The Grass is Greener

by Tom Fort

  Scott’s The Art of Beautifying Suburban Home Grounds is the most complete expression of the philosophy which inspired the creators of the first suburbs. The principal drawback of the English aristocratic model – the stately home in its park – is characterized by Scott as ‘the isolation and loneliness of the habitual inmates of the house – the ladies’. No one can be happy thus, he contends; we were not meant to live in this way.

  Our panacea is to take country life as a famishing man should take food … in very small quantities. From half an acre to four or five acres will afford ground enough to give all the finer pleasures of country life. This kind of half-country, half-town life is the happy medium and the realizable ideal for the majority of well-to-do Americans.

  When it came to realizing the ideal, there was only one starting point:

  Of all the external decorations of a home, a well-kept lawn is the most essential. Preserve in one or two places the greatest length of unbroken lawn that the space will admit of … a smooth closely-shaven surface of grass … Neatness and order are as essential to the pleasing effect of ground furniture as of house furniture. No matter how elegant or appropriate the latter may be, it will never look well in the home of a slattern.

  To avoid any such imputation, the lawn had to be cut at least once a week. Fortunately – technological progress coming to the aid of moral imperative – ‘the admirable little hand-mowing machines’ had arrived upon the scene. The vision of suburbanites who ‘may have the pleasure of doing their own mowing without the wearisome bending of the back incident to the use of the scythe’ moved Scott to a state of spiritual ecstasy:

  Whoever spends the early hours of one summer day, while the dew spangles the grass, in pushing these grass cutters over a velvety lawn, breathing the fresh sweetness of the morning and the perfume of new-mown hay, will never rest contented again in the city.

  The link between the condition of a lawn and the moral rectitude or otherwise of its owner was established overtly and explicitly in the United States, whereas in Britain it has remained, if it can be said to have taken root at all, nebulous and implicit. This may well explain why, in America, the science of grass culture secured governmental backing and financial support at an early stage, while in Britain it has never enjoyed these dubious blessings. The lawn became a facet of the ‘American way of life’, one to which it was deemed proper to devote scientific and economic resources. If grass was intrinsically good, it followed that better grass must be better. A powerful research impetus took hold, and with it the notion of achievable perfection.

  The way towards that goal was opened by the mechanical mower. The first patents for American lawn-mowers were registered in 1868, and the possibilities they offered were embraced with enthusiasm. For a time the choice of what sort of lawn to grow escaped the attention of the arbiters of propriety. In a book published in 1888, Charles Flint recommended a mixture of meadow foxtail, various fescues, ryegrass of two or three types, timothy, conventional meadow grass and assorted clover: a diversity capable of producing a pleasing lawn without excessive labour in a wide variety of soil and climatic conditions. But the puritan tendency was already at work.

  By the late 1890s standards of correctness in lawn care were being laid down by the new United States Department of Agriculture. The chief authority was the senior agronomist, F. Lamson-Scribner. His primary article of faith was hardly original – that ‘nothing is more beautiful than a well-kept lawn … the most fascinating and delightful feature in landscape gardening’. But this banality was then invested with a moral dimension bordering on the sinister: ‘There is nothing which more strongly bespeaks the character of the owner than the treatment and adornment of lawns upon his place.’

  Secure on his high plateau of virtue, Lamson-Scribner looked out over his land of opportunity – encompassing sun-blasted plain, forested hills, tropical swamps and temperate, rolling farmland, with every variety of climatic condition known on earth – and arrogated to himself the task of deciding what constituted the proper American lawn. There could be no bastardizing of seed. The sole true way was ‘a single variety of grass, with a smooth even surface, uniform colour, and an elastic turf which has become, through constant care, so fine and so close in texture as to exclude weeds which, when appearing, should at once be removed’.

