Landscaping the Wright Way

Robert Wright is a smart guy. He writes books, he has spent a lot of time at Princeton University, and no doubt that is why, even when he's talking about lawncare, he explains things like this: "I think it’s possible in principle to engineer a new ethos that allows us to fight chemical negative externalities without creating aesthetic and hence financial ones."

In other words, if suburbanites could learn to love the look of unkempt lawns, we could save a lot of money, and pollute less. Or in fewer words, a little laziness about lawn care might be a good thing.

The tyranny of the suburban lawn has been an issue at least since Rob Petrie, on "The Dick Van Dyke Show," refused to join a vigilante group to rid his neighborhood of crabgrass. Since then, we have more reason to take a live-and-let-live attitude toward weeds: we've become conscious of the environmental cost of a manicured greensward. Chemical fertilizers and herbicides find their way into the water supply, and eventually into the oceans, where they choke sea life. Lawnmowers cause air and noise pollution.

This is how Wright, who lets his lawn go, justifies his weeds. There are, he recognizes, eco-friendly lawncare products (though even some organic weed suppressants contain byproducts of corn, one of the most rapacious crops), but he claims he's too busy to educate himself about "greening" his lawn. Probably best not to bother introducing him to xerophytic landscaping.

Wright's solution, typical of a big thinker, is to tinker with our cultural presumptions. "Maybe someday suburban neighborhoods will consist of lawns that look like mine," he writes, "and everyone will admire them." This isn't an entirely revolutionary thought. As Rob Petrie says in defense of an offending neighbor, "He happens to like the look of crabgrass."

But it's a thought that will take a revolution to promulgate. What many suburbanites don't realize is how much weed control is a matter of simply doing less. Mowing rarely and leaving the blades longer when you do gives grass a competitive advantage over weeds. Planting bushes or ivy that needs trimming once a year or so reduces the size of a thirsty, hungry lawn, and yields more time to laze about.

In Wright's case, Burb recommends a move to a less uptight suburb. Since the dawn of suburbia, lawns have functioned as a kind of code about what kind of people live in a house, a neighborhood, or a town. The sight of grass gone to seed can be a symbol of freethinkers, or long-term illness; the howl of leafblowers toted by phalanx of landscapers is the sound of the American Dream in action.

In other words, Mr. Wright, every homeowner deserves the lawn he's saddled with.