Home › News ›

The Aesthetic Of The Perfectly-Groomed Lawn

Posted by: Chris Steins

20 March 2006 - 11:00am

Environmental historian Ted Steinberg explains American's fascination with the perfect lawn.

"Why did the perfect-lawn aesthetic emerge in the 1950s? Because that was a time in the nation's economic history when — with Americans already awash in consumer goods such as refrigerators and washing machines — manufacturers longed for new ways of stimulating demand. The perfect lawn fueled postwar consumerism as homeowners repeatedly bought products in the elusive quest for an impeccable yard.

...Economic imperatives, color preferences and conformity are better explanations than genetics for the all-American lawn mania. Focusing on genes tempts us to accept as inevitable the roughly 75,000 Americans injured each year using lawnmowers or the groundwater contamination caused by lawn overfertilization. But, in fact, ecological history suggests that traveling back and forth across the yard with our spreaders is no more natural than the chemicals we are putting in the ground."

Full Story: Lawn mores
Source: The Los Angeles Times, March 18, 2006
Related links:
»

Comments

Comment viewing options

Select your preferred way to display the comments and click "Save settings" to activate your changes.

Quest for the perfect lawn

Submitted by Julie R. Black on Tue, 03/21/2006 - 13:04.

And in Clermont County, Ohio, a man killed a 15 year old for trespassing and messing up his lawn. Story is here.

Bookmark and Share
“
Most importantly, we should acknowledge that a consensus building event forms at one time around one cluster among many interacting issues and actions. Other efforts will and should emerge around clusters of other issues and actions.
”