Thorstein Veblen's The Theory of the Leisure Class [0] explains this best as a leftover modern desire by the gentry to emulate the nobility by engaging in conspicuous consumption and conspicuous leisure. (A massively inadequate summary of the argument, to be sure.) [1]
Veblen specifically talks in detail about the practice of maintaining manicured lawns. I read it thirty years ago, but remember it as being hilarious. He's one of my favorite Norwegians (admittedly a short list).
+1 from me because he's one of the few cases where his work is not only smart/educating in RL, but, as a bonus, he almost sounds like a fictional character, too good to be true.
When I first encountered him I thought to myself, "He sounds like somebody improvised up by Douglas Adams in HHGG. 'An apple fell from a tree. This was widely regarded as a bad move. In fact the most popular selling series of books on economics, by one Thorstein Veblen, in his The Theory of the Leisure Class, has pretty much confirmed this, though it has taken nearly a millenia for his proof to fully saturate and be accepted to date within the furthest reaches of the Galactic Empire, despite many incentives for readers such as scratch-and-sniff insta-win prizes.'"
The sillier and more wasteful thing in my view is the front yard. The back yard is a luxury and definitely an instance of conspicuous consumption in denser suburbs and cities, but it's easy to see why people like it -- it provides an open yet semi-private space where you, your kids, or your dog can play, and also a convenient place to host a gathering with your friends. When weather permits, you see people in their back yard all the time.
The front yard, however, sees much less use in most neighborhoods, at least until you're so far out in the country that you practically live on a farm -- it's rare that you'll see anybody on the front lawn unless they're mowing or landscaping it or on their way elsewhere, precisely due to its lack of privacy. The suburbs in general can, with some debate, be accused of being a result of the lack in imagination in adapting the estates of the British landed gentry to smaller lot sizes; the front yard is much less defensible against this accusation. The only practical functions of the front yard in relatively dense suburbs, such as those making up most of California, are these:
- Provide an appealing botanical decoration for the front of the house.
- Decrease noise from passing traffic.
- Prevent passersby from looking into your windows as easily.
But the puny size of front yards in these suburbs limits their effectiveness in satisfying these objectives, which would be much better served by a hedge or ivy-covered wall. These shouldn't be much more expensive than the front lawn, especially considering that you could either eliminate the front yard and expand the back yard or gain increased privacy in the front yard would make people more likely to use it.
My childhood was a lot happier and more social because our neighbors had a big front lawn we could run around and play on. It was effectively a meeting space for all the kids on our street.
Instead of a front lawn our property had a dense growth of evergreen shrubs and all these excuses were used by my parents - easier to maintain, less water used etc.
Our backyard was nice enough but fenced in and not social at all. If I could have had one or the other as a kid it definitely would have been a front lawn.
To me this front lawn hate is all about changing demographics (families are getting rarer) and the tragic paranoia and hostility that now is so prevalent in American society--even though it is safer than ever.
- People don't have as many kids as in decades past
- The "stranger danger" mentality -- which the parent post aptly described as "tragic paranoia [1] and hostility even though it is safer than ever" -- means kids aren't as free to roam the neighborhood.
- Increased amounts of homework, organized activities and indoor entertainment means kids spend less time outside and have other ways to socialize
[1] Children's services can take kids away from parents with minimal due process. Whether this is, on the whole, good or bad is a debate I'm not going to get into here. But I will note that sometimes the system screws up and targets well-meaning parents who give their kids too much freedom. Which leads to a chilling effect where even parents who recognize that giving the children more freedom is the rational thing for us to do as a society, it's irrational for individual parents because some idiots think otherwise, and the system sometimes listens to them, and it's just not worth the risk of having the authorities break up your family.
There is some evidence that foliage on pedestrian streets does increase a sense of well being, lower blood pressure, and so forth. There was an article a while back that showed greater health benefits to walking around trees than walking along a concrete suburban sprawl.
Another thing that front yards help with is reducing the amount of rain runoff that makes its way into storm drains. This is actually becoming a big problem in SF, which has an antiquated combined storm and sewage system.
That doesn't mean lawns are needed, of course, but unfortunately a lot of my neighbors (south of 280), as well as residents in the outer sunset and a few other neighborhoods, are paving over their front yards for extra parking. I find the whole thing pretty depressing, and it is causing infrastructure problems.
Interesting set of articles on the sewage system of SF. I do like tree-lined streets, especially on the wide streets typical of the US, but I left them out from my original list because they can easily live in the strip between the street and sidewalk (or in the sidewalk, if you don't need a strip).
