What caused monoculture grass lawns to become the norm in many places? What were lawns like before this transition?
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It started as pastures for animals.
It then progressed in Europe into “look how rich I am, that I can afford to waste land, labour, water, etc on grass that we grow just to cut down.”
An imperfect analogy, but its the same reason why countertops are made of the same material or the reason to pull weeds in a flower garden. It is just aesthetically pleasing.
As a lawn obsessed American, I think it is a desire to have it neat and clean looking. I dont think its much of a status thing anymore, but i do take pride in doing it well. Its also a pleasure to get outside and work the land a bit.
And before I get a bunch of crap for watering, fertilizing, etc., I live where the grass grows without additional water and I like organic fertilizer anyway. And its only a few hundred square feet.
The monoculture lawns you often see in the US are partly the product of herbicides used to control weeds.
Lawn seed in the US (a fair few decades ago) used to come with a variety of grasses included in it, including things like clover, which has several beneficial impacts on the lawn ecology.
But then there was a fashion move towards pristine lawns – not necessarily targeting things like clover, but more dandelions, crabgrass, etc. The weed selection varies by region. So herbicide products came out that target these leafy “weeds”.
But the herbicides are “broad spectrum” and wipe out virtually everything that isn’t grass, including plants that were previously considered normal in lawns. The lawn care and herbicide companies did a marketing push to sell the idea of a uniform lawn free of anything other than select grasses as the “ideal” as part of their strategy to get people to overlook wiping out beneficial plants during their lawn care treatments.
Over time this led to a move of viewing anything other than the right type of grasses as weeds and an aesthetic desire for an extremely uniform lawn.
Lawns became popular because prior to the industrial revolution and then subsequent suburbanization in the following decades. Only the wealthy could afford lawns. For one you actually had to own enough land to have a lawn, and then painstakingly maintaining it would require either a lot of personal work or hiring A grounds keeper.
So having a lawn became a status symbol and something special (and still kind of is for people in cities). Along with having the nicest Looking lawn, which tends to be a monoculture one since it is uniform.
Prior to that, the land just grew whatever was growing on it, some people would maintain pastures by having any animals they had graze it, but otherwise any areas that weren’t getting used or walked across (trodding down the plants) just grew whatever was there.
Where else are you going to play grass sports like croquet?
Lawns originated in medieval times as clearings around castles. You can’t have trees or brush right up to the castle or won’t see the enemy. So they got cut down and short-ish grass put in so no one could hide. They were often used for grazing so weren’t as manicured.
Lawns stayed as hybrid grazing fields in the Middle Ages but were also frequently around the homes of very wealthy landowners and there was still an element of security involved. See the transition from castles to manors.
Some places called ‘lawns’ are still more or less just tightly grazed pastures, which look quite a bit like a modern lawn.
This influence transitioned in the lawn in the 17th century, when the concept of the decorative garden (pulled from France) and the walkway and gathering spaces made from plants (grass is the best plant for foot traffic, and creates a fairly uniform surface). Versailles is somewhat credited with one of, if not the first purely decorative garden lawn. This became a big trend among wealthy landowners and took off in England. This love was exported to America and used among the wealthiest Americans. Some founding fathers had lawns.
Lawns were the domain of the ultra wealthy for a long time as they had to be cut manually which was labour intensive. Having a lawn was a big sign of status, because it wasn’t productive land. Some early parks were in place in urban areas, and lawns were the style particularly in the UK.
The lawn mower’s invention in the 1830s changed the game by opening up what was the domain of the really rich to the only fairly rich. It also opened up more options for grassy playing surfaces and encouraged the growth of sports during the Victorian era.
Lawns were still a big flex but became more common, then as the 20th century appeared the suburbs rose. North America was the epicentre of this due to having lots of cheap land, and wealthier people went to live on it. Lawns were seen as both a landscape aesthetic and as a practical item – places for children to play and people to gather. They also went in hand with setback rules – homes had to be set back from the road for a couple of reasons (driving visibility, walking safety, aesthetic) and lawns filled that gap.
Lawns were still a northeast thing due to weather and limited plants but enhancements in irrigation let it be more of a thing in drier regions of the south.
They were also associated with well-kept landscaping and tended to enhance property values over wild or other land. The modern suburb continues this trend, though we’ll see if it sticks.
Most lawns aren’t actually monocultures as there are a number of species/varieties in any given seed mix (I’m a landscape architect – I specify seed mixes often)
If you’re curious, go to your local garden center and check out what’s listed on the back of a bag of lawn seed. There’s a good amount of science that goes into it and you can even major in it in college (sounds like a drag tbh, but $$$)
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn#Grasses](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawn#Grasses)
THAT BEING SAID… just because there are many species in a lawn and it’s technically “biodiverse” doesn’t mean it’s a well diversified ecosystem that supports native wildlife. It’s like if you had 100 different stocks in your portfolio but they were all in energy and then the energy market crashed… not exactly diverse. Maybe we need a *hedge*… (kms)
I believe the uniform grass lawn game about because some company invented by accident an herbicide and had to figure out a marketable use, so began an ad campaign to claim that lawns “needed” to be uniform in order to sell their product.
I read this somewhere when I was researching how to care for my clover covered lawn but I’m fine with it now.
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