Butterfly the Lawn

Expat · May 13, 2015

I like this title because I sort-of mean it literally.

It seems to me that monocultured grass lawns are historically the product of fashion and difficulty of maintenance, a feat that lets you show off to your neighbors. The golden age of gardens occurred at the same time as the rise of the lawn (17th/18th century) and I wonder if this even more intensive land use could have significantly replaced lawns (thus attracting those pesky butterflies.) Obviously grazing land isn't going anywhere, and as that's the true predecessor of the ornamental lawn, perhaps this wouldn't work. But could fashion lead folks away from manicured lawns? Any specific POD ideas?

A second POD I'm considering is around the invention of the US suburbs, in which Frederick Olmstead played a leading role. What if he'd emphasized the wildgrass/prairie/meadow aspect of the American landscape in his early planned neighborhoods? As a matter of fashion, wild flower lawns (still consisting of grasses, but requiring much less maintenance) could have become the norm in the US.

Thoughts?

Expat · May 14, 2015

Okay, it's not an exciting topic, and most of the environmentally-minded are off in post-19th century reading the latest rail wank (I'm off to join them now!) But I'll give it one bump, see if anybody bites.

Whanztastic · May 14, 2015

I'm guessing but does this also stem from a defensive idea - you don't want long grasses around your castle/home so you can see if people are sneaking up on you?

Expat · May 14, 2015

Possibly! Either that or the closest land being the land your herd is most likely to chew on, or a bit of both. Whatever the medieval impulse, I don't think you can get rid of it, and I don't think you need to. It's the switch from practicality to aesthetics in the 17th century that I'm wondering about.

mrmandias · May 14, 2015

Clipped or grazed grass is good for leisure games like croquet, badminton, lawn bowling, lawn darts, etc. Which are games that allow you to be outside, don't require special clothing, don't get you very sweaty, and are suitable for mixed company. So I think the 'natural prairie' grasses idea would be a hard sell unless you can somehow get rid of the leisure revolution, which would also be a hard sell.

Driftless · May 14, 2015

A couple of questions/comments:

Is some of the manicured lawn idea come from a psychological need for percieved order, particularly in an otherwise chaotic world? It also becomes a mark of wealth, in that you can commit valuable resources to maintain something that has little visible utility. There's also an element of emphasizing social conformity that goes with the suburban idea. Subtle (or not so subtle) hints to "shape up", "fit-in" with an idealized conformist format

Native plants certainly vary from region to region in size, shape, water & sunlight need, and temperature tolerance. Some of those plants may require fire - or flood - for good long term health. For example, Tall grass prairie might be a bit difficult to manage as a lawn(it needs to be burnt off from time-to-time), but you probably could find some shorter plants from that biome that would work.

(You might like my lawn better than some... It's an un-designed mix of lawn grasses, with a substantial cover of Wisconsin native Violets, Creeping Charlie, not so native - but low maintenance Ajuga ground cover, and a mish-mash of wild flower & conventional perennial gardens. Plus some smaller rasied beds for Vegies & culinary herbs.

I got there by not weed treating the yard when my kids were younger and played continually on the yard and in the trees, and we chose not to expose them to the chemical fertilizers/weed killers. The Violets, Creeping Charlie et al got there on their own.)

Expat · May 14, 2015

mrmandias said:
Clipped or grazed grass is good for leisure games like croquet, badminton, lawn bowling, lawn darts, etc. Which are games that allow you to be outside, don't require special clothing, don't get you very sweaty, and are suitable for mixed company. So I think the 'natural prairie' grasses idea would be a hard sell unless you can somehow get rid of the leisure revolution, which would also be a hard sell.

Tennis developed a specialized space- the court- very early on. Would it be unreasonable to do the same for other games? All we really need to do is change the use of space directly around the great manors in order to set a fashionable trend. Closely-mowed spaces for specific leisure activities (rather than general) don't have to disappear.

zoomar · May 14, 2015

I come from in semi-arid Oklahoma, where nicely trimmed, fertilized, mowed, watered, monoculture grass lawns are the expected thing and in fact legally mandated in in many areas. I myself live in the "country" where it's OK to just mow and trim whatever comes up naturally...all 3 acres of it.

