Problems with the English Lawn in America
Problems with the English lawn in America.
Time to think about the lawn.
We need to figure out how to help it survive. We need to mow it. Then we need to trim the edge of it as well. They are the chores that we hope will keep the lawn looking perfect.
The lawn remains a reminder of America’s love of the English garden.
English writer and landscape gardener William Robinson, referred to as the father of the English flower garden, wrote in 1870, “The lawn is the heart of the true English Garden.”
Yet Andrew Jackson Downing, America’s premiere nineteenth century landscape gardener, knew that Americans could not cultivate a lawn like the English.
In the new book Flora Illustrata landscape architect Judith Major writes, “Downing admitted in The Horticulturist that the hot, sunny American summer does not favor the type of fine lawns that thrive under British conditions, yet writers on landscape architecture continued to promote the lawn.”
During the nineteenth century garden writers, who were sometimes also seed company or nursery owners as well, sought to sell grass seed. The lawn became the essential planting in the home landscape.
Rochester, New York seedsman James Vick (1818-1882) wrote in his magazine Vick’s Illustrated Monthly in August, 1878, “A well kept lawn, with a few beautiful trees and a belt or group or two of shrubbery on the border, needs but little other adornment.”
On that same page and above his words appeared this illustration of a house with its required well trimmed front lawn. [Below]
Thus he encouraged the lawn both in his words and his magazine illustration.
Here is another Vick black line drawing from his seed catalog of 1880. [below] Notice again the central role the lawn plays.
So it was no surprise that Downing had a difficult battle trying to convince Americans that a lawn like the English cultivate was not possible on American soil.
To this day, however, we have not stopped in our quest for that perfect lawn.
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There have been many cultivars of grass that have been developed over the past century and a half to overcome the difficulties of heat, low rain, etc., and in many parts of the US grass is indeed the easiest, lowest-maintenance covering for yards. Perhaps not in the southwestern US, but in most other places. -Beth
Beth, new cultivars of grasses certainly help us address the issue of lawn maintenance. I appreciate your insight there.
The lawn in America is certainly not a black and white situation. The location of your lawn, for example in the southwest, certainly remains a factor in our ever present need to cultivate a lawn since we assume everybody else does so.
On a trip to Reno last week I toured several gardens, most with lawns of various sizes. There I also saw the use of stone, gravel, and plants like agave as well as cactus in the home landscape where one might have expected to find a lawn.