Yardwork: Lawn and Order
Welcome to Yardwork, a summer yard and garden miniseries from Outside/In.
We’re sharing three stories about our relationships with the land around us:
the front yard, the backyard, and down the block.
This is part one.
Americans love a lawn. Green grass grows everywhere: on baseball fields, in backyards, in front of strip malls. Collectively, we spend billions of dollars every year keeping them fertilized and watered.
But lawns cost more than money in Western states like Utah. Despite a severe drought, residents of Utah’s towns and cities use more water per capita than any other place in the nation, and a majority of that water goes right into lawns. That’s helping fuel an environmental disaster that could wipe out one of America’s largest inland seas.
In part one of Yardwork, we trace the 600-year history of lawns, explore how they became a symbol of power, wealth, and Whiteness in America, and share tips on how to make a yard more environmentally responsible.
Featuring: Malin Curry, Ira Curry, Kelly Kopp, Zach Frankel, Karen Stenehjel
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LINKS
Check out Malin Curry’s essay on the history of Black Americans and yard work.
To read more about how agriculture and outdoor watering is contributing to the disappearance of the Great Salt Lake, take a look at these two studies.
ProPublica published an excellent investigation into why one of the West’s driest states often rejects aggressive water conservation efforts.
For some great history on lawns, read Paul Robbins’ Lawn People and Virginia Scott Jenkins’ The Lawn: A History of an American Obsession
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi
Editing by Taylor Quimby
Additional editing help from Justine Paradis, Felix Poon, Rebecca Lavoie and Jessica Hunt.
Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer
Special thanks to Sherry Lund, Zach Renstrom, Karry Rathje and Ken Fox.
Music for this episode by Walt Adams, Sture Zetterberg, OTE, Headlund, Roy Edwin Williams, El Flaco Collective, Pulsed, Jimmy Wahlsteen, Both Are Infinite, Airae, and Alfie-Jay Winters.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio
If you’ve got a question for the Outside/In[box] hotline, give us a call! We’re always looking for rabbit holes to dive down. Leave us a voicemail at: 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837). Don’t forget to leave a number so we can call you back.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Justine Paradis: Heads up. There are a couple swears in this episode. Just in case that makes a difference for your listening experience today. Okay, here’s the show.
Nate Hegyi: It’s the spring of 2020. The early days of the pandemic.
People are howling for health care workers…
[SFX of people howling during pandemic]
…Watching Tiger King on Netflix…
Tiger King Clip: Hi everybody! I’m Joseph Maldonado, otherwise known as Joe Exotic…
…but mainly, like, being stuck at home.
Malin Curry: I realized I had a lot of time on my hands and I had a lot of thoughts."
That’s where Malin Curry found himself. 20-something years old, back from college, living with his parents in North Carolina.
And he starts thinking… like…. why the hell is my dad out almost every day… working on his lawn?
Malin Curry: You know, nobody's out. There's no reason to want to make your lawn look perfect and, you know, have these like lattice, you know, fields and all that stuff. There's no reason for that if nobody's going to be out.
But there his dad was. Bending over, picking weeds, Wearing…
Malin Curry: … cargo pants, like an old t shirt. Bucket hat.
Jamming out to motown hits or Crawl by Chris Brown
Malin Curry: He loves that song
This wasn’t just a lockdown hobby. His dad has always been like this. I mean Malin remembers growing up.
Malin Curry: It wasn't a big thing to like get up in the morning on a Saturday and, you know, get in the yard and spend like basically your entire day there because it was something that we were just wanting to do and wanting to make sure that // the yard was as perfect as it could be.
[Yardwork Theme]
I’m Nate Hegyi, this is Outside/In.
Welcome to part one to our new summer series, Yardwork. We’re doing three stories about our relationship with the land that is LITERALLY around us.
And for part one… we are digging into why this country is so obsessed with lawns. Millions of American are just like Malin’s dad… spending lots of money and time caring for their grass.
Why? How did the love affair begin…
Kelly Kopp: I like making it look neat and tidy.
How did lawns become a symbol of racism in America?
Malin Curry: This is something Black Americans were forced to do.
… and are they fueling a water crisis out West?
Zach Frankel: What is the point of this? This is just stupid and ignorant.
Stay tuned.
[theme fades]
If I asked you, before this episode started, what the most common plant grown in the US is, what would you have said?
Corn? Soybeans? Wheat?
You’d be right… BUT turf grass comes in pretty close.
In fact, it’s the single largest irrigated crop in this country. We’re talking 63 thousand square miles of lawn. That’s an area bigger than the state of Georgia. On baseball fields, in backyards, parks… in front of strip malls.