  In 1901 the American Congress voted a budget of $17,000 for the study of grass cultivation. It was a declaration of intent and independence. America acknowledged that the little island across the Atlantic, uniquely favoured for the purpose by its climate and history, had given birth to the lawn and had led the way in the first stages of social and mechanical development. But that chapter was closed. From now on, America was to take the lead. America, building on the accidental achievement and commendable but limited curiosity of the British, would show what could be done. Human ingenuity, nourished by energy, cash and a sense of civic pride and responsibility, would achieve perfection; which, in the American way, would then be made available to all who could afford it. Forget nature, forget diversity, forget that the people were spread across desert, swamp and mountain, in conditions as different from the gentle climes of the north-east as from those on the surface of the moon. A myth was made, the Holy Grail of the Promised Lawn offered in a plot of one-third of an acre outside the front door.

  This vision has driven the evolution of the American lawn in the 20th century. It was, of course, a fraud, a snare and a delusion. But it was so cunningly packaged, its appearance so temptingly accessible: a mere expanse of vegetation. The means to achieve it were readily available: seed, machinery, tonics to promote health, weapons against enemies. All that was required, it seemed, was effort and careful attention to the words of the high priests. And when the vision proved elusive, the reasons were at hand. The seed was not right. The machine was defective. The range of aids was too primitive, the enemies too numerous and resourceful, the expert words not expert enough, the effort and commitment insufficient.

  We may acquit that obscure agronomist, Lamson-Scribner, of motives of materialism. He doubtless believed that he had identified a moral truth, and in doing so had advanced the cause of progress. He was not to know that behind him would come men of capitalist inclination, intent on exploiting his preaching, not for the benefit of mankind, but to do business. They would apprehend that the vision of the Promised Lawn could never be achieved; but that considerable commercial possibilities might be realized by concealing this fact from those inspired by the ideal. The search for the Grail spurred a flood of words, a clanking armoury of hardware, an arsenal of chemical weapons, an incalculable expenditure of time, effort and cash. And still it remains where Grails were meant to be: just out of reach.

  F. Scott Fitzgerald exploited the convention that a man could be judged by the size and condition of his lawn to telling effect in The Great Gatsby. From Gatsby’s mansion on Long Island stretch great sweeps of resplendent turf, down to the sea and across to the boundary with the property of his neighbour, Nick Carraway – the narrator of the story, a man whose lack of social consequence is reflected in his paltry, scruffy grass. Carraway is neither surprised nor affronted when Gatsby’s gardener arrives with mower to ‘erase the dark line where my ragged lawn ended and the darker, well-kempt expanse of his began’. There is no physical barrier between the two, but economically and socially that dark line is a chasm between one who matters and one who does not. One of the morals of the tale is the fragility and impermanence of status. At the end, when Gatsby is dead and his greatness has been brought to nothing, Nick find that ‘the grass in his lawn had grown as long as mine’.

  A burgeoning turf industry fastened upon the convention. A promotion on behalf of the Coldwell Lawn Mower proclaimed the message: ‘The observer invariably judges the character of a homeowner by the care that is given to the lawn. Seldom, if ever, do you find the owner of a magnificent home neglecting his lawn.’

  A Coldwell mower would doubtless assist in the acquisition of status. Bu
t the question was: were its cutters engaging with the right stuff?

  The pull of the English ideal was still powerful. Barwell’s Imported English Seed Mixture promised the discerning purchaser the chance to

  possess the perfect English lawn. Old England’s historic estates are carpeted with the most beautiful stretches of lawn. Through centuries of careful study and trial, coarse undesirable grasses have been supplanted by a uniform durable species, almost the texture of velvet …

  This nonsense dates from 1911. A few years later, in 1917, an alliance was formed which was to dictate the direction of turf research to the present day. Its focus was on providing an American solution to an American need, and the first requirements were cash and power. Both became available in abundance when the United States Department of Agriculture joined forces with the United States Golf Association.

