<story><title>How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America?</title><url>https://longreads.com/2019/07/18/american-green/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mountainb</author><text>I own a fair amount of land, mostly forest, but I grew up in a city and have lived in suburbs as well, so I understand why lawns confuse people.&lt;p&gt;The answer is that it&amp;#x27;s really low maintenance and it prevents erosion while also lowering the complexity of putting in adequate drainage. It&amp;#x27;s also very efficient to maintain large swaths of grass with uniform equipment, whether it&amp;#x27;s with push mowers, riding mowers, or tractors.&lt;p&gt;Maintaining forest is challenging, dangerous, and more labor intensive than you might think. It&amp;#x27;s real easy to die doing forest work: trees really wanna kill you. Trees are always getting sick and grody. It&amp;#x27;s easy to accidentally kill healthy trees when you are culling dying&amp;#x2F;dead trees and, at least for me, making mistakes makes me feel sad and guilty about it. Chainsaws are easy to use and you really have to be not paying attention or not using protective equipment to hurt yourself with them -- it&amp;#x27;s the trees that are dangerous. This is one of the reasons why suburban developers don&amp;#x27;t go out of their way to plant forests even if it would make the area look nicer. There&amp;#x27;s also the question of who would maintain the forest in an area where everything is subdivided into small private plots, but any living forest requires a lot of space to grow.&lt;p&gt;It is also more intellectually challenging to maintain forest. This is reflected by the difference in wage rates between forestry workers and normal landscapers. Stump removal when you have to do it is also its own set of challenges.&lt;p&gt;The other reason why uniform lawns are easier to work with is something that only dawned on me after years of letting the weeds grow amidst the normal grass. Weeds grow at different rates and have different impacts on the soil. It&amp;#x27;s a lot easier to maintain a uniform lawn. A weedy lawn can look cool at some parts of the year with lots of wildflowers and then look crappy at other times when the flowers all die and it&amp;#x27;s just some weird scratchy bunch of weeds that creates a weird erosion pattern, which is a problem that is more expensive&amp;#x2F;difficult to fix than just never having it happen in the first place.&lt;p&gt;I understand the intellectual perspective in this article but the explanation is very silly in light of the practical considerations that become apparent when you are responsible for land yourself. The labor-hour estimate in this article is also totally delusional, or based on some absurd standard that no one actually keeps their tiny lawn to.&lt;p&gt;I mean, how would you even spent 150 hours a year maintaining a tiny suburban lawn? Are you cutting it with a toenail clipper? Huh? That&amp;#x27;s almost 3 hours a week, dude.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stinos</author><text>&lt;i&gt;It&amp;#x27;s really low maintenance&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;I think that depends on your frame of reference. Sure in comparison with maintaining a forest the way you describe it&amp;#x27;s low (though note that there&amp;#x27;s always the option of not maintaining a forest at all, except for paths through it). But compared to maintaining a meadow (even mown piecewise to strive for max biodiversity) where you&amp;#x27;d mow max 2 times a year, it&amp;#x27;s rather high.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;It&amp;#x27;s a lot easier to maintain a uniform lawn&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Depends. I don&amp;#x27;t consider mowing a piece of grass 2 times a year a lot harder than doing all of it every 2 weeks, on the contrary. You need the correct tool for the job though.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;when the flowers all die&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;That doesn&amp;#x27;t have to be like that, e.g. in my Western-European climate that is only so in the middle of winter; for the rest my grassland has flowering species about 9 months a year. Does require some insight into ecology of grasslands to get such situation though. What you talk about is typically what one gets when not mowing &amp;#x27;correctly&amp;#x27;. I.e. wrong time of year, or too much or too little, or not removing the vegetation after mowing it, etc.&lt;p&gt;&lt;i&gt;that creates a weird erosion pattern&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Can you explain that? I&amp;#x27;m pretty sure I&amp;#x27;ve seen studies where old grasslands are better for erosion than short lawns.</text></comment>
<story><title>How did the plain green lawn become the central landscaping feature in America?</title><url>https://longreads.com/2019/07/18/american-green/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mountainb</author><text>I own a fair amount of land, mostly forest, but I grew up in a city and have lived in suburbs as well, so I understand why lawns confuse people.&lt;p&gt;The answer is that it&amp;#x27;s really low maintenance and it prevents erosion while also lowering the complexity of putting in adequate drainage. It&amp;#x27;s also very efficient to maintain large swaths of grass with uniform equipment, whether it&amp;#x27;s with push mowers, riding mowers, or tractors.&lt;p&gt;Maintaining forest is challenging, dangerous, and more labor intensive than you might think. It&amp;#x27;s real easy to die doing forest work: trees really wanna kill you. Trees are always getting sick and grody. It&amp;#x27;s easy to accidentally kill healthy trees when you are culling dying&amp;#x2F;dead trees and, at least for me, making mistakes makes me feel sad and guilty about it. Chainsaws are easy to use and you really have to be not paying attention or not using protective equipment to hurt yourself with them -- it&amp;#x27;s the trees that are dangerous. This is one of the reasons why suburban developers don&amp;#x27;t go out of their way to plant forests even if it would make the area look nicer. There&amp;#x27;s also the question of who would maintain the forest in an area where everything is subdivided into small private plots, but any living forest requires a lot of space to grow.&lt;p&gt;It is also more intellectually challenging to maintain forest. This is reflected by the difference in wage rates between forestry workers and normal landscapers. Stump removal when you have to do it is also its own set of challenges.&lt;p&gt;The other reason why uniform lawns are easier to work with is something that only dawned on me after years of letting the weeds grow amidst the normal grass. Weeds grow at different rates and have different impacts on the soil. It&amp;#x27;s a lot easier to maintain a uniform lawn. A weedy lawn can look cool at some parts of the year with lots of wildflowers and then look crappy at other times when the flowers all die and it&amp;#x27;s just some weird scratchy bunch of weeds that creates a weird erosion pattern, which is a problem that is more expensive&amp;#x2F;difficult to fix than just never having it happen in the first place.&lt;p&gt;I understand the intellectual perspective in this article but the explanation is very silly in light of the practical considerations that become apparent when you are responsible for land yourself. The labor-hour estimate in this article is also totally delusional, or based on some absurd standard that no one actually keeps their tiny lawn to.&lt;p&gt;I mean, how would you even spent 150 hours a year maintaining a tiny suburban lawn? Are you cutting it with a toenail clipper? Huh? That&amp;#x27;s almost 3 hours a week, dude.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>cptskippy</author><text>&amp;gt; I mean, how would you even spent 150 hours a year maintaining a tiny suburban lawn? Are you cutting it with a toenail clipper? Huh? That&amp;#x27;s almost 3 hours a week, dude.&lt;p&gt;A quarter acre of St Augustine grass in Georgia produces about 5-10 of those 30 gallon yard waste bags full of grass clippings each week at the height of the growing season.  The clippings cannot remain on the grass or they will kill it.  It takes approximately 5 hours a week to maintain such a yard.&lt;p&gt;Similarly in the fall, the trees will produce similar amounts of leaves each week that also cannot remain on the grass or they will kill it.</text></comment>