I hate to write another tirade against the lawn but this is serious:
New Hope, PA, in early summer is just so green. The word 'verdant' compulsively springs to mind. There is plenty of water, warmth and sunlight. It is a grower's dream. And yet so much of of the land here is tied up in big and I mean BIG unproductive properties. The barn like structure you see behind the house is actually a 6 car garage. There are properties everywhere with rustique signs out front proclaiming something like "Sweet Hills Farm" but often the use of the label 'farm' is as meaningless as it is ubiquitous.
This rant is nothing new. In "Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn" (Haeg et al.) this "essential icon of the American dream" is criticised and a vision of edible food gardens offered as an alternative aspiration. And I think often about how the typical quarter acre Australian block could be transformed. But out here in Bucks County the scale is different. These are huge areas. A single property may accommodate 10, 15 acres of perfectly manicured seas of green. This is land that could feed neighborhoods, cities, nevermind the (on average) 2.7 people who occupy the McMansions on this land. I mean, just, well, why??
...what we are looking at here is a miniature British estate, designed for people who had servants...It has become a cultural status symbol to present a non-productive facade. The lawn and its shrubbery is a forcing of nature and landscape into a salute to wealth and power, and has no other purpose or function. The only thing that such designs demonstrate is that power can force men and women to waste their energies in controlled, menial and meaningless toil.
- Bill Mollison 1991 (Introduction to Permaculture)
And this is just another problem with the lawns . On a walk this morning along potentially quiet back roads (searching for wild food, but that's another blog post) the air was filled with the sound of industrial sized lawn mowers. The guys driving these things might enjoy it but all I could think of was what a freakin' boring job - every few weeks mowing the same stretch of lawn for people who don't even play on it.
Don't despair (I tell myself). There are actual farms out here. And I have seen glimpses of household gardens in the back. And there is an (apparently) burgeoning local food scene. There are a few market gardens and CSA schemes out there which I'll be eagerly visiting. Almost everyone mentions the Stockton Farmers market when we ask about good local food. And sure it seems like it will be a really bourgeoisie place but that goes with the territory and it might be a good start. I'll check it out this Saturday - I guess I could try a few artisanal cheeses and force down some new season strawberries if it's all in the name of research.
hey brit. i went to a workshop on espailer. the guy said that the idea of sprawling lawns originated in the british upper class, what was the guys name again? continuity brown or some weird name like that. this guy was a landscape architect or something who wanted to replicate the feeling of looking out over wilderness but in a tamed way in the english estates. they would even have fences down in a ditch so when you looked out accross your expance of private propery you couldnt see the fences dividing your little flocks of ornamental sheep. meanwhile in france they were making all kinds of kitchen garden breakthroughs like espalier.
ReplyDeletei wanted to share this with you
http://www.northeystreetcityfarm.org.au/docs/Village%20Life%20Case%20Study.pdf
and also, what do you think about visiting you ol home town in the uni break for THIS!
http://studentsofsustainability.org/
oh yeah, the other thing the guy was pointing out was that in order to convince people to get on with creatinga beautiful and productive garden. its helpful to understand that people still hang onto ceartain aesthetics with their roots in traditional english gardens and such. so things like espalier and anything thats controlled can kind of get under peoples defences and around that reaction like 'oh i dont want to have a jungle or a bunch of dirty old bathtubs and plastic in my back yard) if we want to convince people to convert their lawns into gardens and save all those trips to the supermarket, then we need to find ways to make permaculture PRETTY (er) :),
ReplyDeleteSee you at S.O.S. maybe?,
Lachie
hey thanks Lachie! i'll check that pdf out. When is SOS? I'm overseas until mid August.
ReplyDeleteYep, totally agree with you about making food production aesthetically pleasing and non-threatening. It can be done in so many ways and people usually take baby steps rather than giant leaps in any kind of change.
Nice blog, can not wait to see what you discover.
ReplyDelete