America out front with lawn obsession

On recent walks around my neighborhood, I noticed several newly resodded front lawns and I realized that some homeowners replace their front lawn more often than they replace their carpet.

That prompted me to finally read, "The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession," a book I purchased years ago, only to have it sit on my bookshelf and collect dust. (I have many such books; I hope to work through them now that I've retired from my job as director of the University of Florida's strawberry breeding program.)

"The Lawn," written by cultural historian Virginia Scott Jenkins and published by the Smithsonian Institution Press, is a fascinating and well-documented expose. Jenkins points out that only in the United States has the front lawn become truly ubiquitous. That's despite the fact that large regions of the country have climates too hot, cold, or dry for turf grasses to grow naturally.

Science and technology, in the form of new grass varieties, power mowers, string trimmers, irrigation systems, synthetic fertilizer, weed killers, and pesticides, have made it possible for homeowners from Florida to California to grow front lawns. They spend billions of dollars on their grass every year, and still, many front lawns fall short of the ideal: a single type of grass, without brown patches, bare spots or intruding weeds, kept neatly edged and mown to a uniform height.

Is a front lawn - an area of seldom-used space - really worth all the time, energy, and money we devote to it?

Before the mid-1800s, very few Americans had lawns.

"The houses in many towns were built close to the street with perhaps a small, fenced front garden," Jenkins writes. "Front lawns did not catch the popular imagination ... until the development of suburban housing after the Civil War."

They didn't become an American icon until after World War II, she writes. Americans moved away from regional landscaping that incorporated local vegetation to a national landscape that equates grassy front yards with happiness.

Now, they're going back. More people are planting shade gardens and beds of low-growing shrubs and perennials in their front yards. They're filling in the in between with stepping-stone paths and mulch.

Ecologically, these landscapes make more sense than a single, non-native plant variety. And many people find them more beautiful and interesting, as well.