I’ve got a piece in NYT about American vs. British lawns. Here’s a gift link to the article.
A few words on lawns left out in the piece…
One of my most recurring dreams is about my boyhood lawn—front and back. In the dreams, I am an adult planting an apple and peach orchard. I plow the turf grass and plant rows that burst with lettuce, kale, and squash. I dream of planting with not only urgency but with a kind of desperate efficiency—determined to wring life from every square foot, as if survival itself depended on it.
I never entirely understood the meaning behind these dreams. In real life, I’d try to get my mom and dad to plant a fruit tree or grow a garden in our vast backyard.
This is all a set-up for me to say that lawns have long played an outsized role in my subconscious, and it felt liberating to put down in words the saucy critique my psyche has always wanted me to write.
Here’s why I think I have those dreams: The American lawn makes very little sense and could so easily be replaced by something better. (You’ll read about the British lawn revolution in my piece, as an example.) I think lawns are one of the weirdest and least scrutinized aspects of American life—alongside the absurd quantity of commercials we must endure to get through an NFL game, or the million-horsepower, military-grade trucks we buy for grocery runs.e
It’s time for our own lawn revolution—to bring life back to our soulless green-brown mats, to swap monotony for abundance, and to remind homeowners’ associations that they answer to us, not the other way around.