So how did we get here?
<<music>>
This idea of a luscious green lawn wasn’t invented by turf companies or unoccupied dads… it emerged nearly 600 years ago from the imaginations of European artists.
At the time they were painting all sorts of biblical scenes… Jesus dying on the cross, Abraham trying to kill his son, and Adam and Eve hanging out in the Garden of Eden.
Now the bible never gives a detailed description of what the Garden of Eden looks like. So it was up to these artists to essentially… make it up.
And so like Bob Ross, they gave it some happy little trees.
Bob Ross clip: Add a little bright red to that. oh I like that color.
Maybe some goats. Some Cows. And THEN a spot for adam and eve to chill.
Bob Ross clip: Make a little grassy area…
A grassy area.
A lawn.
Bob Ross: Yeah, I like it.
This medieval art… it was designed to warm up cold castle walls. Give something for the lords and ladies to look at.
But over the years, these super rich families wanted more than just paintings and tapestries. They wanted their own real life gardens of eden.
Lawns got bigger and bigger… became signifiers of extreme wealth… and eventually made it over to America.
Thomas Jefferson had one in Monticello. George Washington had one at Mount Vernon.
But here’s the irony. It wasn’t Thomas Jefferson out there trimming his own lawn…
Malin Curry: A lot of black Americans were forced to be out in the yard and forced to actually do these things that they probably no more than likely 100% did not want to do.
This is Malin Curry again. He’s a writer. And because of his dad’s obsession with lawns, he decided to look into this more.
Malin Curry: This was something that black Americans were forced to do. And then later on it became something that they choose to do. And it's something that more than that, they enjoy doing. At least that was the case with my family and with a lot of the families that I had sort of grown up around.
Malin found that he could trace a line straight from places like Monticello… to Levittown.
Vintage news piece: Five years ago, this was a vast checkerboard of potato farms on New York’s Long Island… today, it…
Levittown was one of the first modern suburbs built in the United States. It was created by the Levitt family a few years after the end of World War II.
Vintage news piece: Why not mass produce the elements that make up a house just as the auto industry does with the parts that go into a new car?
Up until then, lawns were still mostly for the rich. But one of the founders of Levittown was a garden enthusiast… and he wanted to bring them to the masses.
He once said, quote, “A fine lawn makes a frame for a dwelling. It’s the first thing a visitor sees. And first impressions are lasting ones.”
MUSIC
The result was Pleasantville. Leave it to Beaver.
Rows and rows of perfect, identical homes complete with perfect, identical lawns.
This set into motion an idea - that the state of your lawn reflects your family’s character.
Nice, trim, green grass is basically a sign that means you’ve got your shit together.
Sunbeam Ad: A man who loves fine cars will appreciate the superior performance of a Sunbeam mower. He’ll appreciate the instant cutting height adjustment…
But back then, suburban lawns were also a not so subtle marker that this new way of life, with that white picket fence and those carefully manicured lawns … was meant for White people.
Because many of these brand new subdivisions wouldn’t sell to people of color.
Malin Curry: It was definitely very much sort of this white idea that only white Americans were privy to, really.
This form of housing discrimination… It happened all over the country. The federal government refused to insure mortgages in predominantly Black, urban neighborhoods. at the same time… they helped subsidize the construction of Whites-only suburbs.
These racist policies echoed for decades – Levittown is still majority White today.
But marginalized communities fought back. After some of these racist housing policies were banned during the civil rights era, more and more middle-class, Black families began moving into the suburbs.
This was right around the time that Malin’s dad, Ira Curry, was born. In Detroit, in 1971.
Ira Curry: I grew up in a lower, lower class neighborhood. And so a lot of people didn't have lawns. We had like dirt and patches of grass. So that wasn't a big thing in my neighborhood.
But in the suburbs outside of Detroit… it was.
Ira Curry: These nicer homes outside of my neighborhood, they had nice lawns. So that's something I wanted.
So Ira, he got to work. As a young man, he got a job at a golf course and learned the ins and outs of turf grass.
Then he went to college, got a good paying job, and finally bought his first house with a lawn in the suburbs in the year 2000.
His life had mirrored what happened with a lot of middle-class Black families.
Ira Curry: I think when black people started to come up, so to speak, started to have the opportunity to better themselves, to move into neighborhoods where they weren't necessarily allowed to move into. I think that's where it started to say like, hey, I've got an opportunity to show that I should be respected. That I can take care of a home, I can take care of my yard.
And that’s what Ira set out to do.
