Newsgroups: sci.bio
Path: utzoo!kef
From: kef@utzoo.uucp (Lindsay E. King)
Message-ID: <1989Jan16.201744.15520@utzoo.uucp>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Date: Mon, 16 Jan 89 20:17:44 GMT
The question of why millions of north americans have lawns has facinated me for
years...my first paid job was cutting a lawn.  It seems to me that the vast
majority of lawns are used primarily by dogs not the lawn owners.  Lawns may
provide employment but the nice ones are a source of pesticide/herbicde/
and fertilizer residues.
Then there is the monoculture question---a lost opportunity
to improve the ecological diversity of suburbs that usually sprawl over the
most potentially productive land around.  I suppose this should not be about
why lawns are bad (they definatly are) but why we have them.  Lawns are a status
symbol left over from the victorian era of country homes (lots of money) that
were, intially, surrounded by productive farmland (pragmatic of them)-----
sheep and cattle grazing led to that trimmed look.  Eventually as rot set in
these country homes increased their mircrogardens in size (perhaps to set the
beast-like serfs at a greater physical distance).  The pleasing appearance of
the trimmed pasture was imitated without the smell.
This resulted in alarge amount of acerage wasted.  It is my understading that
the English were resposible for spreading this fetish were ever they went.

L.E.King