Our Love Affair with Lawns
the environment, chemicals are the sinister and little-recognized partners of radiation in changing the very nature of the world - the very nature of life." (Silent Spring, pp.5-6)
But, in our inertia, out of a sense that "this is what is done, and what everyone is doing" we never think to challenge the status quo. We continue to try to control nature instead of working with it because that's what everyone does. And in the end, we all lose.
To keep our lawns respectable we sacrifice individual self-expression for a bland uniformity. Oh, we may put out a pink flamingo or two to set our yards apart from those of the neighbors (this defeating the democratic purpose of the lawn.) Or we may tolerate the flamingos and gnomes decorating the neighbor's yard, viewing them as a misguided attempt to personalize the common green space of the neighborhood. Individuality is apparently good, as long as it isn't carried too far.
And what is meant by "too far"? Not the putting non-natural materials like plastic or concrete ornaments around, but, sadly, the planting of natural and native plants - the ones that actually grow and thrive without a lot of pampering and pesticides. Because to most of us, those native and natural plants look a whole lot like what we've been used to calling weeds. Weeds are considered aliens in the manicured and unnatural landscape most of us maintain - but like the early settlers and the American Indian, it is actually the lawn that is the interloper. The native plants that we call weeds are the displaced citizens.
Nevertheless, those who are too much the individualist - those who try to garden in a way that echoes the balance of nature are the victims not only of neighborhood complaints (the taller plantings destroy the unbroken vista of green) but of weed laws, often wrongly applied by enforcement officials who wouldn't know a rose from a dandelion. Not that dandelions aren't beneficial in many ways. They simply go against the man-made law that says lawns shall be free of foreign (and native) invaders.
Perhaps it's time to re-examine our priorities, to rethink our ideas of freedom and democracy, to re-evaluate exactly what constitutes a status symbol. Perhaps the real status symbol of today should be the yard that gets back to the basics. The real responsibility for all of us is in making sure that the laws of man
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