Some of that is due to changes in how people use space over time - linked pretty closely I suspect with shifts from front porches to back decks. I also wouldn't be surprised if there was measurable variation in front yard to back yard percentages depending on whether houses are on through streets or dead-end streets, though I'm not sure where you'd go to research that.
That's a good point that I didn't consider -- while the front yard is by no means necessary (in many ways, sitting on a front porch directly facing a pedestrian street is more entertaining, although perhaps not as relaxing), a hedge or wall would defeat most of the point of the traditional front porch. I must confess a certain fondness for walls lining the street, especially covered in ivy :)
Anyway, do you know of any good sources for this? I'm trying to research this now, and it seems one of the top results is this series of pages, which isn't that great, although it does list some of the causes of the decline of the front porch (automobiles and air conditioning in particular): http://xroads.virginia.edu/~class/am483_97/projects/cook/roo....
I plan on saving this article. Then I will write an agent that will search the text for any phrase that contains the concept of "landscaping." It will then replace those selections with new phrase sentiments generated from a random list of similar acts of drudgery. Laundry, driving, bathing, child-rearing, grocery shopping, sight-seeing, reading, speaking, attending weddings, barmitvahs, dentistry, cosmology, climate change, signing autographs, game of thrones, breakfast, etc. I plan on calling it the Deep Whine program. I expect it to be the first AI with a regular column in the Op-Ed section of a major national news publication.
"Instead of calling it Work, realize it is Play" -Alan Watts
I have a large backyard lawn in Northern California. The water bill in summer months crosses $200 (and that doesn't count the gardeners), but it's worth every penny. The lawn is the centerpiece of the house. People play on it, camp on it, picnic on it, and lounge on it all the time. As far as I'm concerned, it's a gorgeous backyard with an afterthought of a house attached. Sometimes my wife and I sleep in a tent overnight just for fun.
I find articles like this somewhat offensive. Different people are motivated by different things; who is the author to make such far-reaching claims? I'm sympathetic to people who want to replace their lawns, but I also respect people who prefer to enjoy theirs. Why does this need to become a moral crusade?
The article isn't saying that you're evil for enjoying your lawn. It's merely saying that most people don't really benefit from them and that they'd be better off without them. As far as I can tell, that's true, and it's not contradicted by your relatively unusual enjoyment of yours.
It's a moral crusade because millions of people are sold on the idea of lawns and end up not benefitting from them, causing wasted resources and environmental damage along the way.
Articles like these are primarily about signaling that one is an enlightened urbanite rather than an uncultured suburban troglodyte. In other words, simple cultural warfare. Even the title gives it away... lawns are "soul-crushing"? Only to pompous urban J-school graduates whose entire parasitic existence depends on the productive classes of society.
Lawns are soul-crushing to the suburban homeowners who are are coerced to slash their natural meadows to conform to demands for artificially maintained turf.
Well, that does sound like what I felt when I was twelve years old and sent out to mow the lawn. Decades later, after encountering much more thoroughly soul-bruising experiences, I don't agree. I do feel for the guy who lives on a street where everyone want to have lawns that look like the greens at Augusta. But 45 minutes with a mower every week (fall and spring) or two doesn't crush my soul that badly these days.
> I find articles like this somewhat offensive. Different people are motivated by different things; who is the author to make such far-reaching claims? I'm sympathetic to people who want to replace their lawns, but I also respect people who prefer to enjoy theirs. Why does this need to become a moral crusade?
For the same reason you would be offended if someone threw perfectly good food out while people go hungry. It's conspicuous consumption. Because you can do something does not mean others won't judge. If you don't care, don't care! But don't be shocked when people rally against such waste of resources (in California, of all places!), and pass laws to rectify the problem.
Is it a waste if he or she enjoys it? With a few exceptions, California's water problems are not due to residential use, but rather over-use by agriculture, which uses almost all the water yet represents only 2% of California's GDP. If having a big lawn will increase your quality of life, have a big lawn.
"Today, American lawns occupy some 30-40 million acres of land. Lawnmowers to maintain them account for some 5 percent of the nation’s air pollution – probably more in urban areas. Each year more than 17 million gallons of fuel are spilled during the refilling of lawn and garden equipment—more than the oil that the Exxon Valdez spilled.
Homeowners spend billions of dollars and typically use 10 times the amount of pesticide and fertilizers per acre on their lawns as farmers do on crops; the majority of these chemicals are wasted due to inappropriate timing and application. These chemicals then runoff and become a major source of water pollution.Last but not least, 30 to 60 percent of urban fresh water is used on lawns. Most of this water is also wasted due to poor timing and application."
It's only conspicuous consumption if the main goal is to show off to others. If their main enjoyment is the use they get from it, I don't think it qualifies.