Out came the bucket hat. The cargo pants. Throw on some motown.
Music plays
Rev up the lawnmower…
Lawnmower sound
And start mowing his masterpiece. Because for him.. Lawn care is an artform.
Ira Curry: Just like a painter painting. A painting. He has a vision in his head. He paints the painting. And then once he's finished, he's able to look at the painting and say, wow, that turned out really, really nice.
Bob Ross clip: …we can begin putting in all kinds of beautiful little grassy areas, just just go all through all your different yellows and your greens. It's up to you.
For Malin, his Dad’s obsession with that yard… makes a lot more sense now.
Malin Curry: growing up, it wasn't always super clear to me that, you know, there was really a purpose to be out in the lawn. But now I get it. I get why exactly. I spent all those Saturdays digging up weeds and, you know, cutting the grass really with like fine scissors and all that kind of stuff. Having this lawn is sort of a representation of everything that he has wanted and everything that he has worked for and wanted to have. And he now has it right. And so that's what I think they represent, at least for me and for my family, is progress.
Lawnmower sound, motown song fades
So that green lawn out front of so many houses. It’s not just a place for the dog to do its business. It’s a symbol. A manifestation of the American dream. A symbol forged in power, wealth and Whiteness but then claimed by more and more people.
Thing is, though, We don’t see it that way, most of the time. . . I mean for a lot of us – especially when I was a kid – lawns are just fun.
Grass stains on your knees. Rolling down big hills. Making grass quacks.
[grass quack SFX]
But let’s not forget… it’s still a crop. A garden that produces no food but still demands your love… constant mowing, fertilizing, and gallons and gallons of water.
And there are folks that say the whole shebang is a complete and utter waste.
Zach Frankel: it's an archaic cultural value that we should let go of.
That’s coming up after the break.
But I want to know… where do you stand on lawns? Love ‘em? Hate ‘em? Never had one? Let me know by sending us an email at outsidein [at] nhpr.org. We love hearing from you and trust me, we always respond.
[MIDROLL BREAK]
Nate Hegyi: Hey! This is Outside/In I’m your host Nate Hegyi.
This summer, I drove through the suburbs of Salt Lake City with Zach Frankel.
Zach Frankel: So, this is my house here, second one on the left.
Think big, beige houses. Mormon churches. And lots of lush, green lawns…. except for Zach’s.
Zach Frankel: This is a good thing this is radio because there is no way I would let the public come see the state of my property.
Nate Hegyi: Laughs
[SFX of door shutting, music plays]
Zach’s yard is so wild, SO unruly, and so dry that a couple of years ago it actually caught fire.
Some Neighbors were shooting off fireworks for Independence Day and one landed in his yard.
Zach Frankel: … and then it exploded and it lit this part of our yard on fire. Wow. And we had to quickly run and get the hose and put it out. And that's happened twice now. And we've started putting fliers out to our neighbors, asking them not to light our yard on fire.
But he doesn’t do this out of laziness. This… is defiance.
Zach Frankel: I don’t want to water the grass, I don’t want to mow the grass. I don’t really care about the grass.
Zach is a conservationist who runs a nonprofit called the Utah Rivers Council.
When Ira Curry sees a nice green lawn, he sees the hard work and devotion it took to keep it that way. But what Zach sees are thousands and thousands of gallons of water wasted.
Zach Frankel: it's an archaic cultural value that we should let go of.
One could argue that big lawns are bad for the environment in lots of different ways. They drastically reduce biodiversity. The grasses themselves are often non-native and invasive, spreading far beyond lawns and pushing indigenous plants out. Not to mention all the toxic and deadly pesticides folks use.
But out here in the West, one of the biggest issues with lawns is water. This region is in the grips of an epic drought. We’re talking about the worst one in a thousand years.
And cities and towns in Utah are using more water per capita than any other state in the nation.
And most of that H20 is being sunk right into lawns - a lot of which never even get stepped on.
[mux plays]
Zach and I actually spent 7 hours - 7 HOURS - driving all around finding examples of these green lawns.
There was the strip of green grass outside of a Target.
Zach Frankel: What is the point of this? This is just stupid and ignorant.
There was the Arby’s where sprinklers are mostly watering concrete.
Zach Frankel: This is just incredibly frustrating.
And the granddaddy of them all.
A hospital with four or five football fields worth of perfectly manicured, deep green grass.
Zach Frankel: This is the king of waste. Who the hell needs five acres of ornamental grass?
[mux swell and fade, or some other beat change signal]
And where would all of that water have gone? To the Great Salt Lake.