I always thought of Britain as a center of lawn-culture, but when I spent several weeks at Cambridge about 15 years ago, I was surprised to see that British lawn-care was pretty haphazard. Mowing on the various campus areas was (by anal-compulsive mid-American standards) sloppy and incomplete, weeds were common, and my fantasy of England as a place where anyone could play croquet anywhere was shot down. Later, I discovered from some northern Brits that they called their back yard a "garden" even where it had grass.

For what its worth, I don't think Olmstead or other turn of the century landscape architects had too much to do with respect to the American fascination with ordered lawns, divided into square flower beds along the house and perfectly manicured grass elsewhere. I think it is largely a post-WW2 product associated with the rise of suburbia, greater wealth, and the notion that every American deserved his own little Versailles.

Expat · May 14, 2015

Driftless said:
A couple of questions/comments:

Is some of the manicured lawn idea come from a psychological need for percieved order, particularly in an otherwise chaotic world? It also becomes a mark of wealth, in that you can commit valuable resources to maintain something that has little visible utility. There's also an element of emphasizing social conformity that goes with the suburban idea. Subtle (or not so subtle) hints to "shape up", "fit-in" with an idealized conformist format

Native plants certainly vary from region to region in size, shape, water & sunlight need, and temperature tolerance. Some of those plants may require fire - or flood - for good long term health. For example, Tall grass prairie might be a bit difficult to manage as a lawn(it needs to be burnt off from time-to-time), but you probably could find some shorter plants from that biome that would work.

(You might like my lawn better than some... It's an un-designed mix of lawn grasses, with a substantial cover of Wisconsin native Violets, Creeping Charlie, not so native - but low maintenance Ajuga ground cover, and a mish-mash of wild flower & conventional perennial gardens. Plus some smaller rasied beds for Vegies & culinary herbs.

I got there by not weed treating the yard when my kids were younger and played continually on the yard and in the trees, and we chose not to expose them to the chemical fertilizers/weed killers. The Violets, Creeping Charlie et al got there on their own.)

You might be right about the psychology, and historians certainly seem to agree with you on the showing-of-wealth. But there are other ways to order nature than bare grass lawns. An increase in ornamental garden coverage would certainly show off one's wealth. But I'm not quite willing to say that lawns represent an absolute psychological imperative in the sense that if society can have mowed, immature grass, society WILL have mowed, immature grass. An aesthetic revolution is possible. Imagine something akin to romanticism taking hold in the 17th century, where a safe facsimile of the moors are what people want all of a sudden. Just an idea.

And yes, I'm not suggesting a 'native plants' revolution, as such. We might be trying to get heather to grow in ridiculous places 200 years later, or British wildflowers, or something else rather than Bermuda grass or Kentucky blue. My second POD- the one centering around Olmstead- might get closer to that, but I still imagine there'd be a range of plants that taste would promote.

Your lawn sounds lovely! I hope it gives you a lot of pleasure. Just keep something down for the bees!

voss749 · May 14, 2015

Grass as monoculture in lawns only goes back to the 1940s before that it was quite common to mix clover in with grass seed.

mrmandias · May 14, 2015

voss749 said:
Grass as monoculture in lawns only goes back to the 1940s before that it was quite common to mix clover in with grass seed.

Correct. It was the advent of broadleaf herbicides that made clover mixes impractical.

mrmandias · May 14, 2015

Expat said:
Tennis developed a specialized space- the court- very early on. Would it be unreasonable to do the same for other games? All we really need to do is change the use of space directly around the great manors in order to set a fashionable trend. Closely-mowed spaces for specific leisure activities (rather than general) don't have to disappear.

Not impossible by any means, but there will be a pull to a multi-purpose green space. Easier and cheaper, especially when you are talking about gentry or upper-middle class people or eventually just middle-class people trying to ape their betters.
***
What role does nostalgia for rural life among an urbanizing population play in the move to having lawns, anybody know? My grandpa grew up rural on a farm. When he became a construction worker in the city he bought a place with an acre or so in the suburbs. So my dad grew up with a big lawn that my grandpa mowed to feed the clippings to their milk cow.