I don't think your analogy is a good one. It's probably more similar to buying and eating expensive food, not throwing food out.
Many problems are distribution problems, not production or waste problems.
The amount of subsidies that go into supporting lawns is one reason its a moral crusade. From regressive tax breaks & water subsidies to inefficient oil payouts, its relatively simple to draw a moral argument against private suburban yards.
If you own a home in the USA you participate in one of the most regressive tax breaks in the world in the form of the mortgage interest & guarantee subsidies. Even if you don't directly receive those, which would put you in a large minority, you benefit from the halo effect.
As for oil subsidies, between the commuting costs, care (lawn mower/herbicide/what have you) and heat costs energy to maintain most lawns is higher than people imagine.
I actually think you should own a yard if it provides you happiness & you pay for it. But its a trivial excercise to argue against them.
Do you partake in the mortgage interest tax deduction? Does your neighborhood have maximum density and zoning requirements that force people to live farther apart from each other and amenities, increasing oil usage?
Neither of those things are related to the presence or non-presence of my lawn. I could rip it up and replace it with gravel and nothing would change wrt taxes and subsidies.
Your clear disdain for and anger toward suburban life is leaking over in to a discussion on lawn care. Must suck to tied up in how other people choose to pursue happiness rather than just enjoying your own life.
> From regressive tax breaks & water subsidies to inefficient oil payouts, its relatively simple to draw a moral argument against private suburban yards.
I have a fairly large lawn in Northern California as well. We enjoy it thoroughly. The kids and I play on it daily and camp on it as well. My water bill was about $170 last month but that was the peak. Most of the year it's under $100 and in the winter months it's about $20 per month (I did not irrigate for 4 months last winter). Not all of California is an overpopulated desert using imported water.
On the other hand, having a lawn at other times in my life did seem to just need to be mowed all the time and still looked bad.
That does sound nice though I am tied to California by family. I have a 10 min drive to my office, but I would like to move my office closer when possible.
Same here. I've almost been enjoying this drought this year, since I haven't had to mow my grass every week this summer - although I'm getting sick of watering the vegetable garden twice a day.
You shouldn't belittle the hobbies the old have in an attempt to give their life value.
You to will be old one day and some youngster might belittle you for doing something dumb like playing old, redundant Xbox games when you're so bored life is losing meaning.
You're right. Re-reading it does sound harsh and if extreme lawn care is his thing then more power to him.
To some I already am "old one day." My daughter used to pretend to be David Attenborough and narrate aloud whatever I was doing while drawing unkind pictures to document it.
"And this is the Dave in his natural habitat. See how he struggles to climb under the car to reach the oil pan."
I wonder if we live next to the same guy :)
Seriously though, I think it's just a hobby and a way to remain active and valuable. Definitely helps the property values...
My father had one of those miniature farms, he worked very hard to maintain it (and conscripted me into assisting). Every week he would ritually harvest a useless crop which went directly into the garbage. He was a very proud man, and used the condition of his lawn to signal his moral superiority.
Often in the evenings around the dinner table he would single out malingerers in the neighbourhood and proclaim them to be substandard human beings.
These proclamations weren't typically backed up by action until he was appointed an administrator on the condominium board. Newly backed with institutional authority, he took to logging lawn care infractions, and hand delivering customized warning notices to scofflaws with great zeal.
I didn't mean to be so harsh. It's his Happy Place and who am I to judge.
But there's no fence, so you could take a picture and use it in Refurb's Lawn Care brochure as the "before and after" spread. (Mine being the wah-wah-waaaaah side.)
After unfortunate experiences in Real Estate, I began a new life as the Renting Scum in decent, fiber-optic-Internet-having neighborhoods. As you may imagine, this Floridian enclave of happiness has an HOA which utterly lacks enthusiasm for Renting Scum. Indeed, my webcams show them photographing my front lawn several times weekly. If one of their dogs happens to pee on my lawn and create a dead spot more than a couple inches across? My landlord hears about it from them. My expensive lawn service comes a couple days late after a heavy rain and the grass gets a bit long? Landlord. It barely rains at all during a summer month and things get a bit sparse and brown? Landlord (unless I illegally water on multiple days, which I do, just like the police who live around me do).
TL;DR many of us maintain the Reaganian-perfect front lawn out of the first scene of a David Lynch movie under duress, even if it's the dumbest, most wasteful thing we ever heard of. Hey man, fiber's fiber.
Depending on the climate where you live (and the tolerance of your neighbors), you can scale way back on maintenance, and still have a lawn that's good enough for kids and pets. My family lives in central Wisconsin, and our neighbors are OK with us having a crappy lawn. We don't fertilize or water it. (Fertilizer increases the water demand, water increases the need for mowing).
