Re: (OT) the evolution of American lawns

In a message dated 8/28/00 10:40:42 AM Eastern Daylight Time, 
deanslgr@juno.com writes:

<< > Dean, would this article be available on the internet?
 > 
 > Valerie
 
 
 I doubt it.  I did a cursory glance of the Natural History on-line
 archive  http://www.amnh.org/naturalhistory/  and it looks like only
 featured articles are archived in their entirety.  Magazines do tend to
 encourage people to subscribe, after all.  ;-)  The next time I'm up in
 the attic I'll see if I can find the issue in which that essay appeared. 
 Going up into my bookshelf filled attic is not something randomly
 undertaken! >>

Dean and Valerie,

You can find a similar discussion in "Second Nature, a Gardener's Education" 
by Michael Pollan,  ISBN 0-385-31266-0.  The chapter, "Why Mow" is entirely 
devoted to lawns and how they happened to become such an obsession in 
America.   This book is in libraries or easily purchased softcover.


Roughly summing up, you guys in the midwest started it all with a book by 
Frank Scott that advocated lawns connecting one to the next so the 
subdivision (or estate or whatever your area calls it) looked a one rolling 
green park.  The second part would be the invention and improvement of the 
lawn mower.

Other areas of the world valued privacy more than rolling estate greens.  
Scott describes the Brits "inhospitable brick walls".  This was unneighborly, 
unchristian and undemocratic.   The Chicago area began the zoning laws that 
established setbacks, sideyards and the percentage of land that could be 
occupied by buildings.

This is facinating stuff as it spread all over the US making the improvements 
of existing housing a "hardship" if a proposal violated these rules.  Should 
you want a garage and your percentage is used up, you need a hardship permit.

I lived in a town once that had a limit of solid fencing,  four feet.  Over 
that got you a date in front of a judge.  When I inquired what was the basis 
for this idiotic law, the answer was safety.  They did not want any riffraff 
running around the shrubbery.  The reality was that the town was filled with 
State University employees and began as very progressive.  Frank Scott had an 
influence there.  Present town administration has no idea of this movement of 
the last century.

To each his own, I should like to have something marking landlines between 
properties.

Claire Peplowski
East Nassau, z4

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