Was the grass always greener...?
Lawn care through the ages
BY Lynn Cunningham
Medieval Period Lawn lore has it that castle-dwellers protected their turf, literally, by having their peons scythe down grass surrounding their strongholds, the better to spy advancing enemies.
1640s Early colonists in America grow imported grass and clover to feed their grazing livestock, the native plants already having been devoured by their ravening cows and sheep. What has become known as Kentucky bluegrass proves to be particularly successful, although it’s as indigenous as koala bears, since it comes from Europe and the Middle East. One of its attributes: an ability to survive grazing—and mowing.
Mid-18th century Grass seed isn’t the only thing imported to the New World. The sweeping green expanse made popular by European aristocrats (and kept short by ravening livestock) starts being adopted by lesser landholders. This practice was briefly revived during World War I by Woodrow Wilson, who grazed sheep on the White House lawn to publicize the wartime labour-saving campaign.
Late 19th century The United States Department of Agriculture defines the platonic ideal of the lawn: “a single variety of grass with a smooth, even surface, uniform colour and an elastic turf which has become, through constant care, so fi ne and so close in texture as to exclude weeds, which, appearing, should be at once removed.”
1962 Rachel Carson, often credited with propagating the environmental movement, publishes Silent Spring, which raises the alarm about the widespread use of pesticides, particularly DDT. Coincidentally or not, production of the latter, dubbed the “atomic bomb of the insect world,” peaks at 82 million kilograms the same year. The chemical was largely banned in the U.S. in 1972; Canada caught up in 1985.
1990s On the country’s cultivated land, the biggest “crop” is “industrial” lawns. “Though vegetal,” one opponent declares, such a swath “is artificial in that it only attains its emerald splendour when subjected to a perpetual torture.”
2005 Almost 30 percent of households use pesticides on their lawns, although in Manitoba the proportion reaches 44 percent. Quebec trends sharply in the opposite direction, where use drops to 15 percent, half what it was in 1994. The most probable explanation is the so-called Hudson decision, in which the Supreme Court ruled that a pesticide ban imposed by the town of Hudson, Quebec, was legal, citing the “precautionary principle”— essentially a better-safe-than-sorry approach to environmental issues.
2007 Toronto has had a pesticide ban in effect for two years and offers advice on creating “natural” lawns and gardens on its website (Plant “[l]ots of perennials and native plants, selected specifi cally for light and water requirements”). In late August it also sends a crew to raze a city resident’s natural garden that she had cultivated for 10 years. Among the plants destroyed are native species like butterfl y milkweed and cardinal flowers, as well as a red oak tree. The city then billed her $200 for its services.
