EP3: The absurd culture of the American Lawn with Virginia with Scott Jinkins

The conversation explores the history and cultural significance of lawns in America. It begins with the author's research on lawn ornaments and transitions to the topic of front lawns. The origins of lawns in England and their adoption in America are discussed, as well as the development of suburbs and the influence of golf on lawn aesthetics. The conversation also delves into the role of advertising in promoting the ideal lawn and the societal pressure to maintain it. The conversation highlights the changing language and metaphors used in lawn advertisements over time. The conversation explores the historical and cultural significance of lawns in America, highlighting the dominance of the lawn aesthetic and the impact of the advertising industry. It delves into the battle against nature, the use of pesticides and chemicals, and the gendered division of labor in lawn maintenance. The conversation also touches on the failure of progressive movements to challenge the lawn culture and the need for a new aesthetic that promotes sustainability and reconnection with nature.

Episode Transcript

(00:06):
So Virginia, thank you for being on theshow today.
And why don't we just start with kind of a35 ,000 foot view of the book that you
wrote and the inspiration around the bookand just kind of what was going on in your
life and some of the things that led tothe creation of this.

(00:31):
Okay, I was a graduate student.
at George Washington University in theAmerican Studies program looking for a
doctoral dissertation topic.
And I was looking at actually lawnornaments, you know, why some people had

(00:52):
them and some people didn't and why theyseemed to be regional.
You know, there were ducks in New Englandand chickens in the South and seahorse
bird baths in Maryland.
And it was just.
I was interested in, you know, so the folkart part of it.
But then I realized doing some researchthat before the late 19th century, most

(01:20):
people didn't have lawns.
So, right, there was nothing to put a lawnornament on.
And so that became a much more interestingtopic.
So I changed my.
dissertation topic to why Americans havefront lawns and when did that happen and

(01:42):
how did that happen?
Wow.
Okay.
And this is such an interesting topicbecause it's kind of coming full circle
now where we're now getting to a timewhere, you know, in places like California
and Arizona, there's large debates ofwhether or not we should have lawns
anymore and what places to have them.

(02:05):
And as I was doing a little bit ofresearch, I think, I mean, you you wrote
this book quite a bit earlier than anyoneelse was writing about this, at least in
the detail, from what I can tell that Ithink Michael Pollan's book on lawns is
probably what, 10 or 15 years after yours,because yours was like 1991 and his was

(02:26):
his was probably in the in the early2000s, I think.
So, you know, very much ahead of your timein that way of.
of kind of seeing that I don't think therewas a lot of other literature that was
there at that time, which is just soamazing.
And that's why it's really cool to be ableto do this conversation now.
And so in the book, you start with howactually your mother had a very different

(02:54):
take on lawns and just kind of growing up,you had a different experience with that.
Can you tell us a little bit about that?
Well,
My mother was a widow with three smallchildren and the long was, you know, the
yard was not the last thing she wasworrying about.

(03:14):
And so there was grass.
But I don't think anybody in ourneighborhood was really concerned about
growing a green velvety carpet.
You know, the kids, we played on, youknow, people's yards and and.
ran all over them, but.

(03:35):
So she hired a couple of kids across thestreet, you know, to mow the lawn for us,
but we really didn't pay much attention toit, except that at one point I do remember
that the backyard was overrun withdandelions, so she would pay us a penny
for every 10 dandelions we dug out of thebackyard and we would fill bags full of

(03:59):
them.
Wow.
And would you would you eat them?
Did you guys eat them at all?
Or no, we didn't.
But my mother remembers when she was achild that there were Italian Italians who
came through the neighborhood with a horsedrawn wagon asking if they could dig the
dandelions out of people's yards.

(04:21):
Wow.
Yeah.
OK.
Very cool.
Very interesting.
And so you you mentioned that.
No one in your neighborhood seemedparticularly worried about lawns where you
were, but this is not really the case ofthe history of the lawn.
And when the lawn was originating, it wasvery much the opposite from my

(04:41):
understanding where the whole premise wasto create the cultural idea that you
needed to upkeep this thing and kind oftell us a little bit about the, I guess,
the origins of where the lawn came fromand some of the cultural norms around
that.
Well, the idea came from the Britishlandscape architects in England who were

(05:06):
designing massive country estates and thelandscape of it for wealthy people in
England.
Lancelot Capability Brown is one of them,who actually moved hills and created lakes

(05:29):
and vistas.
But those were parks and grazed by herdsof deer or sheep.
There really wasn't a lawn involved.
But the aesthetic was published in anumber of books.
In the 18th century, George Washingtonactually aspired to having his estate on

(05:56):
the Potomac River in Virginia look like aBritish landscape.
And he hired an English gardener to comeand help him achieve this.
But there are pictures of GeorgeWashington's house on the Potomac with
sheep grazing.

(06:17):
on the pasture between the house and theriver.
So there wasn't the, there were no lawnmowers.
There were no lawn grasses.
The whole thing was to reorganize thispastoral landscape for yourself.

