America’s Most Useless Crop

The history, irony, and idiocracy of American lawns

A lawn is a strange thing. It is a patch of land where nothing happens, a landscape engineered for constant maintenance, an invention that demands work but serves no function. We water it so it will grow, then cut it down. We fertilize it, then complain when it thrives. We pour toxins on it to kill weeds and insects, even though neither harms us. Lawns are an idea that costs billions of dollars, millions of hours, and untold environmental damage. It’s time to ask: Why do we have them at all?

In a 1985 essay called "The Abolition of Work," Bob Black writes:

“Americans devote more time, effort, and money to the care of their lawns than any other country. They buy elaborate machines to cut the grass to an unnaturally short length and then complain that it doesn’t grow. Then they spend even more money on chemicals to make it grow faster, only to cut it again. The whole thing is absurd.”

A lawn is a garden where you spend money preventing anything useful from growing. It's a plant that turns your free time into yard work and your paycheck into fertilizer. It's a freeloading roommate—you pay its bills, clean up after it, and it just sits there doing nothing.

The Origins of the American Lawn

Like so many bad ideas, the American lawn was imported. In the 18th century, wealthy English and French landowners began cultivating short, grassy fields around their estates. These lawns served a single purpose: to prove that their owners were super rich. A lawn meant you had enough wealth that you didn’t need to use the land for farming, and you had enough servants with sythes to maintain it. Instead of growing food, lawns grew an aesthetic.

Thomas Jefferson admired European landscape design and brought the idea back to America, but it didn’t take off until the late 19th and early 20th centuries when industrialization and suburbanization collided.

The rise of the middle class meant more people had land to shape. As a result of an English textile engineer's idea to modify a carpet cutter, the first version of a lawn mower was invented in 1830. By 1868, American inventors had secured patents for lawnmowers, but these machines were still considered luxury items. In 1871, the first lawn sprinkler was patented, making lawns possible in arid regions and times of drought.

The final push came from real estate developers and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which promoted lawns as a symbol of civic virtue, order, and neighborly responsibility. The USDA promoted lawns at the 1876 Centennial Exhibition, though guidance on maintenance was sparse. By the 1880s, lawn care advice became common in magazines, and the USDA expanded its research into turf grasses. The first American golf course, built in 1888, further fueled interest in maintaining finely groomed grass. Golf’s rise, along with USGA-backed research in the early 1900s, drove advancements in turfgrass breeding.

Lawn culture briefly stalled during World War I, when Victory Gardens—vegetable, fruit, and herb gardens planted by civilians to help ensure food security during wartime—replaced ornamental grass, and sheep took over mowing duties at the White House. In other words, WWI made people temporarily return to practicality over extravagance.

The post-war era saw the return to profligate landscaping. When the 40-hour workweek was established in 1938, homeowners had their weekends freed to maintain their lawns. By the 1950s and ‘60s, suburbia and lawn culture were thriving. Rotary mowers made grass maintenance easier, and companies like Pennington Seed developed specialized lawn grasses. By the late 20th century, the American Dream included not just a house but a house with a manicured, green, pristine lawn.

Why Lawns Are Everywhere

Lawns spread for two reasons: social pressure and legal enforcement. Homeowners' associations (HOAs) and city ordinances dictate how a yard should look. A patch of clover, a garden bed, or a few dandelions are often considered signs of neglect. In many places, having an “unkempt” yard can get you fined, and neighbors enforce the status quo with disapproving glances. A perfect lawn signals respectability. Anything else is disorder.

But the real force keeping lawns alive is habit. Americans don’t ask why they have lawns—they just assume they’re supposed to.

The Cost of Keeping a Lawn Alive

A lawn is not a passive thing, nor is it nature. It is an artificial construct made of non-native grass that demands constant inputs.

Water

Lawns drink water like a man in the desert. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) estimates that landscape irrigation accounts for one-third of all residential water use, amounting to 9 billion gallons per day. Much of this is wasted—overwatering and overspray are common, and a significant portion evaporates before it even reaches the roots.

This is absurd in places like California, Arizona, and Nevada, where people water their lawns while nearby reservoirs shrink to crisis levels. The irony is that we create these artificial ecosystems that can’t even survive in their own climates, and then spend fortunes keeping them on life support.

Fertilizer

Grass is not naturally suited to growing in uniform, golf-course perfection. To keep it looking unnaturally green, Americans dump about 3 million tons of fertilizer onto their lawns each year. Fertilizer contains nitrogen and phosphorus, which stimulate growth—too much growth. This forces homeowners to mow more often, creating another cycle of unnecessary labor.

Michael Pollan recalls a conversation with his father in his book "Second Nature" (1991):

Father: “Remind me again why I have to spend my Sunday mowing the lawn?”

Michael: “Because the grass is too long.”

Father: “And why is the grass too long?”

Michael: “Because we watered and fertilized it to make it grow.”

But fertilizer doesn’t stay put. It washes off into rivers, lakes, and groundwater, triggering algae blooms that suffocate aquatic life. The Gulf of Mexico has a dead zone—a region where almost nothing can survive—largely caused by fertilizer runoff from lawns and farms.

