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Front Yards: The tyranny of conformity

© Carol Wallace

MUSIC: Theme from Twilight Zone

ENTER: The enterprising American. The scene? The suburban American block in the 1950s. Enterprising American alights from bus, looks at the rows of identical houses and plays "eenie meenie miney-mo" then enters the winning house. Is served dinner without question. Has no need to ask the way to the bedroom, bathroom or obligatory TV. Everything is as expected, and as it is in every other home on the block. Home has become such a conformist thing that all houses are home; all neighborhoods are interchangeable.

I wish I could take credit for this scene, but I think The Twilight Zone did it years ago. The sad thing is, little has changed today. Rows of houses, as regular as a Monopoly tokens. Lawns, unbroken by anything but driveway entrances and the obligatory specimen tree. Mustaches of yews fronting all the porches. One tall conifer at the corner of each house. The object of this uniformity is to create a parklike vista of unblemished lawn to unify the neighborhood.

The very idea of planting a dooryard garden in unthinkable. Erecting a decorative fence and planting beds to frame the grass would be perceived as an act of hostility. Good fences do not make good neighbors when they pop up in the front yard. Gardens intrude on the unrelieved tranquillity of green. No matter that the fenced yard with its charming cottage garden is a thing of beauty. It ruins the vista. It shouts to the world the message that this lone maverick has rejected the norms of the community.

What the community demands is a perfect facade. Do as you wish in the back, but present a perfectly made-up face to the world so people will believe that in this neighborhood we are united by common values; in this neighborhood we live the American Dream.

But what is the American Dream? Land of the free, home of the brave — and yet most of us are too cowardly to attempt to use that freedom to create a front yard that reflects our personality and style.Should it require bravery to plant a wildflower? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — but if your happiness is in gardening, restrict it to the backyard. You have the liberty to garden — but not in plain sight. Feel free to dream, as long as it's the same dream your neighbors have.

Let me ask a simple question. Who owns the home? The neighbors? Or the homeowner? If you live in a planned community, perhaps you are stuck with sameness. But if you are paying diligently on a mortgage that signifies that this land is your land — then why aren't you able to plant it as you see fit? Why not a vegetable garden on the front lawn? What's so bad about a fence? And if gardening is a means of self-expression, which to many it most definitely is, then isn't restricting us to green lawn and yew hedges a violation of our First Amendment rights? And yet there are weed ordinances in many cities that do just that.

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