You may also like<\/strong><\/p> Lawns provide a strong visual link to the pastoral English landscape, which may be visible beyond our boundary, but if not will certainly hold a deeply entrenched position within our mind\u2019s eye. They are pleasant to look at and to lounge on and provide an excellent setting for other landscape features.<\/p> Lawn care in itself has achieved cult status as an activity. The act of pushing a mower<\/a> around possesses an almost primordial appeal. Our interaction with and manipulation of \u2018nature\u2019 is a defining characteristic of humanity. Nature\u2019s response is invariably to mount a sustained attempt towards unruliness and reversion. Mowing<\/a> the lawn is an immediate paradigm of our relationship with nature and it is to be expected that as a recently industrialised society we should cling to such activities as a vestige of our agricultural past. Lawn maintenance is an accessible activity, as it does not require specialised plant knowledge. In practical terms it occupies a gap between \u2018gardening\u2019 proper and the built environment \u2013 a world of straight lines, sharp edges, levels, of hard and fast rules. But a forgiving and soft world nonetheless.<\/p> You may also like<\/strong><\/p> The eighteenth-century origin of the lawn<\/strong><\/p> Lawns were established as an indispensable element of garden design during the 18th century. Eighteenth-century landscape designers stylised English pastoral scenery \u2013 by far the most prominent surface treatment in their idiom was cropped grass. Beyond the ha-ha, sheep cattle or deer may have maintained the sward. But next to the house, it was required that men with scythes<\/a> regularly trim the herbage, an extremely labour intensive and skilled task. The aesthetic demanded as smooth a surface as possible. When you consider that grass was predominantly a resource for feeding livestock, the notion of constantly employing men to remove it can be considered an outrageous act of ostentation. The modern history of the lawn can be said to really get going once lawn-mowing technology was developed and adopted during the 19th century. But it is important to remember that the earliest lawns were very much the preserve of the elite. Lawns have held a powerful aspirational appeal ever since.<\/p> The earliest lawns were very much the preserve of the elite<\/p><\/blockquote> The cylinder mower<\/a> was invented in Gloucestershire in the 1830s, almost as a by-product of the industrial revolution in cloth-making. The technology was essentially sound, though initially somewhat cumbersome to use, and it was adopted fully with some modifications over the course of a few decades. This gradually democratised the ownership of lawns in concert with the development of suburbia. Would this lessen the allure? The new technology begat refinement, and as long as further refinement was possible, lawn maintenance remained an aspirational activity even for those who had to perform the labour themselves. Lawn mowing machines and accoutrements became status symbols in themselves.<\/p> The 18th-century ideal of a landscape garden is imprinted firmly on the American psyche<\/p><\/blockquote> The lawn fetish flourished with the British Empire and was transferred to the wider world in combination with a number of the turf-based sports, such as cricket and football, for which Britain is famous. It was adopted and transmuted nowhere more avidly than in the USA. Rather like the English language, we can attribute much of the current global hegemony of lawns to our American cousins. There is no doubt that the 18th-century ideal of a landscape garden is imprinted firmly on the American psyche. Urban parks, golf courses and suburban developments were consciously based on this ideal. To a nation that had to struggle to define itself and impose its own order on a hostile continent, the cultivation of lawns became an important symbol of nationhood and civic pride as well as personal aspiration. The climate in much of the USA is poorly adapted to lawn culture \u2013 nevertheless an increasingly uncompromising lawn aesthetic was vigorously pursued throughout the 20th century. The establishment and maintenance of lawns was conceived and enacted as a war against nature. Extraordinary excesses in the consumption of chemicals and water use were encouraged in pursuit of the ideal.<\/p> Conspicuous consumption or destruction of natural resources is thankfully no longer as fashionable<\/a> in the West as it was. At one time the lawn was a totem both of the British Empire and the American Dream. Neither now viewed with unalloyed positivity. In films such as Blue Velvet<\/em> and American Beauty<\/em>, a well-tended, suburban American lawn represents sterile, oppressive conformity. <\/p> Extraordinary excesses in the consumption of chemicals and water use were encouraged in pursuit of the ideal<\/p><\/blockquote> Nevertheless, lawns still have a powerful global currency as a symbol of prosperity and it is almost impossible to envisage a world without them. Lawns carry a huge weight of cultural and environmental baggage, but where does the future lie? At Chatsworth House<\/a> in Derbyshire, seat of the Duke of Devonshire, there are twin lawns known as \u2018the Salisburys\u2019, which run up to the east side of the house. They were established by sowing hay seed in the 18th century and have not been \u2018improved\u2019 since \u2013 as a result they contain an astonishing multiplicity of species. The Duke and Duchess declined the invitation to rectify them in the 1980s, following intervention from a Dr Gilbert of Sheffield University. Such lawns were smooth enough to satisfy \u2018Capability\u2019 Brown \u2013 perhaps we should be equally accepting of nature\u2019s foibles, in spite of our hard-won power to impose a stricter will?<\/p> 1700s<\/strong> 1830<\/strong> 1902<\/strong> 1945<\/strong> 1962<\/strong> 1963<\/strong> The Grass is Greener<\/em> An engaging historical account of the British Lawn, mingled with personal musings on the nature of manhood.<\/p> The Lawn \u2013 A History of an American Obsession<\/em> (Smithsonian Books, Washington, 1994). The Lawn Expert<\/em> Silent Spring<\/em> Meadows<\/em>![\"\"](\"https:\/\/c02.purpledshub.com\/uploads\/sites\/40\/2020\/09\/GettyImages-919006274-d3e785d-scaled.jpg\" "\\"\\"\/")
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Don’t miss our feature on Plantlife’s No Mow May campaign<\/strong><\/a><\/h3>
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The history of the lawn: timeline<\/h2>
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Books to read about lawns<\/h3>