Tips and Tricks for Bringing to Life the "Perfect Lawn"

Hissing sprinklers, humming mowers, buzzing weed whackers: the quintessential sounds of summer are also symbols of an American mission -- to craft the so-called “perfect lawn.” 

The obsession with a perfect lawn didn't begin until after World War II, said Dr. Ted Steinberg, history professor and author of American Green: The Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.

He cited the first mass-produced suburb in Levittown, New York in the late 1920s as the turning point in our culture's obsession with precisely manicured lawn. There, homeowners were required to mow their lawns once a week. 

Steinberg spoke on WNPR's Where We Live as part of a panel of lawn experts and enthusiasts. He said that with the advent of climate change and skepticism about chemicals and pesticides, the perfect lawn has entered a vulnerable period.  

American lawns are shrinking, too. They're 20 percent smaller than they were in the 1970s, said Atlantic writer Andrew McGill. Part of this trend is because houses are getting bigger, McGill said, taking up more space that used to be reserved for a lawn. 

Horticulturist and sustainable lawn consultant Thomas Christopher, author of Garden Revolution: How Our Landscapes Can Be a Source of Environmental Change, offered some advice on Where We Live about maintaining your lawn: 

• Homeowners in Connecticut shouldn't be watering their lawns in the summer. 
  "If they've planted it properly and chosen the appropriate grass, it should be fine," Christopher said.  When the temps go up, grass naturally goes dormant and turns dull colored or brownish but will green up again in the fall when rains come back and the temperatures drop. "Most of the watering is not for the growth of the grass, it's to evaporate off the surface of the lawn and keep it artificially cool, sort of like refrigerating your yard," he says. "It's a huge water user."
   
• Tom Christopher reads old lawn care books that were published before the chemical industry had a lot of influence. He said they recommend having clover in your lawn as a way to fertilize the grass naturally and help occupy space that otherwise might be filled with weeds.  Also, the old books recommend planting wildflowers. "You end up with more like a flowering tapestry than just a green astroturf carpet," he said.   
   
• Keep your grass blades taller than usually recommended.  
  "The more leaf surface the grass has, the more sunlight it captures... the more food it can manufacture and send down to the root so you can get a more vigorous plant," Christopher said. "Plus it shades out weeds too, so you have less competition for weeds with a slightly taller lawn."
   
• If you think you have an insect problem, go to the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station. "They give great free advice," Christopher said. 
   
• Dealing with drought, Christopher said homeowners can plant Turf-type tall fescue instead of typical Kentucky bluegrass. The tall fescues go several feet into the soil and "can tap into big reservoir of moisture and go much longer without watering between rainstorms." 

Lydia Brown and Lucy Nalpathanchil contributed to this post.