Being fortunate to live in your community, I really enjoyed watching your front lawn transform into an edible vibrant landscape in our mostly-manicured neighborhood! Your sharing of background work on human-neighbor cultivation is as interesting as the plantings themselves.
This post also reminds me of "The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession" by V Jenkins which I reviewed as our local Ecology Action Center was developing it's Yard Smart Program. The book narrative reads like a PhD dissertation, thick with facts. But what I found especially fascinating was a section on visuals plates advertising lawn mowers in the late 1800s & beyond, marketing the idea of "grass cutting simplified" (even your wife or kid or dog could do it; of course it was not.) The front lawn was to be an extension of the parlor - not functional like previous front yards grazing messy animals etc. Then the ads for chemicals began after WWII (using war language like "Give em hell" a wife says to her husband spraying weeds) which enabled monoculture lawns, demoting once-prized clover to a weed.
It's yet a reminder that turf lawns are cultural creations. And edible vibrant pollinator-attracting yards can be too. Thanks for demonstrating this in your own front & back yard (and our neighborhood).
Finally, I love imagining people as trees, beautiful gnarls and all!
I enjoyed reading Michael Pollan's book Second Nature. He has a section on the history of lawns in the US and it sounds like it mirrors what you describe in the Jenkins book. We are living with views of lawns that originated with the Puritans and a couple of landscape architects from the early 1900's that thought our lawns should serve to showcase our homes. I am looking forward to seeing our views and approach to caring for our yards expand to include people, wildlife, and nature in general.
Being fortunate to live in your community, I really enjoyed watching your front lawn transform into an edible vibrant landscape in our mostly-manicured neighborhood! Your sharing of background work on human-neighbor cultivation is as interesting as the plantings themselves.
This post also reminds me of "The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession" by V Jenkins which I reviewed as our local Ecology Action Center was developing it's Yard Smart Program. The book narrative reads like a PhD dissertation, thick with facts. But what I found especially fascinating was a section on visuals plates advertising lawn mowers in the late 1800s & beyond, marketing the idea of "grass cutting simplified" (even your wife or kid or dog could do it; of course it was not.) The front lawn was to be an extension of the parlor - not functional like previous front yards grazing messy animals etc. Then the ads for chemicals began after WWII (using war language like "Give em hell" a wife says to her husband spraying weeds) which enabled monoculture lawns, demoting once-prized clover to a weed.
It's yet a reminder that turf lawns are cultural creations. And edible vibrant pollinator-attracting yards can be too. Thanks for demonstrating this in your own front & back yard (and our neighborhood).
Finally, I love imagining people as trees, beautiful gnarls and all!
I enjoyed reading Michael Pollan's book Second Nature. He has a section on the history of lawns in the US and it sounds like it mirrors what you describe in the Jenkins book. We are living with views of lawns that originated with the Puritans and a couple of landscape architects from the early 1900's that thought our lawns should serve to showcase our homes. I am looking forward to seeing our views and approach to caring for our yards expand to include people, wildlife, and nature in general.