It's full of weeds. Kids can run around on weeds. It only requires a handful of mowings every year, then it goes dormant unless there are unusual amounts of rain (like this year). By late July, the grass has stopped growing, and it's only weeds, which I can control with a manual "weed whip." For better or worse, the weeds are drought resistant.
So I doubt the contention that my lawn requires water, fertilizer, or even weekly mowing. As the kids have gotten older, the need for an extensive backyard has diminished, and I'm gradually turning more of it over to the vegetable garden every year.
This whole thread I thought this is what people meant by "lawn" because I live in a rural place where this is very normal.
I thought everyone was really whiny because it really doesn't take /that/ much work to maintain a yard like this. I honestly don't understand why it's so uncommon.
The concept of expending any effort on the lawn beyond mowing it when it starts to get too high (think knee-high...) is baffling to me. The only times I've ever seeded anything is once after clearing a section of woods, and another time when we plowed and harrowed a field and put in clover special. Grass is just something that grows on its own, mixed in with dandelions and clover and other stuff. If it gets dry and the grass dies, congratulations! now you get a break from having to mow it as much this summer.
This is what I came to say. My children love playing on our large lawn. I consider them lucky given the number of dirt (drought resistant) parks these days.
False. If HN has taught me anything it's that we should all be living in energy neutral cube farms while drinking soylent. Any free time should be spent learning how to code. Your lawn is frivolous.
Growing up, at least for me, the woods were a much more entertaining place. I gotta think all of those lawns are replacing a lot of trees which could've been climbed.
Lawn care is a religion in North Carolina. In the city, in the country. What's amazing is that when driving in any rural area, you'll see frequently small houses on five or ten acres of perfectly cultivated and mowed grass with no agricultural purpose ... just for show.
No sheep? What bothers me is that a lawn was meant for food for sheep. Without sheep or other ruminants, there is no purpose. Man was never meant to mow.
I am inspired by the front yard landscaping of Western Portland, OR. Hardly any property has grass lawn. Grass is replaced by lush ground cover, ferns, wild grasses, flowering bushes, etc.
My parents place (in New Zealand) is similar, the only lawn they have is the mandated patch between the road and the footpath, and a 5x5 m patch out front, which is more ornamental than functional. Most of the back yard is decked.
It's great when you don't have any kids that need space to run around, and it's very low maintenance, but I suspect that they're going to run into issues when selling the place, there's not a whole lot of demand for a 4 bedroom house with no lawn, and the place isn't really laid out such that you could just replace the deck with a lawn.
It's a local council thing, you have to have grass between the footpath and the road. Not allowed to just have flowers or vegetables. Sort of makes sense, it's semi-public land.
In some cities, it's actually the council's job to mow them as well.
There can be beauty in simplicity --whether a green grass lawn or a sand/rock garden --they're only soul crushing if you're doing them while you would otherwise not.
That said, I prefer maintaining shrubs and other decorative plants in the tiny garden I have --yes, it's a time suck _but_ that's the whole point of it. You get to connect and care and semi meditate, or in the least take your mind away from preoccupation (it's a kind of therapy through futility). So, really whether you enjoy them or not depends on how you use them in your life.
I hate when article do that. Let me pick a unit of measure that makes the number sound REALLY big. Did you know I weigh 75 THOUSAND grams? I'm huge!!!
I'm not sure where he got the 9 billion gallons per day from, but it's suspect. Total public utility water use is 42 billion gallons per day. So lawns take up 25% of all public water use?[1]
I could see that being true in some areas, but when I used to live in Michigan it rained often enough that rarely ever watered. Maybe once or twice a summer?
I have never seen a American-style lawn in India. Where are you seeing these lawns? Most people just keep a garden with potted plants (commonly known as a veranda).
Delhi people take it to the next level by having rooftop lawns. I stayed in a rooftop apartment there once and nothing beats rolling around on grass in the middle of a summer night.
As far as I can tell in India lawns are a sign of wealth and position. I once visited a dusty air force base in Bikaner and the commander's house had a beaut lawn with 2 airmen dedicated to maintaining it.
Which part of India did you see? There are big-ass lawns in my hometown, Thrissur, Kerala. Also, lawns covering homefronts where I currently reside in North India. I am not going to be specific, but somewhere in UP.
To be fair, I've lived mostly in cities, but I doubt the case is going to be different in rural India. I have grandparents in Dehradun, grew up in Bombay, have cousins in Delhi and relatives in Jharkhand, and no where have I seen lawns in the American manner; only concrete verandas with potted plants.
