There are places where they have trees all around their houses. Like in California, where they just had been more fuel to the fires.
Trees (e.g. apple trees or others) provide great shade and help lower the temperature. They are beneficial if you feel that summer heat is getting worse due to climate change. Additionally, if you have issues with heavy rainfall, trees can help by absorbing large amounts of water through their roots. This approach can be applied in most countries.
The 50s happened.
And for whatever the fuck reason, they wanted houses like the ones found in pre-1789 France
It’s a stupid reason. Historically, if you were a peasant and had been granted access to land, you grew food or herbs. If however you were a lord, you got your food from your peasants. You had no need to grow your own food. So they could afford to grow lawns as a sign of wealth.
This has transferred across into the modern psyche. Lawns are a way of saying “i’m so rich, i don’t have to worry about sustenance. In fact i’ll throw money at it to maintain this slab of green rather than have it provide food, or shade.”
@Turturtley @Confidant6198 Its worse, because, actually, even if they wanted to, most Americans are under the tyrannical rule of a Homeowners Association (talk about liberty huh) that forces them to plant grass, and can fine them a shit ton of money if they do otherwise
This is the correct answer. So many US’isms are bourgeois / aristocratic imitation.
Cars / wasteful transportation, lawns, sprawled out cities, high amounts of meat consumption, vacation homes / timeshares / exotic vacations, having servants, etc. These are things that are only possible for countries with huge amounts of land and resources, and not sustainable or doable for most of the world.
We do. Obviously not everyone can But I wager the number of Americans growing something edible on their space is decent. Usually it’s easy stuff to grow, or someone’s favorites.
Thinking about it and counting in my head I actually know dozens of people that grow tomatoes personally. They grow easily in large quantities in relatively small space and all taste better than store bought.
Citrus has been pretty plentiful my entire life too. Lemon trees especially.
As someone who lives in an ex-industrial city (Birmingham Alabama), I’ve always been worried about air pollution and tainted soil (there are superfund sites nearby). I feel like every thing would have to be above ground and covered. That seems like a lot of work. Should I be worried?
Your city has a cool vibe.
oh, man I was there for the first time ever just two weeks ago. I wanted to stop at a boutique liquor store I had found listed online. I was shocked to see the number of abandoned/dilapidated structures. The liquor store actually happened to be located in a newish out-building on the same lot of one of these abandoned mansions. The store was very nice as was the staff, but I was left with a lot of questions that were all pretty-much answered when I read online that Birmingham is also known as The Pittsburgh of the South.
Yeah you should. Look into soil testing with your local city, county, or University Extension office. You send in a little sample of dry soil and they email you the results. It’s usually pretty cheap and will tell you if any soil is unsafe. My local library, for example, has sample boxes for free. Definitely a good idea for anyone in a place where lead paint could have been used, let alone other horrible stuff.
In, or in the yard of? We’re not talking about indoor houseplants, I assume.
If outside is what you mean, it goes back to the days of aristocracy. Having land you don’t use for food was a form of conspicuous consumption, and you had sports for the elite grow up around stretches of short grass as a result, like golf and polo. The former is still synonymous with the well-off, even.
Then you have to skip ahead to the 1950’s and 60’s in America, where the “mid-century modern” philosophy of urban planning gains prominence. The idea was to get people out of the crowded, Victorian-style slums, which we might find quaint in hindsight, but at the time were very stigmatised. This extended to a certain disdain for cities and buildings in general, even - more nature was better. So, where do you put people? In tiny little rural estates modeled on the ones popular with aristocrats, separated by zoning laws from the other sections of the city.
The vision was that people would get home from their 9-5 jobs in the commercial-only zones in their very own car, and would hang out outside enjoying their government-mandated leisure time. The urban planners of the time probably pictured a giant croquet course going up and down a residential street, and the all-white 3.5 kid families that live there sitting outside on lawn chairs, playing friendly games against each other. These “white picket fence” suburbs had lawns, then, because you couldn’t have semi-rural domestic bliss without them, according to some architects who graduated Harvard in 1920.
In practice, of course, none of that happened. Like so many other tidy ideas it failed to predict how the general public would interact with it. I’ve been around plenty of places like that. You know the names of your neighbor, but not much else about them, and the people a few doors down are suspect of being pedophiles or violent drug dealers. That fence line is sacred, each house becomes an island, and you’re frightfully dependent on driving to get anywhere you can do basic errands. And that’s not even getting into the racial issues that came out of it.
