RE: Michael Pollan and the Absurd American Lawn

I walked our dog on a different route yesterday, and encountered a lawn where the front lawn grass had grown up and gone to seed. I briefly looked towards the house’s windows to see if there was any sign of life or activity. Which I think is what is supposed to happen.

In my opinion, Michael Pollan comes tantalizingly close to understanding the American front lawn, making numerous insightful observations and then, like so many others before him, he chooses to vilify the front lawn as an inexplicable American absurdity, rather than exploring what’s really going on. 

What’s fascinating to me is that both Pollan and I shared a common experience – a father that decided to stop mowing our respective suburban front lawns. Pollan was growing up in Farmingdale, Long Island. I lived an hour and a half west in suburban New Jersey. According to a 1989 New York Times Magazine article, Pollan isn’t sure why his dad stopped mowing (“laziness or contempt for neighbors?”) while mine was engaging in an iconoclastic agronomic experiment – seeing if the lawn would re-seed itself -- obviating the need to purchase and spread grass seed.

The results were predictable. His neighborhood was a little more contentious, yielding a mix of passive aggressive suggestions (mower broken?) and an eventual confrontation. Where I lived, concerned neighbors solicitously inquired if my father was ill (possibly the only acceptable rationale for not mowing). In both cases, the unmown lawn was quickly noticed by neighbors with rising alarm and led to direct questioning of the household. Whether this reflected genuine concern for the families involved or merely a pecuniary interest in nearby property values is hard to discern, but probably doesn’t matter. They knew something was amiss and that action was required.

Let me explore some of Pollan’s recent assertions. It’s a little more than 28 miles from Webster City, Iowa to Iowa Falls. Both small towns have suburbs with neat green front lawns, the kind of lawns Michael Pollan complained about back in 1989, and recently reprised in a short video The Absurdity of America’s Front Lawns for The Atlantic. In the video, Pollan describes the front lawn as a creature of American suburbs. But that’s not completely accurate. Every farmstead between Webster City and Iowa Falls, as far as you care to look in any direction on GoogleEarth has a front lawn. So there is something else more pervasive about lawns than simply being bizarre suburban artifacts. For some reason/s, farmers need them too.

Pollan is right, of course, about all the water, fertilizer, acreage, biocides, and gasoline lavished on front lawns, but instead of concluding all this expenditure must be in service of something valuable and questing to discern what that might be, instead he lambastes American single family homeowners as engaging in “absurd” behavior. 

“The front yard belongs to the community as much as it does to you.” This is an important insight that some miss, and Pollan is correct in distinguishing the crucially different roles front and backyards* play. The front yard is the buffer between the life of the public street (or sidewalk) and the private household. Even though Christopher Alexander didn’t believe in setbacks (Pattern 122) he did understand the need for Entrance Transition (Pattern 112), astutely noting in 1977 “There is another argument which helps to explain the importance of the transition: people want their house, and especially the entrance, to be a private domain. If the front door is set back, and there is a transition space between it and the street, this domain is well established. This would explain why people are often unwilling to go without a front lawn, even though they do not “use it”.

So, the “unused” front lawn functions as a green moat – enabling the dog to provide early warning about UPS deliveries, and enabling parents to see trick or treaters approaching. It’s a great place for yard sales, and the correct location for animated Halloween decorations and (where feasible) snowmen, which the neighbors are meant to see.

“How well you take care of your lawn is the way you express your solidarity with your neighbors – it’s a gesture to your neighbors as much as it is to you.”Yes, it is a gesture to neighbors, but the front lawn is an expression of solidarity with your neighbors no more than crowing is a symbol of rooster solidarity. 

As far as I can tell, how one’s lawn is maintained is a representation of the general fitness of the occupant (or landlord). For some, this becomes a competitive exercise, an effort to assert dominance by approaching the perfect, green carpet, lawn. But in many neighborhoods what is important is not so much what is growing, but how often it is cut. Why is that?

Neighbors are consciously and subconsciously intensely curious about their neighbors. They are skilled in reading the neighborhood landscape. The big cardboard box by the curb that signals a new flat-screen TV. That new paint job – are they thinking of selling? Two newspapers in the drive – away for the weekend? No garbage can on trash day – what’s with that? But these are ephemeral, rapidly changing data points laden with too many ambiguities. 

At the other extreme is the old house with the curling shingles, peeling paint, and the overgrown yard. Everyone has known and gossiped about the unfortunate trajectory of those owners for years. 

What is needed, by neighbors, is a mechanism to discern what is going on inside the home that falls somewhere between interpreting curbside trash and waiting for incontrovertible, obvious neglect to manifest itself after a neighbor family has disintegrated. A chance to act, either to be helpful or corrective, before it is too late.

The answer is the front lawn. Grass an inch or two high? Maybe they are on vacation. Grass going to seed -- maybe she left him? The lawn operates on an intermediate time scale that enables neighbors to make inferences about how the household is holding up. When the occupants get dysfunctional, one of the first symptoms is seen in the front lawn.

“The front yard becomes purely a symbol.”I don’t see the front lawn as symbol, but rather more of a channel that neighbors, visitors, realtors, the police and others tune into to interpret what is going on in the household. A regularly mown lawn communicates that the occupant is 1)present, 2)competent, 3)aware of social norms, and 4)has the capacity (either doing their own mowing or paying someone) to maintain a lawn. It says: “Don’t worry about us, we’re still here and doing okay.” 

Today, when I walked the dog, the lawn had been mowed, and, now curious, I stopped to study the house. The pots outside the front door held lifeless plants. There were no curtains and I could see a stepladder inside leaning against a window. The house is vacant and I really only noticed because the lawn hadn’t been mowed. Bingo. Another lawn success story.

Just because I believe front lawns are appropriate rather than absurd, doesn’t mean I applaud the extravagance currently involved. There needs to be a way to consume less fertilizer, water, biocides, energy, and time and still provide virtually all of the current lawn functions. 

Unfortunately, I don’t think native, shrubby landscapes are going to do it, because neighbors don’t have a standard for what they should look like – no way for them to tell a managed native landscape (competent occupants) from a wild one (crisis inside the home). 

In theory, the front yard vegetable garden might work for low-growing plants, but the opacity of tall tomatoes, bean poles, corn, etc. argue against (not to mention the pilferage – it’s usually a mistake to plant a lychee or a mango in the front yard here in Florida.)

Some people have switched to front 'lawn' pebbles, which might make sense in arid areas, but in wetter areas, rocks lead to herbicide use because plants find their way in, and rocks don't produce any oxygen.

So, what could work? First, switch from water- and fertilizer-intensive groundcovers, abandoning grasses if necessary. This could be low growing natives or exotics so long as the result is a mowable green expanse and not bare soil. Second, and most importantly, reduce the overall lawn extent --  a six or eight foot wide strip along the street could serve as a barometer of household fitness and in modest lots, that could be mowed with an electric string trimmer. 

Watch Pollan’s video and study your neighbors. I’m optimistic you’ll conclude they are not absurdists, but rather generally rational folks with legitimate interests in front lawns. Then set an example to help your neighbors reduce the impact of this generally appropriate American phenomenon. 

* Backyard items and activities traditionally included children's play equipment, sheds, other outbuildings, swimming pools, boat storage, barbecue/grilling, sunbathing, gardens, fruit trees, and miscellaneous outdoor storage.