Stilgoe's article on the American landscape, as well as Opal's blog post really got me thinking about what a lawn says about a person. We associate a beautifully manicured lawn with happiness and I don't think we completely consciously comprehend the reasons why. Well, take some time to think about it. If you have a lawn that means you can own property, suggesting status. The bigger it is, the more money it suggests you have to spend on land. If it's perfect that means you have extra time to tend to its every detail, meaning you don't work all the time to pay off your property or have to tend to other more pressing tasks in your life. By matching the lawn of the neighbors you show you fit perfectly into the society you've chosen to live in. I wonder if lawns are actually beautiful, or if we've just been conditioned to believe so.
If you look at a city, Chicago for example, you can see how the desire for a lawn comes into play. The upper class neighbordhoods have sweeping lawns, hugging their wrap around porches all of which is perched on top of a tree lined street. Middle class neighborhood have pleasantly sized lawns. Lower class neighborhoods have apartments with people stacked on top of each other, with little to no lawn space for every person in that building. Of course this is only a general pattern, as there are expensive apartment buildings and ways to get cheap land, but it symbolizes the value we put on a square of plant.
Plus I really don't think lawns are pretty. I'd much rather see a patch of legitimate prairie grass or even a zen rock garden than that green that's inefficient at fixing carbon and steals water.
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