developments were as iconic Levittown, New Yorkwas its beginning.
Levittown was the brainchild of the Levitt family, who viewed landscape—a word that only entered the English language in the 1930s—as a form of “neighborhood stability, or a way to enhance property values. Thus the Levits, who built 17,000 homes between 1947 and 1951, insisted that the homeowners mow the yard once a week between April and November and included the narrowing in the covenants accompanying their businesses.
But the Levitts have only obsessed with the lawn so far. “I don’t believe in being a slave to the grass,” Abraham Levitt Books. Clover for him was as “nice” as grass.
Engineering perfection
All of this is to say that searching for wholegrass wasn’t natural. It had to be designed, and one of the biggest influencers in that regard was the Scotts Company of Marysville, Ohio, which took agricultural chemicals and created concoctions that homeowners could spread over their yards.
Equivalents like Scotts have one great advantage: The grass is not native to North AmericaAnd cultivating it on the continent is, for the most part, an uphill ecological battle. Thus, the homeowners needed a lot of help in striving for perfection.
But the first Scotts had to help bring the ideal lawn into the American imagination. Scotts was able to take advantage Postwar trends in brightly colored consumer products. From yellow pants to blue, colorful products became status symbols and a sign that the consumer had rejected the drab black-and-white world of urban life and its changing colors—which, of course, included the vibrant hues of grass green.
Architectural trends also helped solidify the perfect lawn aesthetic. a Blur indoor and outdoor space It took place in the post-war era where patios and sliding glass doors invited homeowners to treat the patio as an extension of their family room. What better way to achieve a comfortable outdoor living space than with a patio rug in a nice green area.
In 1948, the perfect lawn took a giant step forward when the Scotts Company began selling its “weed and feed” lawn care product, which allowed homeowners to simultaneously weed and fertilize.
Evolution was probably one of the worst things to ever happen, ecologically speaking, in the American arena. Now the homeowners are spreading toxic 2,4-D herbicides – which have been published ever since Linked to cancer, reproductive harm, and neurological impairment —in their lawns of course, whether or not they have a problem with weeds.
Selective herbicides such as 2,4-D killed broad-leaved “weeds” like clover and left weeds intact. alfalfa and bluegrass, both desirable herbaceous species, I evolved togetherThe former capture nitrogen from the air and add it to the soil as a fertilizer. Its elimination sent homeowners back to the store for more synthetic fertilizer to make up the shortfall.
This was bad news for homeowners, but a good business model for those companies selling lawn care products that, on the one hand, crippled homeowners by killing alfalfa, and on the other, sold them more chemical inputs to recreate what they could have. It happened naturally.
The “whole” grass has come of age.
Grass drawing meaning
By the early 1960s, homeowners were already looking for ways to achieve the perfect lawn on the cheap.
A 1964 article in Newsweek noted that green grass paint was being sold in 35 states. I opened the magazine Since a homeowner “needs a BS in chemistry to understand the dizzying variety of weed destroyers now fogging the market,” paint became an attractive alternative.
So the interest in drawing grass is not entirely new.
What is new, however, is that the recent interest in lawn painting takes place in a context in which a more pluralistic view of the yard has taken root.
People who are tired of corporate lawn care are turning back the clock and They sow their yards with alfalfaA drought-tolerant plant that provides nutrients to the lawn, to boot. And so the cloverweed is making a comeback, with videos on TikTok hashtag #cloverlawn It has 78 million views.
All together, the resurgence of lawn painting with the renewed interest in alfalfa meadows suggests that the ideal of an ideal, resource-intensive lawn is an environmental perception that the state may not be able to afford.