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Authors: David Feldman
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Grow Lawns Around Our Houses?
At first blush, this Imponderable seems easily solved. Lawns are omnipresent in residential neighborhoods and even around multiunit dwellings in all but the most crowded urban areas. Lawns are pretty.
Enough said.
But think about it again. One could look at lawns as a monumental waste of ecological resources. Today, there are approximately 55
million home lawns in the United States, covering 25 to 30 million acres. In New Jersey, the most densely populated state, nearly one-fifth of the entire land area is covered with turfgrass , twice as much land as is used for crop production. Although turfgrass is also used for golf courses and public parks, most is planted for lawns. The average home lawn, if used for growing fruits and vegetables, would yield two thousand dollars worth of crops. But instead of this land becoming a revenue
WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 47
generator, it is a “drainer”: Americans spend an average of several hundred dollars a year to keep their lawns short and healthy.
If the purpose of lawns is solely ornamental, why has the tradition persisted for eons, when most conceptions of beauty change as often as the hem length of women’s dresses? The Chinese grew lawns five thousand years ago, and circumstantial evidence indicates that the Mayans and Aztecs were lawn fanciers as well. In the Middle Ages, monarchs let their cattle run loose around their castles, not only to feed the animals, but to cut the grass so that advancing enemy forces could be spotted at a distance. Soon, aristocrats throughout Europe adopted the lawn as a symbol of prestige (“if it’s good enough for the king, it’s good enough for me!”). The games associated with lawns—bowls, croquet, tennis—all started as upper-class diversions.
The lawn quickly became a status symbol in colonial America, just as it was in Europe. Some homeowners used scythes to tend their lawns, but most let animals, particularly sheep, cows, and horses, do the work. In 1841, the lawn mower was introduced, much to the delight of homeowners, and much to the dismay of grazing animals and teenagers everywhere.
Dr. John Falk, who is associated with the educational research division of the Smithsonian Institution, has spent more time ponder-ing this Imponderable than any person alive, and his speculations are provocative and convincing. Falk believes that our desire for a savannalike terrain, rather than being an aesthetic predilection, is actually a genetically encoded preference. Anthropologists agree that humankind has spent most of its history roaming the grasslands of East Africa. In order to survive against predators, humans needed trees for protection and water for drinking, but also grassland for foraging. If primitive man wandered away into rain forests, for example, he must have longed to return to the safety of his savanna home. As Falk commented in an interview in Omni magazine: “For more than ninety percent of human history the savanna was home.
Home equals safety, and that information has to be fairly hard-wired if the animal is going to respond to danger instantaneously.”
48 / DAVID FELDMAN
When we talked to Dr. Falk, he added more ammunition to support his theories. He has conducted a number of cross-cultural studies to ascertain the terrain preferences of people all over the world. He and psychologist John Balling showed subjects photographs of five different terrains—deciduous forest, coniferous forest, tropical rain forest, desert, and savanna—and asked them where they would prefer to live. The savanna terrain was chosen overwhelm-ingly. Falk’s most recent studies were conducted in India and Nigeria, in areas where most subjects had never even seen a savanna. Yet they consistently picked the savanna as their first choice, with their native terrain usually the second preference.
Falk and Balling also found that children under twelve were even more emphatic in their selection of
At first blush, this Imponderable seems easily solved. Lawns are omnipresent in residential neighborhoods and even around multiunit dwellings in all but the most crowded urban areas. Lawns are pretty.
Enough said.
But think about it again. One could look at lawns as a monumental waste of ecological resources. Today, there are approximately 55
million home lawns in the United States, covering 25 to 30 million acres. In New Jersey, the most densely populated state, nearly one-fifth of the entire land area is covered with turfgrass , twice as much land as is used for crop production. Although turfgrass is also used for golf courses and public parks, most is planted for lawns. The average home lawn, if used for growing fruits and vegetables, would yield two thousand dollars worth of crops. But instead of this land becoming a revenue
WHY DO CLOCKS RUN CLOCKWISE? / 47
generator, it is a “drainer”: Americans spend an average of several hundred dollars a year to keep their lawns short and healthy.
If the purpose of lawns is solely ornamental, why has the tradition persisted for eons, when most conceptions of beauty change as often as the hem length of women’s dresses? The Chinese grew lawns five thousand years ago, and circumstantial evidence indicates that the Mayans and Aztecs were lawn fanciers as well. In the Middle Ages, monarchs let their cattle run loose around their castles, not only to feed the animals, but to cut the grass so that advancing enemy forces could be spotted at a distance. Soon, aristocrats throughout Europe adopted the lawn as a symbol of prestige (“if it’s good enough for the king, it’s good enough for me!”). The games associated with lawns—bowls, croquet, tennis—all started as upper-class diversions.
The lawn quickly became a status symbol in colonial America, just as it was in Europe. Some homeowners used scythes to tend their lawns, but most let animals, particularly sheep, cows, and horses, do the work. In 1841, the lawn mower was introduced, much to the delight of homeowners, and much to the dismay of grazing animals and teenagers everywhere.
Dr. John Falk, who is associated with the educational research division of the Smithsonian Institution, has spent more time ponder-ing this Imponderable than any person alive, and his speculations are provocative and convincing. Falk believes that our desire for a savannalike terrain, rather than being an aesthetic predilection, is actually a genetically encoded preference. Anthropologists agree that humankind has spent most of its history roaming the grasslands of East Africa. In order to survive against predators, humans needed trees for protection and water for drinking, but also grassland for foraging. If primitive man wandered away into rain forests, for example, he must have longed to return to the safety of his savanna home. As Falk commented in an interview in Omni magazine: “For more than ninety percent of human history the savanna was home.
Home equals safety, and that information has to be fairly hard-wired if the animal is going to respond to danger instantaneously.”
48 / DAVID FELDMAN
When we talked to Dr. Falk, he added more ammunition to support his theories. He has conducted a number of cross-cultural studies to ascertain the terrain preferences of people all over the world. He and psychologist John Balling showed subjects photographs of five different terrains—deciduous forest, coniferous forest, tropical rain forest, desert, and savanna—and asked them where they would prefer to live. The savanna terrain was chosen overwhelm-ingly. Falk’s most recent studies were conducted in India and Nigeria, in areas where most subjects had never even seen a savanna. Yet they consistently picked the savanna as their first choice, with their native terrain usually the second preference.
Falk and Balling also found that children under twelve were even more emphatic in their selection of
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