American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn Book

Diatribe against the suburban lawn. There are chapters on each of the vices of lawns. For example, there was the change in the last 30 years on clover from being added to grass seed mixes to being considered a weed. Professional golf course superintendents warn home owners against trying to get to golf course standards. It requires daily work to maintain grass at low heights. Putting green grass heights are getting shorter and shorter to create faster rolling which increases the grass maintenance. Augusta National on TV has driven the perception of the perfect lawn - the course is closed for six months/year to get TV perfect. There is a chapter on the lawn mower - how manufacturers opposed safety improvements for decades. The old spinning cylinder mowers were much safer as they moved much slower. The standard rotary mowers blade moves much faster - faster than a bullet. This causes the ejection of material from the chute and direct amputation. Scotts had a lawn mower with a dead man's switch in the early 1960, but took over 2 decades to become required which `100,000 injuries/year. The section on fertilizers covered the usual issues. One interesting item is a product called Ironite - basically Iron is needed for photosynthesis and makes grass greener. However, Iron sourcing for the product has significant amounts of Arsenic and Lead as similar chemicals. The product is banned around the world, but not in the USA. Lawncare industry has made claims about the sustainability/environmental gains with lawns. One of the interesting claims is the amount of oxygen created - lawns do provide oxygen. However, lawns produce significantly less than equivalent acreage of forest. Further, the world is not in danger of having too little oxygen - it is constrained on water. Interesting read, but not very balanced - preaching to the converted on environmentalism.