 | By Abby RussoCommunications Intern |
The following blog was written by one of our Summer 2017 interns. For more information about our internships, visit our internship page here.
Imagine the perfect suburban house in the perfect suburban neighborhood. I’ll bet you’re envisioning a house decked out with a well-watered, green lawn. Somewhere along the line, turf grass lawns have become synonymous with suburbia and are so widespread that they collectively take up more area than all the cropland cultivated in the United States. To maintain these lawns, suburbanites such as myself waste resources like potable water and introduce harmful chemicals into the environment. Most people cultivate their lawns without even questioning the tradition that leads all the way back to an 18th century Englishman named Lancelot “Capability” Brown.
“Capability” Brown was a prolific landscape architect operating out of England in the 18th century and is recognized for creating the image of the English countryside and more recently with the creation of the suburban aesthetic. Brown designed the grounds of English country estates and mansions in an imitation of nature, defining his works with sweeping fields of grass and clusters of trees cut through by serpentine rivers. The simplicity of his work was so great that his contemporaries feared it would be lost to history because it so closely resembled nature.
Brown had a sweeping effect on the English landscape and designed or collaborated on approximately 260 landscapes, over 150 of which still exist and can be visited today. One of which is Highclere Castle, the setting of Grantham mansion on Downton Abbey. Allegedly Brown picked up the nickname “Capability” due to his habit of telling his clients that in the right hands, their lands had “great capabilities.” As their landscaper, he was the expert.
Alas, the dream of the idyllic English countryside could not last forever, and in the post World War II world, people living on larger parcels of land had to divide up their estates, deconstructing some of Brown’s designs. While trying to reconfigure the English identity, develop infrastructure and disassociate themselves from Eastern Europe, the English adopted a policy of “adaptive reuse,” transferring Brown’s stylistic ideals to designs used in suburban planning. Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, lawn culture spread to North America as well.
Brown’s work clearly has a place in history and English culture, but it may also be time to consider alternatives to Capability’s designs. Suburban lawns consume an excess of potable water and their maintenance results in methane pollution from lawn mowers and harmful runoff from fertilizers. One alternative to the turf grass tradition is to replace cultivated turf grass with native grasses that require less resources since they have adapted to flourish in your environment. Other options include creating a rock garden or planting a vegetable garden.
If you aren’t feeling like transgressing against the suburban aesthetic, there are plenty of ways to decrease waste while still caring for turf grass as well. Try being more environmentally friendly by avoiding harmful pesticides or using a lawn mower that doesn’t require fuel. Also, allowing a mixture of turf grass and other plants to grow instead of weeding creates a more resilient lawn that can withstand greater use. Conserving water by avoiding using an excess that might run off the lawn or evaporate is another way to mindfully maintain a turf grass lawn.
Capability Brown may have created a major facet of the English identity, but he also influenced a tradition of excess that has persisted over the years. Instead of continuing to manufacture an idealized version of nature, it might be time to start concentrating on letting it be.