Go for an 'Edible Estate': The Case Against Lawns

By Fritz Haeg, Metropolis Books. Posted April 4, 2008.

Editor's Note: The following is an excerpt from Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn from Metropolis Books.

The front lawn is so deeply embedded in our national psyche that we don't really see it any more, at least for what it actually is. What is that chasm between house and street? Why is it there? Or rather, why is nothing there?

I grew up surrounded by a lawn. This is a common American phenomenon. Perhaps the first growing thing most of us experience as a child is, indeed, a mowed grassy surface. How are a child's ideas of "the natural" affected by this? Of course, there is nothing remotely natural about a lawn. It is an industrial landscape disguised as organic plant material.

As a teenager I passed many weekend afternoons mowing the lawn and I loved it. The more overgrown the lawn, the greater the sense of satisfaction as you roar over it to reveal that crisp trimmed surface and fresh grassy smell. I suppose most of my outdoor time as a youth was spent on a lawn. It is the first defensive ring between the family unit and everything beyond. It is the border control that physically and psychologically keeps wilderness, city, and strangers at a safe distance.

The English Estate

The lawn has its roots in England and is the foundation for any proper English landscape. In spite of the unnatural repression of all other plants, a lawn of mowed grass makes some sense in England, with its regular rainfall and cool climate. Animals grazed, lawn games were played, and the wilderness had been civilized and kept at bay with the crisp line where the grass ended. The front lawn was born of vanity and decadence, under the assumption that fertile land was infinite.

The English estate owner in Tudor times would demonstrate his vast wealth by not growing food on the highly visible fecund property in front of his residence. Instead this vast swath of land would become a stage of ornamental green upon which he could present his immense pile of a house. Look at how rich I am!

Similarly, the plumage of the male peacock advertises well-being and virility, and when he fans his feathers, he shows he can spare the enormous energy necessary to put on such a phenomenal display. The better the display, the healthier the peacock, and the more likely he is to attract a mate. In the case of the English estate owner, the expanse of green signals financial health and power.

This obsession with the lawn is, I believe, almost entirely a male phenomenon. It is an enticing and toxic stew of male seduction, aggression, and domination. Whether intended to attract a mate, demonstrate wealth, impress his friends, or control every bit nature that surrounds him, the lawn is covered with the fingerprints of masculine tendencies.

Once that fertile farmland in front of the English estate had been turned into a sterile monoculture, where did the cultivation of food happen? Out of view, of course, hidden in a remote section of the property where visitors and the lord of the estate would never see it. This was perhaps the beginning of the notion that plants that produce food are ugly and should not be seen. Today the idea has played itself out at an industrial global scale, with our produce grown on the other side of the planet. The only landscape worthy of the public eye is made of ornamentals, trimmed within an inch of their lives, inhospitable to other creatures, always the same and never changing with the seasons.

The Birth of the American Dream

Even if you have never seen Thomas Jefferson's Monticello in the hills of Virginia, you know it well. It is still the de facto prototype for the American home. You may recognize its prominent features in many contemporary housing developments: the Palladian windows, the white-columned portico, the red brick facade, and the vast green lawn that dominates the landscape around it. Jefferson's house is very much in the tradition of the English estate.

Master of all it surveys, wilderness at bay, anchored on the lawn, the illusion of absolute independence-this is still the model for most Americans' real-estate fantasies. Jefferson had a well-documented love affair with his kitchen garden, which was really more like a small domestic farm. He kept a detailed diary of its growth and evolution through the seasons and years. He lavished upon it devoted attention and care. It seems to have been one of the great passions of his life. And yet, where did he locate it?

See more stories tagged with: environment, food, gardens, lawns

Liked this story? Get top stories in your inbox each week from Environment! Sign up now »