  Golf is a game, or – according to Arthur Ransome – ‘a laborious form of open-air patience in which you hit a ball, walk earnestly after it, and hit it again’. But in the United States, within a matter of decades after the laying of the first course at Ardsley, New York, in 1888, it became a powerful social force. It combined many characteristics which could double as social aspirations. It was healthy, but not arduous; competitive, but not dangerously so; outdoors, but not of the wilderness; solitary and sociable. It could be enjoyed by the young, those in the prime of life, and the ancient; by men and women; by the exceedingly rich, the aspiring rich, and the merely well-to-do (though generally in different places). It could be played for fun, or for money; by amateurs and professionals, by bunglers and geniuses. It reflected society, and society’s organizing structures transferred very easily to the golf club. Golf had to be codified. There must be committees to draw up the rules, arrange the matches, appoint the officers, issue decrees on dress, manners, who was to be allowed into what bar at what time, with whom. It had the comforting air of being democratic, while in fact being organized hierarchically, those with the most money and the best contacts being found at the top. Its allure was felt by all sections of the white, professional classes, as well as by the idle rich. In time, the embrace between the golf club and society would become closer still, with the evolution of the ‘fairway lifestyle’, whose physical manifestation was a golf course into which the homes of the members were integrated.

  The rich men who formed the golf clubs required the best of everything – starting with the best possible surface on which to strike their white balls. And they were prepared to pay for it. In 1916 a seed company, O. M. Scott and Sons, from Marysville, Ohio, supplied five thousand pounds of bluegrass seed to the Brentwood Golf Club on Long Island. It did not take Scott and Sons long to awaken to the potential of this market; and not much longer after that to start exploring the even greater possibilities of representing the standards of the putting green as suitable for the domestic lawn. In 1928 the partnership between the Department of Agriculture and the US Golf Association was cemented by the setting up of a research station at Arlington where a swarm of experts were to be found poring over five hundred experimental plots of grass. The seedsmen from Ohio were in the vanguard of the movement which sought to persuade the American consumer that the fruits of this boffinry were available to him. ‘Scotts’ Creeping Bent for Perfect Lawns! Sod in six weeks! A rich velvety stretch of lawn that chokes weeds before they can grow! A deep, thick uniform turf that makes your home a beauty spot … like the deep green pile of a Turkish carpet …’

  The alliance of government and golf had by now become tripartite, with the recruitment of the Gardening Club of America. The Gardening Club’s newsletter was the ideal means to spread the word of Mr Lamson-Scribner as made real in the rich earth of the Arlington research station. The glad tidings that the Promised Lawn was at hand went forth to millions of aspiring households.

  But all the exhortations and soothing scientific counsel could not disguise an awkward truth. For a combination of climatic, economic and sociological reasons, none of these super-refined single species of grass seed was remotely suitable for the domestic lawn. There was a deep divide between the putting green with its support system of green-keepers armed with every machine and chemical science could devise, and the front or back yard stretch of turf dependent on its untutored owner, with a living to earn and a budget to manage. The proportions of that divide were implicitly recognized in a Garden Club newsletter of 1931 which advised that the lawn needed to be completely remade each spring and autumn.

  The Wall Street Crash, the depression and the Second World War put a brake on the spread of the American lawn. But its place in that complex system of symbols known as the American Way was already secure. In 1944 the magazine House Beautiful enlisted its appeal in the war effort: ‘Wherever the GI is he dreams of velvety lawns, beautiful flowers … he wants to come home to them. Keep them growing their best, awaiting that day! They will contribute immeasurably toward a winning home front.’

  The end of the conflict and the return of the GIs to the land of promise initiated the biggest sustained house-building boom in history. ‘How can we expect to sell democracy in Europe until we prove that within the democratic system we can provide decent homes for our people?’ demanded Harry Truman during his 1948 presidential campaign. Once elected, he and Congress engineered the release of tens of billions of dollars to elevate a generation into a new home-owning middle class. Each year between 1947 and 1964, an average of one and a quarter million new homes came into being, almost all of them on plots which society dictated were, or should become, lawns. It is estimated that in 1960 there were thirty million American lawns, a total which was being added to at the rate of at least half a million each year.

  The ideological orthodoxy, linking a man’s lawn with his worth, remained unchallenged, and indeed strengthened its hold. People moving into what was to become the single most celebrated new housing development in America – Levittown, on Long Island, a cityless suburb of seventeen thousand box-like homes – were required by the creator, William Levitt, to sign a contract obliging them to ‘cut or cause to be cut the lawn at least once a week between April 1st and November 15th’. If they failed, the grass was cut for them and they were charged.