(06:42):
But if you wanted the grass,
kept short, either you had grazing animalsor you had somebody who was very good at
wielding a scythe who could cut the grassshort.
But that was time consuming and fairlyexpensive to have somebody do that for

(07:03):
you.
And so initially you might have somebodydo that around the house.
But this idea of the pastoral
green pasture, just stretching around thehouse, was taken up by various wealthy
people in the late 18th, early 19thcentury, New England and Virginia,

(07:31):
particularly.
It wasn't until, about the time of theCivil War that you actually had this idea
of creating public parks.
and with green grass and no hedges, nofences, trees, and sort of this lovely

(07:58):
landscape.
And about that time, there were suburbsthat developed around Chicago, Boston, and
other cities in New Jersey.
And they were called...
Hyde Park or what are the other parksuburbs?

(08:21):
Anyway, park where I lived in Maryland.
And the idea was that there would be nohedges or fences between the houses.
It would look like the houses were in apark and that this green grass would just
flow up and down the street and the houseswould be set back.

(08:44):
from the street, which was a new idea,because up till then, the house would be
right on the street.
And you'd have your private space behindit.
And so this idea took shape.
And there were all kinds of bookspublished in the 1860s and on.

(09:15):
of showing rural or suburban cottages andhouses.
And I think one of the reasons that theyshowed just grass around it, because it
was easier.
It's easier to depict your house without alot of bushes or other things growing

(09:40):
around it in a manual about building.
building a house.
Right, right.
And this and this idea is fostered byreally probably not that big of a group of
people, right?
Like Frederick Olmstead before the CivilWar, he he had just done Central Park, I

(10:00):
believe.
I think Central Park was done before theCivil War.
But not very long before, not very longbefore.
And and him with who is the guy Downing?
Downing was another character.
Jackson Downing, right?
And all of these characters are veryinteresting because they're all idealizing
the English and the French countryside.

(10:22):
And they are avidly traveling to Europe,actually, right?
Frederick Olmsted is traveling to Europe.
He's taking detailed notes, meeting withthe landskeeper and the landscapers of the
parks that are in England and France.
And then he comes back and he's trying tonow shape the American landscape as he

(10:42):
sees it.
And they're all kind of writing letters toeach other and they're all talking about
what it means to develop this new quotecivilized society in their kind of vision.
And then after the Civil War, I think iswhen he started doing the setback off the
street.
And I think Chicago was one of the firstplaces that he did that in an area there.

(11:06):
And you talk about in the book that therewas.
like I think three components to like thesuburban movement that happened, that
there was, let me just see, I have itsomewhere.
But anyhow, so we have this suburbanmovement happening where people, I guess

(11:30):
the feeling of the time is that the citiesare starting to feel dirty.
Right.
The city starting to feel clustered anddirty and unhealthy.
And now it's this idea of, hey, you shouldactually go out farther off of the outside
the city and we'll have these nice windingroads that go up in there and this whole

(11:52):
new ideal of what it means to to to be ahomeowner.
But what about the the the kind of socialnorms of the early creation of it was the.
the idea that the wealthy had anobligation to show the poor how they

(12:13):
should maintain their space.
That's right.
People were concerned about peoplecrowding into the cities and the
industrialization of America.
And.
One of the things that drovesuburbanization was of course

(12:35):
transportation.
The development of the trolley car, whichcould bring people out to the suburbs and
so people could commute back into town foran office job.
Or even earlier than that, the steamboatson the Hudson River.
You could actually take a boat up theHudson to...

(12:59):
where you lived in the country and thenget back into New York City fairly easily.
So the development of mass transit wasvery important that allowed people to live
further away from where they worked.

(13:22):
And then, of course, you had this sort offlight from the city.
I mean, in many cases, it was the wealthywho lived downtown in the city and the
poor lived on the outskirts.
But that flipped.
And when the wealthy couldn't move out ofthe cities and then the poor moved in.

(13:52):
So you have this movement for the parksuburbs that are now accessible because of
the trolley car and then later on theautomobile, of course.
And then.

(14:15):
A really interesting influence was theintroduction of the game of golf into the
United States.
Right, right.
And you have a whole chapter on that part.
So tell us about that, because that's avery fascinating topic.
Well, I think the game of golf was broughtto the Boston area.

(14:42):
by somebody who'd seen it played inScotland.
And the golf courses in Scotland werebasically cow pastures.
And in Brookline, Massachusetts, somebodyset up a golf course for their friends and
family.

(15:04):
And it was essentially a pasture.
And people had a great time with this gameand it spread.
And then several golf clubs were formed.
And then there was an impetus to start toimprove the pasture.

(15:30):
But it was very difficult because youdidn't have grass.
the lawn grass seed that would grow and ifyou kept it very short, you needed
irrigation, you needed a source of waterand be able to keep it watered in dry

(15:58):
weather.
You needed some kind of a lawn mower.
You needed
fertilizer, you needed all kinds of thingsto keep this aesthetic going.
And so golf courses worked with farmers togrow grass seed for them and not just seed

(16:28):
for hay fields.
You needed a better
kind of grasped for the sports.
Also at that time, lawn tennis, badminton,after the Civil War, a number of these,

(16:54):
croquet.
Croquet, I think, was really the big one,especially in the English countryside,
when they were starting to develop theconcept of the lawn.
So after the Civil War, you had thesemiddle class, upper class families who had
the leisure and had the space.

