Further to the post below, Elizabeth Kolbert’s piece in The New Yorker last month examines American’s long and entrenched addiction to lawns. Did you know lawns aren’t actually “natural”?:
…the lawn today is nearly ubiquitous. Its spread has given rise to an entire industry, or, really, complex of industries—Americans spend an estimated forty billion dollars each year on grass—and to the academic discipline of turf management…. The lawn has become so much a part of the suburban landscape that it is difficult to see it as something that had to be invented.
And this:
Mowing turfgrass quite literally cuts off the option of sexual reproduction. From the gardener’s perspective, the result is a denser, thicker mat of green. From the grasses’ point of view, the result is a perpetual state of vegetable adolescence. With every successive trim, the plants are forcibly rejuvenated. In his anti-lawn essay “Why Mow?,” Michael Pollan puts it this way: “Lawns are nature purged of sex and death. No wonder Americans like them so much.” [Emphasis mine.]
Snap.