I'd prefer to have a lawn with native meadow grasses in it, but the blackberry bushes and other invasive plants ruin everything. The only way to keep those at bay is to mow them down regularly.
I converted my front lawn to all native perennial plants and flowers, with aggressive ground cover plants around them. It looks great and is essentially zero maintenance - I only water it once or twice depending on the weather.
It's a really small front yard, maybe 15 feet tall and 30 - 35 feet wide with a driveway taking up most of it. I'm in the northeast US. I have a few trees that I want to build mulch beds around and some mulch beds in front of the porch as well as a side walk that leads to the front door so I want to fill in the rest with nice river stone (not gravel). This would allow us to travel without hiring someone to come out and work on the lawn. I can do it for the cost of a decent push mower. I have a little over half an acre in the back and I'll be leaving the grass there so I won't be entirely devoid of green, I'll just be able to slack on it as nobody can see it.
Cornus canadensis. White Flowers in spring, Red berries in summer, Red leaves in fall. Attract birds. Miniature forest for children. 'Fairy tales' themed. Just a mat of stems or scorched leaves in winter. Low. Stands Shadow.
Tiarella cordifolia. Soft green leaves with a foam of White flowers. Shadow. Delicated. 'Feminine'. Spring. Spreading by rizomes, but not much invasive. Visited by insects and bees.
Asarum canadense. Good heart-shaped leaves. I don't know how it stands summer, but probably well. Reddish flowers rare but hidden. Interesting at short distance, but often missed. Poison.
Bearberry. Arctostaphylos uva ursi. Low mat of 7 inches high or so. Hard aspect. Ordinated. Solid. Leathery small leaves, pink-shell bells, Red fruit and good fall color, purple dark. Needs acid soil. Slowly growing to up to 15 feet diameter, but can be pruned to keep it in shape.
Antennaria plantaginifolia. I don't know about if is too vigorous or not. White small flowers. Separated sexes. 'Dusty'. Useful for drier places, but not outstanding.
Fillers:
Native violets (Viola). Visually soft and fragile with nice blue flowers in spring. Reseed itselves on gravel and crevices, but never a nuissance.
Mitchella repens share some points with Cornus (white flowers, red berries), but is a native short creeper with small 'hard' leaves. More fragile and fragant. 'Feminine'.
Aquilegia, bulbs, ferns etc...
Grasses and taller shrubs for accent and out of season interest:
Yes, you need some grasses, they are wonderful and your winter is too long. Some candidates.
A clump of Switchgrass Panicum virgatum 'North-Wind' 3-6x3 feet. The winter spectacle in orange-rust tones deserves well the nuissance of a single cut to the soil level each year at february. Linear, vertical, upright standing even strong winds. Opaque, but could fit your needs if you want privacity in summer and a wild touch. Panicum virgatum 'heavy metal' is a slightly smaller version that provides a good canary yellow in fall (instead orange), and a strange tone of blue-green leaves in summer. Both get dormant and wake up very late when soil warms, so there is nothing to see between its annual cut at the end of the winter and June or so.
If you want a more delicate option, you could use some Molinia caerulea "transparent" (non-native) or the native Wavy Hairgrass, Deschampsia flexuosa. 12-30 inches hight, Effect transparent and delicate. Both catching light wonderfully in a non obtrusive way. Not so much to see in winter in this case, but good in summer and fall.
Black Chokeberry. Aronia melanoarpa. A very hard plant when established standing some pollution and unfavourable conditions. Middle height, 3-5 foot or so. Could be pruned eventually if needed. A little dark green in summer, but a wonderful scarlet fall color and shiny black berries that attract birds and are sour but edible. Whitish flowers with pink anthers. Aronia arbutifolia is taller and provides a luminous orange fall colour for a few weeks and many scarlet berries over green foliage in summer and fall.
Cornus sericea. Excelent dark red lasting for all winter, very nice mixed with snow. Makes a dense mat. Worth it even if you'll need to prune it once each year to keep it dense and at 5 foot or so. If you prefer greenish-yellow stems look for C. sericea flaviramea instead.
To avoid:
Aegopodium. Easy. But a monster spreading over large areas and growing fast from rizomes and discarded cuttings. Aggresive invader in NE USA.
Vinca, nice flowers, but too aggressive also and non native. You will need to keep it on place, and is not an easy task; they run around like rabbits.
Hedera. Will cross the path and you will need to prune it.
Veblen specifically talks in detail about the practice of maintaining manicured lawns. I read it thirty years ago, but remember it as being hilarious. He's one of my favorite Norwegians (admittedly a short list).
[0] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/833
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Clas...