The Vine

Here’s a great article from The New Yorker tracing the history of lawns as the centerpiece of American landscaping—from mid-19th century origins as an attempt to refine rural slovenliness, to the forty billion dollar industry of today.

As the author aptly notes, “The lawn has become so much of a part of the suburban landscape that it is difficult to see it as something that had to be invented.”

Over the past 150 years, well manicured lawns have come define our neighborliness and civility (read: our property values). Indeed, in many neighborhoods you would be cited and fined for not maintaining one.

The backdrop of the story is the small but growing (no pun intended) anti-lawn movement, whose proponents decry the volume of chemicals and water required to maintain an aesthetic, non-productive form of gardening. As opposed to, for example, edible landscaping.

Mind you, I’m not endorsing an anti-lawn agenda that would turn all of our yards into scrub and weeds (or, if you prefer, “low growing broad-leafed plants”). But with water shortages curtailing development in California and elsewhere—and with EPA estimates that nearly one-third of all residential water use goes into landscaping—it does call into question the sustainability of the existing model.