In the 1837 edition of his Guide for Emigrants to the West, a Baptist
missionary called John Mason
Peck described the process he had watched in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, and Michigan for nearly
20 years. His account will apply in broad outline to the great movements that cleared all the
continents of the earth.
"Three classes, like the waves of the ocean, have rolled one after the other.
First comes the
pioneer, who depends chiefly upon the natural growth of vegetation . . . and the proceeds of
hunting. His implements of agriculture are rude, chiefly of his own make, and his efforts directed
mainly to a crop of corn [maize] and a 'truck patch' . . . a rude garden .... The next class . . .
purchase the lands, add field to field, clear out the roads, throw rough bridges over the streams, put
up hewn log houses . . . occasionally plant orchards, build mills, school houses, court houses,
etc., and exhibit the pictures and forms of plain, frugal, civilized lives. Another wave rolls on. The
men of capital and enterprise come .... The small village rises to a spacious town or city .... All
the
refinements, luxuries, elegancies, and fashions are in vogue . . . ."
Here, in miniature, is the history of agricultural man.
Cultivated space is also the history of urban man. In
Schrebergärten
in Germany today we see
some evidence community gardens that were first developed as a social program in nineteenth-
century Berlin. Residents
were allotted plots in green belts at the periphery of the city, giving them
the opportunity to seek respite from the confines of their urban lives by traveling a short distance
to
work in a food and flower garden. On each plot they would construct a small cottage, and many
relocated to these tiny shelters after the city was bombed during World War II. Visiting these
gardens, which can still be found throughout Germany, is like stepping into either some agrarian
past or a utopian future. This observation was made by Fritz Haeg in his book, 'Go
for an edible
estate: the case against lawns'.In contrast, the
American lawn he said is an almost entirely symbolic. Aristocratic English
spectacle and drama which has degenerated into a bland garnish for our endless suburban sprawl
and alienation. The monoculture of one plant species covering our neighborhoods from coast to
coast celebrates puritanical homogeneity and mindless conformity. An occasional lawn for
recreation can be a delight, but most of them are occupied only when they are being tended.
Today's lawn has become the default surface for any defensible private space. If you don't know
what to put there, plant grass seed and keep watering. Driving around most neighborhoods you will
see lush beds of grass being tended on narrow unused strips of land. In the United States we plant
more grass than any other crop: currently lawns cover more than thirty million acres. Given the way
we lavish precious resources on it and put it everywhere that humans go, aliens landing in any
American city today would assume that grass must be the most precious earthly substance of all.
Yet the lawn devours resources while it pollutes. It is maniacally groomed with mowers
and
trimmers powered by the two-stroke motors that are responsible for much of our greenhouse gas
emissions. Hydrocarbons from mowers react with nitrogen oxides in the presence of sunlight to
produce ozone. To eradicate invading plants the lawn is drugged with pesticides and herbicides,
which are then washed into our water supply with sprinklers and hoses, dumping our increasingly
rare fresh drinking resource down the gutter.