Now, in the 21st century, people assume houses have always had lawns, and messing with that formula irritates the local NIMBYs. New ideas become rigid tradition, and it falls to the next generation to question them. Hopefully we will, but it will take a moment.
Thanks, you explained better than I would have. I was going to go on a tangent about Louis XIV showing the other aristocrats his new “lawn” concept.
Hey, thanks!
I have to point out, Versailles did have quite a bit of lawn and certainly helped, but the concept of decorative short grass predates it, and even existed in the some of the American civilisations using a totally different plant IIRC. The Wikipedia article notes several medieval examples.
I’m tryin’, man. Fruit bearing plants take a lot of work compared to the manicured suburban steriscape. They’re not super easy to grow (depending on where you live), require pruning and fertilizer, soil amendment, and unfortunately pesticides or fencing if you don’t want insects or deer destroying your hard work.
That’s way more effort than most people want to expend. HOAs or even local ordinances may also restrict what can be grown.
Look into native plants. There are so many edible things that you can just leave in the wasteland that is your yard and they’ll take over. Here in Tennessee we have pawpaws and maypops for fruit, tomatoes that pop up randomly, garden greens like wood sorrel and lambs quarters, and a bunch of other things that absolutely take over given half a chance. Sure, if you try and grow the seed packets from your local Lowes you’ll have issues with pests and whatnot, but there is so much more food out there than these varieties.
Absolutely. Already have a couple.
I don’t know what your experience with gardening is, so I might be preaching to the choir here. But if it helps, No-Dig Gardening is a method that lets nature do a lot of the hard work for you.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/soil-composts-mulches/no-dig-gardening
I’m not super-experienced, but this is absolutely a viable method if you have somewhat decent soil to start with. Unfortunately where I live it’s a ton of clay, so getting the soil to a usable state absolutely requires digging. It’s just as much work to dig and amend vs build on top and import soil.
European garden with some ten different berries/fruit trees and bushes - no work needed, they just do their thing (when they are big enough.) Rotate about one every three years, sometimes move some berries from one place to another.
Strawberries are a ton of work at the end of the year (not the little wild ones though,) don’t do them unless you really love them.
I mean some of us hate grass so much we started a huge reddit community about it that made it’s way too lemmy.
Bugs, pests, and animals, at least where I live. Unless you build a green house, clear the yard of all other foliage, or somehow fortify your garden, only produce with natural defenses like peppers will make it to harvest. However, I am jealous of my friends on the west coast, who don’t really have to worry about bugs or other critters eating from their fruit trees just passively growing in their yard.
If you’re East Coast, I think you’ve just given up too early. Plenty of pests on the West Coast, too. There are also plenty of organic ways to keep them in check. Will you have perfect harvest? Never, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have anything at all.
Growing crops is quite a bit of cost and effort and time. I have a little garden, but it’s not like you just plant some seeds and you’re all done.
HOAs say “ew no that’s for the poors” and good luck finding a house that’s not in an HOA within a reasonable commute to your job
My HOA:
Looks like you are stuck with fruits, grains, herbs, and ornamentals in the front yard, then, lol.
…pretty much this: you’ll be fined for anything other than well-groomed grass growing in your yard…
Because this is illegal in most of America. You would be fined and the city would probably send a crew out to rip it all up and give you the invoice if you defied it and left it that way.
That’s a bit extreme? I think that you are correct that this may be the case in front yards depending on location, but backyards are usually fine for whatever barring some HOA BS or unusual local rules.
I’ve seen this happen before in real life so extreme or not, it’s definitely the norm in upstate New York at the very least. Had the city called on us while we were out of the country and we came back to all 6 of our small fruit trees dug up and tracks all over the front lawn from an excavator and a $2500 bill from the city.
So front yard? Yeah, not super surprised at that. I’ve heard plenty of stories about front yard cultivators running into problems with the city. I live in a more rural/urban mixed area so it’s a lot more forgiving. Plenty of people here have apples or other fruit trees in the front yard - not aggressively farming the yard, just as part of the plantings.
Ya front yard. We didn’t aggressively plant either. We had 4 or 5 fruit trees planted with beds around them
Shoulda gotten a tree lawyer. Tree law is not to be fucked with.
That really sucks.
Some do. Grass just got into the pop culture as the “proper” look for a residential property. But having fruit trees is amazing, especially in spring when they are all in bloom with flowers.
A lot of people are secretly cows and they actually eat that grass. Next time you say hello to someone and they respond “moo” you’ll know why.
