Yesterday afternoon I had to make a couple stops there on my way between my shop in Mansfield and the farm. I was daydreaming and missed my turn so I went home via a road that I travelled nearly every day for about 3 years in the late 80s and early 90s when I was a teenager. There were literally hundreds of new houses, all built within the last 13 years or so. Most of these are $250,000-$500,000 homes which is high-end for this area. Many are on about 5 acres. One of the most striking things was the hundreds of acres of spotlessly green, weed-free lawn.
I've been leafing through Permaculture: A Designers' Manual this week as it has sat on my desk ready to be loaned to a fellow blogger. Here is what the author, Bill Mollison, has to say about lawns:
We can clearly see the lawn as the world's "third agriculture," after food gardens and farms. Few people realise just how large this agriculture has become following the development of automated mowers, slashers, "whipper snippers," edgers, plug-cutters, aerators, sprinkler systems, and the development of teaching institutes, journals, retail outlets, and very large firms to service the turf and lawn industry.
It is now probable that the lawn cultures of affluent nations use more water, fertiliser, fossil fuels, biocides, and person-hours than either gardens or the formal broadscale agriculture of that country, or indeed any agricultural resource of the third world. Of the lawns developed today, perhaps 13% have any use in recreation, sport, or as rest areas. Most lawns are purely cosmetic in function. Thus, affluent societies have, all unnoticed, developed an agriculture which produces a polluted waste product, in the presence of famine and erosion elsewhere, and the threat of water shortages at home.
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