Revisiting Turf Terror Twenty Years Later, 32
The Prelude
Lawn care is a very old tradition and may represent the second best con we humans have thought up.
I mention this because it’s May in America; the lawn is the focus in springtime and all that it represents to so many Americans. The constant din of lawnmowers, weed whackers, hedge trimmers is pervasive, along with the sweet smell of gasoline. Damn the cost!
Accompanying the “tools” of war are the chemical trucks patrolling the streets of the nation, in cities, suburbs and even in rural America, searching for any sign of improper or unacceptable lawn maintenance.
The word “lawn” makes its first official appearance in the United States in the third decade of the eighteenth century. The lawn started in France and in England in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century. It referred to grass near the house (house at that time alluded to a palace or a chateau) that was mowed, not be a lawnmower of course.
A few wealthy Americans learned of these European lawns. In fact, some of the Founding Fathers like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson began experimenting with laws, following European guidelines. The lawn, however, did not become a common word in America until after the Civil War.
Renewing Old Friendships
A few months ago I moved into a small, older house in an area of the city that includes a combination of single-family homes, condominiums and apartments of one kind or another. As some sections of the area where I live include newly built housing, the requisite patch of “perfect” grass, generally of a certain height and devoid of insects and plant life, surround the single-family home or the often times monotonous landscape design for the condo or the apartment but, nevertheless, assures one and all that the neighborhood is as it should be. The ideal remains intact … and most likely can be reproduced quickly and efficiently just about anywhere.
I first took an interest in natural gardening and native plants some 20 years ago, received hysterical complaints from neighbors while creating and experimenting with my own natural garden, and ultimately ended up in municipal court being fined for violating city “weed” statutes that had probably been on the books since the days of Dwight Eisenhower’s first inauguration. Along the way I wrote several articles, a few of which were published in the Kansas City Star.
A lot has changed—for the better I believe—over the past twenty years regarding “drug-addicted lawns,” defining more clearly and accurately the term noxious weed and creating statutes that reflect the 21st century and natural landscaping.
But too much still remains the same, especially as the shadow of climate change is no longer some abstract, academic issue “we might” take a look at. It’s arrived whether or not we choose to take that look and has little regard for the well manicured lawn.
Why It Matters
Quite by chance I recently watched My Garden of a Thousand Bees on my local PBS station, a wonderful diversion in our current world of madness and human lunacy. Martin Dohrn, a wildlife photographer from the UK, forced to remain at home during the pandemic two years ago, decided to make a film on bees in his small backyard in Bristol, England in the spring and summer of 2020.
He ended up identifying some 30 species of bees in this one small garden, which he had left wild and natural and full of “weeds.” As Martin Dohrn discovered, there was so much diversity in one small area and, as he states, “bees are pollinating the fabric of life.”
Bees pollinate something like three-quarters of our fruit, vegetables and the nuts we eat. But today half of bee pollinators have gone extinct across the planet. In our backyards alone, especially in springtime, just letting yards grow or at least reducing the number of times we mow the grass will increase the available food for pollinators of all kinds. Native flowers can bloom and provide pollinators with an early forage.
The Tale of the Grift
Somewhere west of Laramie there’s a broncho-busting, steer-roping girl who knows what I’m talking about. This is the first sentence of the now famous 173-word advertisement for the Jordan Motor Car Company that appeared in the 1920s. The age of modern advertising began in this decade. Anything could be sold to the public these modern alchemists told their clients … and they were mostly right.
What was the best con of the twentieth century? My vote goes to the worldwide diamond trade. Debeers and friends, who consolidated the markets in the late nineteenth century, secured a monopoly of truly remarkable proportions. Who in the world today doesn’t know that a diamond is forever and is also a girl’s best friend.
The “grass” trade in the United States may not be in the same league as the diamond monopoly, nor did it deliberately start out in its early days to convince all Americans that a weed-free, dark green lawn, of a certain height and texture was a sign of integrity and character; nevertheless, the industry eventually understood, at least by the late 1940s, there was a lot of money to be made getting people to believe in that one “correct” way. They succeeded beyond anyone’s expectations.
The 1920s proved to be a sparkling new era for American lawns and all it represented. The wealthy created gardens on large estates from the east coast to the west coast. The popularity of golf took off in the 1920s. As more and more Americans started playing the game, it wasn’t long before a few perceptive businesses and advertisers started encouraging homeowners to create that golf course look with their own lawns. The Depression and World War II slowed things down but only momentarily.
The Grift Established
In the 1950s the American lawn arrived. The Garden Club of America, the United States Golf Association, as well as the U.S. Department of Agriculture exerted considerable sway over standards and convinced a lot of Americans they knew what was best.
In How to Landscape Your Grounds, published in 1950, wealthier Americans were told, “It is inexplicable why we have so many heterogeneous, unattractive and commonplace properties otherwise refined and cultured.” Later in the same book we learn that, “those in the lower and medium income groups,” want the same refinement as the upper crust.
This was also the period when the U.S. was in the “cold” war with the Soviet Union. We had to be vigilant—toward the communists as well as our grass. Advertisements were full of words like never surrender … sure-to-kill ingredients … take up arms … and slaughter by chemical warfare. Famous golfers like Sam Snead helped advertise the new power lawnmowers. “Want a lawn that fairway-smooth?” Sammy asked us. “Get a Toro.”
The chemical companies had been kept busy during the war developing various compounds and mixtures in the fight against fascism. What they had discovered and developed during wartime, they were determined to market during peacetime.
Chemicals Are Forever
A “new” series of summer insecticides appeared in the 1950s. They included DDT, DDD, BHC as well as chlordane, aldrin and dieldrin. Some of the phosophates included parathion, diazinon and metacide. The list went on and on. Some “experts” even talked about the future for curing plant disease might be chemotherapy. Cancer patients were apparently not the only ones with some hope now.
One of my more interesting jobs as a teenager was spraying lawns with assorted chemicals along Connecticut’s “gold coast.” I had no real idea exactly what I was putting on these expensive lawns but I followed instructions and knew what ingredients to mix together based on what needed to be killed and destroyed. I did my duty.
Lawn care people recommended products that had been developed by military chemical warfare specialists—as a weapon against crabgrass. Chlordane was initially thought to be the most effective herbicide. Then came potassium cyanate, followed by lead arsenate and ammonium sulfate. One chemical company came out with a product that was advertised as the ultimate in the war against broad-leaved weeds, the now infamous 2,4-D. Some fifteen years later this became the main ingredient in the defoliant Agent Orange used in Vietnam. Yes, chemicals are forever.
What a glorious time! Farmers were spraying crops with all these modern chemicals, wherever and whenever they could. Don’t worry. Be happy. Trust us. Homeowners put down new lawns, poured on water, fertilizer and lime. We mowed the lawns, not letting the grass grow more than a few inches. Then we added chemicals to kill “weeds,” insects and those damn rodents. We rested a while. Then we started all over again and again, and again. A drug-addicted landscape rapidly spread across America. Don’t worry, Be happy.
Only the End of the Beginning
Now there was the deliberate promotion of an unnatural aesthetic conformity, which over time covered millions of acres requiring billions of dollars in equipment, chemicals and upkeep. A nice lawn was, of course, a sign of substance and gravitas.
We believed every word of this artificial, and ultimately harmful, dreamscape. But of course we had earned the right to sit in our lawnchair on our perfect lawn with a few friends, sip a gin and tonic or a cold beer and possibly light up a relaxing cigarette, just as Madison Avenue advised.
If you haven’t already guessed, we now had a proven template for so much more in a, er, rugged nation of individualists and free thinkers. Hm-m?
Next post June 5