How We Ended Up With Lawns

Clothing fashions come and go. Did you know that there are landscape fashions too? For example, in the 1630s, “tulip mania” swept the Netherlands. The English cottage garden is a landscape fashion. So is lawn.

The lawn fashion started in England in the 1700s, where vast sweeping acres of grass surrounded castles, palaces and manor estates and were kept short by sheep. England has a great climate for this type of landscape. There weren’t any irrigation systems back then.

The lawn trend in the U.S. was an accumulation of events; the Scottish immigrants brought golf and lawn bowling with them, the Industrial Revolution uglified big cities and created a backlash of city beautification projects leading to the invention of parks. The baby boom greatly increased housing demand and led to the creation of suburbs. The lawn mower and the garden hose were invented, pesticides and inorganic fertilizers became available and affordable.

Between 1947 and 1951 Levitt & Sons, Inc. built the first mass-produced suburban community: every one of the 17,000 houses had a lawn. In a burst of publicity, the American Garden Club defined the suburban landscape and let us know it was our civic duty to maintain a perfect lawn. Subdivisions and lawns are with us today on a massive scale. For builders and developers, lawn is a very quick and relatively inexpensive way to put in a landscape. We’ve been pretty well brainwashed about the desirability of lawn and the way it should look.

We all know by now that turfgrass needs a lot of water compared to other types of landscaping. But it’s not just the plant itself. The development of the automatic irrigation system in combination with landscape maintenance companies often results in homeowners that don’t even need to pay attention to their lawns. You might glance at a green carpet as you back the car out of the garage on the way to work and resolve to call the lawn guy about those brown spots. Automatic irrigation has led to an incredible waste of water from over watering, leaks (often caused by lawn mowers) and watering streets and sidewalks. We’re not paying attention!

I’m not against lawns. Turfgrass is perfect for athletic fields and great for kids to play on. There are a number of other benefits of lawn. But I am very decidedly against water waste! When it comes to irrigating lawn, most of the waste comes from ignorance and inattention.

So if you want a lawn, get yourself educated! Our Irrigation Check-up program is free and takes about an hour. We find the leaks, identify other irrigation inefficiencies, and provide a custom seasonal schedule for efficient watering. There would be more than enough water to go around if we all use only what we need. There’s never enough water to waste.

Call Liz Block at (661) 822-5504 to set an appointment for an Irrigation Check-Up.