[mux]
The Great Salt Lake is America’s largest inland sea. In the middle of the desert about an hour from Salt Lake City. I drove out there and visited a marina and this… should’ve been an idyllic scene, right?
Kids playing on a boardwalk, a couple of seagulls. Some sailboats.
But instead… the entire marina was dry.
There was an orange buoy in the mud. A single abandoned sailboat.
The lakebed itself was cracked, white, and squishy.
Nate Hegyi: Squish squish squish, like if I went down there I think I would go down to my ankle in… goop.
There was a woman there with her kids.
Woman at lake: I mean there is still beauty in it but it’s definitely a little bit ominous. It makes you feel a little unsettled, I would say.
The Great Salt Lake has been shrinking for the past three decades.
Right now, it’s at its lowest point in recorded history. And a lot of the water that should be going into the lake via rivers and streams is instead getting pumped onto crop fields, golf courses and lawns.
And Zach Frankel, the environmentalist… he says if the state doesn’t start drastically conserving water:
Zach Frankel: We're going to have a public health crisis and an environmental crisis of disastrous proportions.
As the lake dries, it’ll destroy an entire ecosystem… starting with sea monkeys… aka brine shrimp. They are one of the only creatures that can survive in the lake because it’s so salty.
They are at the center of a multi-billion dollar industry that harvests the shrimp and then sells them as food for fish farms.
And speaking of food, brine shrimp are also a critical food source for millions of migrating birds… including a cute little shorebird called the American avocet.
[Avocet SFX]
Without those shrimp… they’ll die. And as for the people that live around the Great Salt Lake, they’re already facing worsening dust storms.
Zach Frankel: just a couple of days ago, there was a two day long dust storm where the winds blew at 40 or 50 miles an hour.
The next morning, we went out and there was dust caked over everybody's cars that was so thick you had to immediately wipe it off if you wanted to look out your windshield.
The desert has always been dusty. But more and more of that dust is now coming off the Great Salt Lake… It’s not just a nuisance. That dust contain high levels of toxic heavy metals like arsenic and mercury.
Zach Frankel: Those compounds get into people's lungs and they're very hard for the body to remove. And some of them can be there for the lifetime of the resident.
Nate Hegyi: What happens to you if you get that stuff in your lungs?
Zach Frankel: Both arsenic and mercury are carcinogens, and are cancer causing substances… There's a variety of studies that indicate breathing these substances can shorten your lifespan.
Shortened lifespans. Dead or starving birds. A disappearing lake.
I mean… are lawns really fueling all this?
Zach said they play a big role But I wanted to look at some numbers.
So I found a couple studies…
They show lawns, golf courses, gardens… all that outdoor watering in Utah… have lowered the lake’s levels by almost a foot.
Which is actually a lot - but compare that to all the water used in farming and ranching… those thirsty fields have lowered the lake’s levels by about seven feet.
Most of these crops by the way aren’t feeding people… they’re feeding cattle.
But farmers have been forced in recent years to cut down on water, whereas many cities and towns haven’t.
And the grass in front of Arby’s? Well, that isn’t feeding anybody.
So lawns may not use as much water as farming, but having a green, well-watered yard in a state as dry as Utah is kind of like driving a Hummer in the middle of a climate crisis.
It doesn’t look good.
Zach Frankel: It's a waste of time and energy. It's a waste of money, and it's a waste of the public capital that we spend diverting our rivers and streams.
So why do some businesses do it anyways?
I tried calling and emailing a spokesperson for the hospital with the four or five football field’s worth of green grass.
No answer.
Voice: The mailbox is full and cannot accept any messages at this time. Goodbye.
And the Arby’s with the sprinklers watering concrete at 10 am in the morning? I called them too… got a hold of a manager… but he wouldn’t talk on record. And eventually just hung up on me.
[CLICK SFX]
So, I didn’t get any answers. But I imagine businesses must feel the same subtle social pressures that regular folks do at home. You have a green lawn because it’s expected. It shows you have your shit together. And this mentality is especially acute in Utah.
Kelly Kopp: This area was settled particularly by mormon pioneers.
That’s Kelly Kopp. She’s a turfgrass specialist at Utah State University. And the Mormons who settled this area had a religious zeal to make the dry desert bloom.
Kelly Kopp: I think they brought with them an aesthetic and an Idea about Their landscapes that was based a little bit more on New England and England and sort of those climates where grasses were really prevalent. And historically grasses, especially in Europe, were for the affluent.
Remember that whole… lawns are a symbol of wealth and prosperity? That came out West.
