This is the American dream: a nice house with a lush, green, well-manicured lawn. Lawns take up more land in the US than agricultural crops. All told, they account for about 1.3% of the surface area in the continental US, which is an area larger than the state of Louisiana. But the fact is, lawns are anything but natural. It takes a lot of hard work, resources, and money to make a lawn and keep it green. And it's not even a plant that's native to North America. Even Kentucky Bluegrass is actually from overseas. So I can't help but wonder why it's all you see up and down virtually every street in America. And are there other options than the quintessential green lawn? Originally, manicured turf grass lawns came about in 18th century England and France. They were the domain of the ultra-privileged members of society, since you were growing something that couldn't be eaten or made into clothes.

In America, lawns were popularized by influential figures
like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, who both styled their estates
after the fashionable British lawns. The ideal of turf grass lawns
was furthered by people like landscape architect Frederick
Law Olmsted, who designed massive public parks
projects Central Park, Boston’s Fens, as well as parks in Buffalo,
Milwaukee, and Chicago. But green, well-manicured lawns
remained in the sphere of public parks and the homes of the wealthy because so many people
didn't own a house of their own. But that was all about to change. Starting in the 1930s, U.S. government loan programs provided
mortgages for over 11 million new homes. The federal government also built 48,000
miles of interstate highways, which enabled Americans to access these
shiny new suburban housing developments. Developments like Lakewood, California,
a suburban bedroom community where over

17,000 brand new single-family homes sprang up. To many, Lakewood was Paradise. Lawns were heavily marketed to this new middle class of suburbanites as luxurious reflections of status. They told you that if you had a beautiful lawn, it meant that you were a smart, modern American. One magazine article at the time said it was the biggest lawn boom of all time. It is literally spreading all over and has become, in fact, much more than a ground cover. It is an emotion that has blossomed into a status symbol. I'll be totally honest. I've never owned a lawn, so I don't even know where you would start to make a lawn that looks like this. I called Dr. Nick Christians. He literally wrote the book on growing turf grass. If you've got your timing right, and you know a little bit about what you're doing, you can do it with very little effort.

Digging through his book. Let's see. You should start by testing your soil. It says to do it every 3 to 5 years, or when your lawn is not up to snuff. Then you got to fertilize. He says the ideal is 3 to 5 times annually. Then you got to water the lawn. He suggests twice a week. Fescues. Blight. Drop spreaders. Pre-emergent herbicides. Point being, it's a lot. The average American spends about 65 hours a year on lawn and garden care. And all this lawn care uses up lots and lots of resources. Lawn mowers in the US use 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline every single year. And it takes 1 to 2 inches of water a week to keep your lawn lush and green, which for 1000 square foot lawn. That's over 10,000 gallons a summer.

in a more arid region, like here
in California, a single family can use up to 87,000 gallons a year,
just to water their lawn and garden. That's the same amount of water
as four home swimming pools. And all this lawn and garden equipment
emits tens of millions of tons of pollutants into the environment
every year. So turf grass is by far
the most common lawn covering, but it seems like it's maybe not
the most environmentally friendly option. So I had to wonder–
If you don't want a turf lawn, but you also don't want an overgrown meadow
like this, what should you do? I would not say that I'm anti-lawn,
but I'm anti lack of a better idea. And thinking about what you want your space to actually do
and serve you and your community. Sarah is one of the people
trying to figure that out. She's a landscape designer in San Diego,
and I decided to drive down to talk.

to her. She showed me some of the projects
she's worked on, where she converted grass yards to more useful,
ecologically minded gardens. And she showed me
a few of their key benefits. Pretty much 99% of my clients
want low maintenance and low water. So picking those plants isn't really hard. There's a lot of California
friendly plants, California
native plants that do well with that. Treating your front yard maybe even more like a backyard
where you have places to sit, you have things to interact with,
you have a variety of things can actually really be great
for a community. A space like this offers a lot more interaction for kids. There's
so many things that are tangible here that if a kid kicks this around,
they're not ruining your yard. You just push back. Cities across the US are actually paying people
to convert their lawns from turf grass to more sustainable, low
water use landscapes. Here in L.A., You can get up to $25,000.

Sometimes I think we try to stick to these perfect yards and, you know, we're like, don't touch it, don't interact. But isn't that the opposite of the point? For so long, this is what people envisioned when they thought of the American dream. And for some, maybe it is. It's the satisfaction of how it looks when you're doing it right. When you get it right, it really looks great. Everybody comes by and wants to know what you did and how you did it. But for others, the American Dream might be a yard that requires less work, comprised of plants that are actually native, and that's better for the environment. Maybe it's time we reimagine what the American dream can look like.

Why do we have grass lawns?

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