Lawns and their Discontents: Creating the American Landscape

By Elaine Zhang

White picket fences, single family houses, and a perfectly manicured flat green lawn—this ubiquitous image of the ideal American home pervades society. Lawns are convenient, cheap, and aesthetically pleasing. According to studies utilizing geospatial analysis to measure lawn area, they have come to dominate urban spaces around the world, constituting around up to 70% of urban greenspace, or around 23% of developed land cover in the United States. Yet, as we attempt to build greener cities, it has become increasingly transparent that this ideal may not be sustainable; the environmental cost is being overlooked and ignored.

Lawns first originated with the English aristocracy in the 18th or 19th century, where they symbolized wealth and power—it was only affluent aristocrats who could afford to have unused land. Later, with suburban area expansion and the invention of the lawnmower, the lawn became central to the American paragon of suburban living for the middle class. The lawn was not only beautiful, but also provided open areas for recreation and other activities. And the idea of the perfectly manicured green lawn as a status symbol still endures.

The deep attachment to lawns manifests in many ways. For instance, when drought struck Los Angeles and resulted in drastic watering restrictions, some homeowners turned to spray-paint in order to keep their dried lawns verdant. Strict restrictions for landscaping and its maintenance are often set by local homeowner’s associations, with fines imposed for violations. The presence of a green lawn is also an important contributor to property value. Lawns are deeply socially embedded: as a cultural aesthetic, a product of corporate marketing by major fertilizer corporations, and a representation of enhanced community membership and responsibility.

Yet, with their prevalence across differing climates and environments, lawns also come with a host of ecological challenges. Grass species are often grown even in conditions they are not well suited for—creating primarily monocultures that displace native species and are not ecologically productive. Attaining the ideal lawn also requires a significant amount of inputs, including labor, mowing, and chemical application.

Furthermore, lawns consume a significant amount of water. According to the Environmental Protection Agency, landscape irrigation constitutes up to one third of residential water use. In arid areas, this proportion can jump up to 60%. Regular watering is also often inefficient, as an estimated 50% is wasted. Especially in regions projected to experience major droughts, such as California, critics argue that lawns are entirely unsustainable in the long term.

Maintaining lawns also entails intensive and indiscriminate chemical application from fertilizer, fungicides, herbicides, and pesticides. Compared to larger-scaled agricultural usage, homeowners on average use more than ten times more pesticides per acre. From an ecological standpoint, the widespread use of lawn chemicals threatens non-target species and ecosystems as chemicals accumulate up the food chain. Research has found the presence of lawn chemical residues in local water systems, ecosystems, as well as in the human body. It is challenging to evaluate the potential toxicity of the accumulation of these chemicals, but many common chemicals contain endocrine disruptors that may be adverse to human health, affecting fertility, neurological damage, and development.

As a first step to alleviating the environmental costs of lawns, the No Mow May movement advocates to reduce mowing during the spring months, when pollinators are most active. Those who are looking to be more sustainable with their lawn practices do not necessarily have to commit to a full re-landscaping. Simply keeping the lawn less tightly mowed allows the opportunity for greater biodiversity and can provide critical habitat for pollinators in urban spaces.

“Especially in an urban area, there tends to be fewer floral resources early in the season,” says Laura Rost, a representative of BeeCity USA, which is a non-profit organization working to support pollinators. By reducing mowing and not using herbicides or pesticides, she explains, “You might see some white clover, or selfheal, or dead nettle––all these little plants that get interspersed with grasses. And a lot of those can be floral resources.”

An alternate solution is to find more sustainable and resilient lawn replacements, such as rain gardens, native gardens, or even simply using native turfgrass species. Careful choice of better-adapted, low maintenance plant species can reduce water input and mowing frequency. Landscape designer Briana Lyon, owner of California Wild Gardens, a company that aims to provide customers with accessible sustainable landscaping options, explains her design mission:

“The idea is to work with natural ecology systems and mimic natural ecologies to create gardens that function for humanity and society in a productive way with minimal maintenance. People just need the vision of what the change is, so that’s why I’m trying to create this new vision of what landscapes can be.”

While the lawn continues to serve as the default landscaping option and choice of aesthetic, Lyon explains that there is also an increasing interest in alternatives. Expanding the garden aesthetic beyond the lawn to further kindle this interest can be a critical step.

Artificial turf, though a popular substitute due to its appearance and simplicity, may actually be less sustainable than turfgrass. While requiring less water and maintenance than grass, artificial turf is not recyclable, may pollute local water systems, and overall would reduce ecosystem services. Compared to artificial turf, urban greenspaces––including conventional turfgrass despite its environmental costs––provide some amount of ecosystem services. These include carbon sequestration, drainage, air purification, cooling effects, and benefits to human wellness.

Nevertheless, it will take more than individuals changing their gardens, explains Paul Robbins, the dean of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

“There’s a lot of opportunity to alter the aesthetic through slow, repeated practice. But it also counts on this moral authority, this social stigma–of people controlling one another. We need to operate around sustainability as a scalar system problem, and not simply the immorality of your neighbor’s watering regime.” Too much focus on individual gardening choices can also “individuate environmental responsibility instead of looking at the structural conditions that produce this outcome, like the pesticide industry,” according to Robbins.

In many areas coming under water stress, there has been movement on the state and municipal policy levels to encourage a transition away from lawns. For example, in Berkeley, the East Bay Municipal Utility District offers rebates for lawn conversion for up to $2.50 per square foot depending on the project. In Nevada, the governor has mandated removal of “non-functional” lawn in areas around Las Vegas by 2027 and offers $3.00 per square foot in rebate.

To create far-reaching changes in the United States around lawns, it is important to adopt new approaches and policy to residential landscape man- agement, including relaxing homeowners association rules and local ordinances. Some, like Robbins, argue that there would also need to be regulatory changes at the municipal, county, and state levels. “We need modest incentives to offset the cost,” says Robbins, “We have to be ready to commit resources to encouraging and subsidizing the alternatives.”

“Having good city ordinances around encouraging natural, native ecosystems in people’s landscaping—especially in new developments, if there can be revisions to the codes—can really help set new standards for beauty and what well-cared-for landscapes can look like,” states Rost. “And we can have some unique, beautiful landscapes that feel special to our own communities.”

The endurance of the lawn is a complex subject, entangled in neighborhood image and dreams of suburbia. In order to move away from lawns and their intensive maintenance practices, there needs to be effort on multiple fronts. Lyon hopes that “our residential and urban landscapes blend with our wild ones and bridge with habitats in a way that’s really beautiful and productive for wildlife and for humanity.”

While the perfect prim lawn may be beautiful, well-adapted and low-maintenance gardens may not provide beauty in other forms: perhaps wilder, yet thriving—flourishing with life of all kinds.