Kelly Kopp: And so there's sort of that cultural thing that's come down through the generations. It's like, well, if I want to have a nice looking, appealing landscape, it's going to include some grass, because historically we couldn't all have that. But hey now we can!
And obviously Mormons weren’t the only ones to bring this aesthetic out West. But it is a style that has stayed in Utah while it’s disappearing in other arid towns.
And a big reason for that, Kelly says, is that unlike in other places… the water here is REALLY cheap. So it’s easy to waste on a lawn.
Kelly Kopp: If gas is $0.05 a gallon, nobody cares. They're driving all over the place. Gas is well over $5 a gallon right now. So I think people are like. Oh. Wait a minute, let me think about this a little bit more. The same would absolutely be true of water.
[mux]
Grass is a social crop. And so it’s unlikely that hard-to-imagine, individual action lowering the pressure to keep up with the Joneses.
Why should Arby’s stop watering their lawn, if the McDonalds across the street doesn’t have to too?
But Utah isn’t really taking any big steps to curb water use.
In Las Vegas, they’re literally ripping out turf and banning lawns.
Here in Utah, it’s mostly up to the whims of certain communities, HOAs, or homeowners.
But you can’t totally bash the state. The culture is slowly changing.
The Mormon Church recently told its millions of members in Utah that YES… the drought is very bad and we should all be cool with brown grass.
And some towns are raising the cost of water and even enforcing watering restrictions.
[pause]
If you’re hearing all this… and cringing at the idea of getting rid of your lawn… It doesn’t have to be that way.
Kelly also says there are ways to have a lawn that’s also more environmentally responsible. For instance, changing the kinds of grasses you grow.
Kelly Kopp: there are low water use grasses. There are native grasses. We can be transitioning away from higher water use grasses. And in fact This lawn.
She’s pointing now to her own yard.
Kelly Kopp: Which is primarily composed of high water use, Kentucky bluegrass, is going to be gotten rid of At the end of this growing season in favor of much lower water use grasses.
These include Bermuda grass, buffalo grass…
There’s also this special mixture of grasses from a company out in Oregon that Kelly says can stay green for ten days after a single, light watering.
Kelly Kopp: We're talking about a huge reduction in irrigation. That one area. If everybody did that, we'd be getting to our net zero, right? // and this is what I would like. I would like a net zero water situation. Let's grow, but let's not increase the amount of water we're using.
But to do that she says the lawns also need to be a lot smaller. the rest of your yard could be filled with veggie gardens, cactus, rocks, native plants… stuff that either produces food OR doesn’t really need much water.
And Kelly’s yard is kind of a model. She’s lives in a home up in the mountains outside of Salt Lake.
Kelly Kopp: That's an apple tree over there, a really old apple tree that I absolutely adore,
There are choke cherries and native aspen trees that quake and shiver in the wind.
Kelly Kopp: There’s also… my husband, he likes to think he's a veggie gardener and so he's Thrown some vegetables in here as well. So there's that.
And… there is a lawn… but it’s pretty small and a couple weeks ago it had dandelions everywhere.
Kelly Kopp: I think they're cute, you know, dandelions, beautiful little yellow flower.
And you know what? … it kind of looks like what those European artists imagined 600 years ago. Like a little Garden of Eden.
Bob Ross: A little bit of sap green in there to give it a greenish hue, ok, let’s go up there… let’s make some big decisions in our world…
So… Do you think you could live without a lawn? Maybe a smaller one? What would your dream yard look like? Shoot us an email at outsidein@nhpr.org. We love hearing from you, and trust me - we always respond!
And next time on our summer miniseries Yardwork, how do you know if the veggies you grow in your backyard are safe to eat?
Maureen McMurray: I’m growing stuff that’s in the same soil as all of this coal, am I poisoning myself and my family?
That’s up next time on Outside/In… which, by the way, a public radio production is – we really do rely on listener support. So if you’re able, please consider donating to support the show – the link to do that is outsideinradio.org/donate.
Outside/In was produced this week by me, Nate Hegyi, and edited by Taylor Quimby, with help from Jessica Hunt, Justine Paradis and Felix Poon.
Rebecca Lavoie is our Executive Producer.
A very special thanks to Malin Curry who actually interviewed and recorded his dad for this piece, as well as Sherry Lund, Zach Renstrom, Karry Rathje and Ken Fox.
Music in this episode came from Walt Adams, Sture Zetterberg, OTE, Headlund, Roy Edwin Williams, El Flaco Collective, Pulsed, Jimmy Wahlsteen, Both Are Infinite, Airae, and Alfie-Jay Winters.
Our theme music is by breakmaster cylinder
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.