  ‘Not to mow’, stated the magazine Better Homes and Gardens, ‘is to attack one’s neighbours, lowering the value of their homes and calling into question the integrity of the street and the cultural norms it represents.’ What had begun as a convention rapidly acquired the force almost of statute, its moral logic demanding wider application. In 1950 the vice-president of the mighty corporation which had blossomed from that Ohio seed company, Charles B. Mills of Scotts, asserted that the condition of municipal lawns mirrored government probity as surely as that of home lawns reflected family virtue. The lesson according to Scotts went out across the land, via the company’s long-established newsletter, which by 1960 had four million subscribers.

  The task of educating the multitudes of new homeowners inspired the turfgrass industry to prodigies of technical and marketing effort, and to a massively profitable expansion. In his homily on the moral importance of the lawn, Mr Mills listed the equipment required to keep its virtue in top condition. The hardware comprised mower, aerator, perforator, cart, sprinkler, sweeper and roller; all to be supported by a complex system of nutrients and poisons. The arming of the American homeowner for his yard crusade mushroomed into a multi-billion dollar industry.

  The attendant marketing propaganda was overwhelmingly masculine in tone and direction, even when – as in this 1953 promotion – a nod was attempted to the female of the species:

  Mowing is a man’s job … but here’s a tip for wives whose husbands are about to buy a mower. Unless your lawn is the kind that obligingly stops growing when hubby just can’t find time to mow it, you’d better slip your arm through his when he goes mower shopping … make sure it’s one you can handle.

  In general, though, the message was insistently maleoriented: ‘Which house’s boss has the Clemson? The one wit
h the well-trimmed lawn, every time.’

  Nor could women reasonably be expected to involve themselves in the chemical side of the campaign. It required a soldier’s mind to comprehend the variety of adversaries ranged against the lawn, and to understand how the corresponding array of counter-measures should be deployed.

  The lawn’s foes were grouped into two categories: vegetable and animal. Among the factions in the vegetable camp were plantains, dandelions, ragweed and the like. But the worst was crabgrass. At its most innocent, it would make your lawn ‘look as unkempt as a man with a threeday beard’. More often, it was likened to a fifth columnist, malignantly dedicated to the sabotage and overthrow of an American institution. In the early days, the recommended treatments were based on either arsenate or mercury, both of which were toxic to humans and animals, and neither of which was very effective. Then came cyanamide, and then potassium cyanate, with the command: ‘Knock out your lawn’s worst enemy … KILL IT SO IT STAYS KILLED.’

  But it was little use exterminating the weeds if what was left was devoured or destroyed by beasts. Like the enemy in the Malayan jungle, invisible but deadly, the creatures were swarming in to do their evil work: grubs, beetles, caterpillars, cockchafers, earwigs, ants, worms. Once again the scientists came to the rescue, with a chemical dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, known affectionately as DDT. ‘The atomic bomb of the insect world’ they characterized it affectionately. Nothing could stand against it. The creeping, chomping hordes were routed. Used in conjunction with chlordane – which obliterated earthworms and the hated Japanese beetle grub – DDT saved the American lawn from its enemies.

  At the same time that the laboratory scientists were devising new methods of destruction, the agronomists at the research stations were grappling with the enduring problem of what grass to grow. The single species doctrine of Lamson-Scribner had proved unsustainable in the face of climatic realities. One early success seemed to realize the dream of Frederick Winslow Taylor of time-and-motion fame, who spent the last years of his life scrutinizing a vast assembly of sods from all over the world, and forecast that one day it would be possible to produce grass ‘in much the same way that an article is manufactured in a machine shop or factory’. In 1950 this panacea went on the market, grass seed planted in factory-made sheets of cellulose which was to be cut into the required shape. ‘Thousands of home-owners now have a weapon with which to outwit their old enemy, Mother Nature,’ the advertisements proclaimed.