Sycamore · May 14, 2015

What about a royal edict being issued by an absolute monarch with extremely bad hayfever setting the precedent, in a manner akin to the way in which Swans got off the dinner plate?

Driftless · May 14, 2015

At risk of pushing the discussion into OT-Political chat, you do wonder if there had been an earlier move away from high maintainence lawns - some gardens too, how we would be dealing with situations like the 4 year drought in California - as well as many other places. For example: Kentucky Bluegrass maybe isn't the best choice for an area that is normally short of water to begin with. Even in environments where lawn grasses grow well, there's an awful lot of chemical fertilizers, soil treatmenst, herbicides, etc that pass through those lawns into the water table.

I only know of Olmsted's work in general terms, but his ideas of combining carefully selected native and non-native plants to shape perception of space and appearance seems to me to fit your idea. I'm not sure (one way or the other) how his theories connect with the other great gardener of the era - Gertrude Jeykell. Olmstead also used his influence and reputation to serve natural conservation efforts - an early environmentalist of sorts.

Expat · May 14, 2015

Sycamore said:
What about a royal edict being issued by an absolute monarch with extremely bad hayfever setting the precedent, in a manner akin to the way in which Swans got off the dinner plate?

This sounds like a lot of fun! Though one never knows when it comes to pre-modern diagnoses; did they even make the connection between particulates and sneezing?

Expat · May 14, 2015

mrmandias said:
Not impossible by any means, but there will be a pull to a multi-purpose green space. Easier and cheaper, especially when you are talking about gentry or upper-middle class people or eventually just middle-class people trying to ape their betters.

Right. The part you'd have to get them to ape is the uncut part. I think if you put the fashionable focus on that romantic heath-like appearance, people will fall in line.

Perhaps the void in playing-space could be filled by a new emphasis on shared civic green space. A new role for the commons, perhaps? Or just an earlier duty for the great houses of a neighborhood to provide an amenity for their tenants and neighbors in the form of cut grass fields?

Expat · May 14, 2015

Driftless said:
At risk of pushing the discussion into OT-Political chat, you do wonder if there had been an earlier move away from high maintainence lawns - some gardens too, how we would be dealing with situations like the 4 year drought in California - as well as many other places. For example: Kentucky Bluegrass maybe isn't the best choice for an area that is normally short of water to begin with. Even in environments where lawn grasses grow well, there's an awful lot of chemical fertilizers, soil treatmenst, herbicides, etc that pass through those lawns into the water table.

I only know of Olmsted's work in general terms, but his ideas of combining carefully selected native and non-native plants to shape perception of space and appearance seems to me to fit your idea. I'm not sure (one way or the other) how his theories connect with the other great gardener of the era - Gertrude Jeykell. Olmstead also used his influence and reputation to serve natural conservation efforts - an early environmentalist of sorts.

This (along with the bees) is what got me thinking about the idea in the first place.

I don't know of any thematic connection between Jekyll and Olmsted, either, though Olmsted seemed to be obsessed with over-engineering the apparently un-engineered.

Jekyll's spaces seem ordered on their face.

mrmandias · May 19, 2015

Expat said:
Right. The part you'd have to get them to ape is the uncut part. I think if you put the fashionable focus on that romantic heath-like appearance, people will fall in line.

Perhaps the void in playing-space could be filled by a new emphasis on shared civic green space. A new role for the commons, perhaps? Or just an earlier duty for the great houses of a neighborhood to provide an amenity for their tenants and neighbors in the form of cut grass fields?

That could work if you come up with some kinds of games that don't require a flat surface or much running around. Some kind of early, smaller version of frisbee golf, for instance.

Tanc49 · May 19, 2015

What about pre-eminence of French gardens?

There are lawns but there are less central to it than in the English gardens?

Sian · May 19, 2015

maybe a 17th century hype-train about Japanese/Chinese stone gardens (spearheaded by dutch traders or portugese missionaries) that just keeps growing and getting localized with local materials and plants? With allocated recreational areas being gravel courts, somewhere between Tennis clay courts and Boule courts in appearence