Pesticides and Herbicides

A lawn is supposed to be a monoculture: grass, and only grass. But nature doesn’t work that way. Dandelions, clover, and other plants are constantly trying to reclaim the land. Instead of accepting this, homeowners wage chemical warfare.

Americans apply over 70 million pounds of pesticides and herbicides to their lawns every year. Many of these chemicals are linked to cancer, neurological disorders, and hormone disruption—not just for the insects they’re meant to kill but for humans and pets as well. Children are particularly vulnerable as they roll around in the grass and absorb these toxins through their skin.

Ironically, clover, one of the most common “weeds,” naturally fertilizes the soil by fixing nitrogen, taking it from the air and making it available to plants. Clover was once included in grass seed mixes until chemical companies convinced homeowners it was a problem they needed to pay to fix. Gotta grow that market.

Mowing

The average American spends over 70 hours per year mowing the lawn. That’s nearly two full workweeks lost to pushing a machine back and forth over the same patch of earth. Lawnmowers also run on gasoline. Gas-powered mowers, leaf blowers, and trimmers generate significant air pollution and annoying noise.

What Else Could a Yard Be?

What if we stopped this madness? What if a yard wasn’t just a green carpet but something useful?

Native Plants and Wildflower Gardens

Native plants require little water, no fertilizer, and support local wildlife. A yard filled with wildflowers and native grasses attracts pollinators like bees and butterflies while reducing maintenance. No mowing, no chemicals, no wasted water.

Food Gardens

Instead of growing grass, why not grow something you can eat? Here's how. Fruit trees, vegetable gardens, and herb beds turn a lawn into a source of food. Imagine if every suburban yard had a few fruit trees and clover instead of a stretch of fescue. Every pound of food grown at home is one that doesn't need to be grown elsewhere, likely with damaging agricultural practices, and transported, stored, bought, refrigerated, and transported again. Food grown on your own property and picked fresh tastes better and is more nutritious anyway.

Drought-Resistant Landscaping (Xeriscaping)

In dry regions, lawns are particularly wasteful. Xeriscaping replaces grass with drought-tolerant plants, gravel, and mulch, creating a beautiful but low-maintenance landscape. Many cities now offer rebates for homeowners who replace their lawns with water-wise landscaping.

Outdoor Living Spaces

Instead of devoting space to unused grass, why not turn a yard into something functional? Fire pits, patios, shade gardens, and seating areas make a yard a place to enjoy rather than just maintain.

Outdoor living spaces can include all of the above—native plants, wildflowers, fruit trees, vegetable beds, drought-resistant plants, rock features, maybe some artistic sculpture, etc.—to make an elegant yard that Jefferson or even the Joneses across the street will envy.

Many cultures prioritize some sort of beautiful outdoor living space, especially ones that honor nature. They don't even require much space. For example, the Japanese create what they call tsubo-niwas, small urban gardens.

The End of the Lawn?

Lawns have no real purpose. They exist because we assume they should. Your neighbors have one, so you have to have one, and now everyone is too afraid to stop. But assumptions can change. Across the country, more people are questioning the logic of pouring time, money, and chemicals into an expensive, high-maintenance crop that you grow only to kill.

Cities are beginning to relax their laws on alternative landscaping. Drought-prone states are cutting water subsidies for lawns. Neighbors who once judged unkempt yards are starting to admire wild gardens instead.

A lawn is a relic of outdated thinking and a monument to idiocracy—a waste of resources, a burden on homeowners, and an environmental insult. We can do better.

The question isn’t whether lawns will disappear. The question is how long we’ll keep pretending they make sense.

Questions for you:

• How much do you think social pressure influences lawn care? If your neighbors replaced their lawns with native plants or gardens, would you consider doing the same?

• Have you ever considered replacing your lawn with a more sustainable alternative, such as native plants, xeriscaping, or a vegetable garden? What holds you back?

• What would an ideal, low-maintenance, eco-friendly yard look like to you?

Resources:

Environmental Protection Agency. Outdoor Water Use in the United States. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 2021, www.epa.gov/watersense/outdoor-water-use-united-states.

Henderson, Tim. “Americans Love Their Lawns—But They're Bad for the Environment.” Pew Charitable Trusts, 15 Mar. 2022, www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2022/03/15/americans-love-their-lawns-but-theyre-bad-for-the-environment.

Lindsey, Rebecca. “Dead Zone in the Gulf of Mexico.” Climate.gov, 4 Aug. 2022, www.climate.gov/news-features/understanding-climate/dead-zone-gulf-mexico.

Milesi, Cristina, et al. “Mapping and Modeling the Biogeochemical Cycling of Turf Grasses in the United States.” Environmental Management, vol. 36, no. 3, 2005, pp. 426–438. Springer, doi:10.1007/s00267-004-0316-2.

Robbins, Paul. Lawn People: How Grasses, Weeds, and Chemicals Make Us Who We Are. Temple University Press, 2007.

Scholz-Barth, Katrin. “Sustainable Landscaping: How Lawns Impact the Environment.” National Wildlife Federation, 2020, www.nwf.org/Educational-Resources/Wildlife-Guide/Understanding-Conservation/Sustainable-Landscaping.

Pollan, Michael. Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. Grove Press, 1991.

Pennington. “The History of the American Lawn.” Pennington, www.pennington.com/all-products/grass-seed/resources/the-history-of-the-american-lawn.