The WHO Garden: Out with the Lawn and In with the Food

 No, I'm not talking about a corner plot in the town of Whoville, though I'm sure Dr. Seuss imagined gardens exclusively in the organic. I'm referring to the South Lawn of the White House. Last week, a NY Times story reported that the Obama family has decided to grow their own food. 'Tis a beautiful thing. The story highlights the nutritional benefits of eating garden fresh vegetables, and how organic gardening reduces our reliance on commercial agriculture and its myriad of devastations to the environment. What the piece did not mention is that food will be replacing one of the most overused plants in modern landscaping: grass.

Lawns began in eighteenth century Europe, mainly in England and France, as an indulgence for wealthy landowners who didn't need to use all of their land to grow food. They were nice to look at, walk on, or perhaps play a game of cricket. These luxurious landscapes originated in Western Europe where rainfall was abundant and grass grew naturally. Three hundred years later Americans have an unhealthy fixation with lawns that's draining our natural resources and polluting our soils, waterways, and air with pesticides. Lawns are extremely water intensive, especially during hot summer months and in drought ridden parts of the U.S. (eh em, California). The shallow root systems of grasses prevent water from filtrating deep into the ground. This means you have to water more than you would, say, if you were growing carrots, whose deep root systems draw water further down into the soil, where the temperature is cooler and moisture is retained. Years of unnatural landscaping and commercial agriculture have left our country's soil in a pretty bad state. The good news is that sustainable organic gardening methods improve soil health. (I emphasize sustainable here because certain practices, like importing gypsum from the other side of the world to use as a soil amendment for growing tomatoes, may qualify as organic without being very sustainable.) While improving the White House soil health will not solve the problem of topsoil depletion nationwide, at least the Obamas are setting an excellent example of how easy it is to replace lawn space with a garden that can feed a family, and visiting diplomats.

I realize I may be coming off like I'm anti-lawns, and that isn't entirely true. Growing up, I enjoyed rolling around on grass as much as the next child, and I also enjoyed wandering through the small mazes of gardens. I'm not calling for a world without lawns, but rather a world with fewer lawns that have climate appropriate grass varieties and no pesticide use. It is possible, and more communities are catching on. In these times of looking closely at how we really use our resources-financial, environmental, what we devote our own energy to-it seems like growing food instead of lawns just makes more sense.