(17:15):
And people were wanting to get out andplay in their yards.
These were no longer farm yards.
These were suburban houses.
And...
So the lawnmower was invented, the firstpatent in the United States, I think it

(17:41):
was 1868, 69.
And it was modeled after a tool that cutthe nap of carpet.
So a real kind of a mower.
And so.

(18:03):
The first mowers were extremely heavy anddifficult to use and needed a lot of
strength, but better than the size becauseto get some lawn smooth with the size is
very skilled.
Yeah, that seems like that would be quitethe, yeah, even more so skilled than even

(18:31):
labor, but that would be.
quite the challenge.
Going back really quickly though with the,so the golf courses are starting to come
about and this is also where the initialbig push for new types of grasses and
they're importing grasses from Europe intothe US and then they're also now starting

(18:56):
to, they're starting to,
have breeding programs, right?
I believe like the USDA is now veryinvolved.
And so would you say that in thehistorical view that before, obviously, we
know that, you know, colonizers have comeover settlers, colonizers, whatever we
want to call them, they've come over,they've, they've been inhabiting this land

(19:19):
for some time.
And the main things they've been doing isis clearing land and building structures
for the most part.
Now they're actually starting to
bring in lots of different vegetation andbreed and hybridize this vegetation.
Is that correct?
And that now the landscape of the natureis really starting to change because the

(19:42):
native species are now being removed andputting in these things?
That happened actually when the very firstEuropean boats arrived in the New World,
in this continent.
They would have had
hay and straw in the hold, you know,either, you know, for mattresses or for,

(20:07):
you know, some animals they brought withthem.
And when they cleaned out the boats, theseeds, you know, would spread.
And yes, as the Europeans discovered,
there were no grazing animals like sheepand cattle in the Americas.

(20:36):
until you got to the Great Plains.
And of course, they weren't anywhere nearthe Great Plains.
And so their animals, when they broughtthem with them, would eat the annual
grasses.
The annual grasses wouldn't come backbecause they hadn't receded themselves.
And then the animals would die.
So one of the big impetuses was to try tokeep your animals alive.

(21:03):
And so they started importing
grass seed almost immediately in the 1600sfrom Europe to seed the fields as they
cleared them and so that their animalswould have something to eat.
Okay.
Okay.
And then later on as the lawn isdeveloping, then we get into the now the

(21:29):
state schools and the USDA and the GolfAssociation, they're all kind of working
together.
to create new forms of grass that are, youknow, take less water or they last long.
I mean, it sounds to me like really thefirst, I don't know how many years, you
know, you can tell us, but the first somany years is just probably people buying

(21:52):
grass that dies within a couple of monthsor within six months.
And it's a huge problem and it's continualfor some time.
Well, the grass seeds.
You know, the seeds from Europe wereperennial grasses.
And so they could be cut and used for hay,which was the important thing.

(22:16):
The grasses that existed here died out.
You know, they destroyed.
So.
The US Department of Agriculture.
started out trying to find better haygrasses for farming, for agriculture.

(22:40):
And the challenge was that the grass thatwould grow in New England was not the
grass that would grow in the mid -Atlanticor in the southern part of the country.
You needed different types of grasses.

(23:00):
And so they actually had grass explorersthat went out around the world collecting
plants, not just grass, but plants thatthey thought would be useful for the new
nation and brought them back.
And there was an experimental garden wherethe Pentagon is today.

(23:22):
The Department of Agriculture had a bigexperimental garden and grew various kinds
of grasses to see what would
what will grow.
And then the in various states, theDepartment of Agriculture also had their
own experimental gardens to see, you know,what would grow in there.

(23:45):
So you had a hot, dry climate or a cold,wet climate or whatever you needed a
different kind of grass.
And the.
You mentioned that the everywhere needed adifferent variety, essentially.
And so one part you talk about how the youknow, there's big challenges in the south

(24:09):
with what they would have needed, as wellas there's this cultural dynamic of the
northerners are trying to impose thisidealism on southerners who have a much
different landscape and lifestyle.
And there's also kind of cultural battleshappening just with.
with slavery and stuff at that time aswell.
But they talked about, or you talk aboutthe, it's interesting of how, tell us

(24:36):
about how different countries in generalperceive lawns and spaces and privacy
versus no privacy and that type ofcomponent and the reasons why some people
would cut things back or not.
Well, I was fortunate to be able to do afair amount of traveling.
in my life and noticed that the landscape,the cultural landscape was very different

(25:02):
than that of the United States.
In many places, the houses are right onthe street, sort of a blank front, and
either the private area is behind thehouse or in an interior courtyard.
You don't have this public space in frontof the house.

(25:25):
that's essentially a conspicuousconsumption because it's not used, you
know, it's for show.
And so I then noticed that in variouscountries that I had visited that the U
.S.
embassy had a lawn, you know, which stuckout in the middle of wherever they were,

(25:50):
they had the American cultural landscape.
That's so interesting because I actuallyit was only after I read that part that I
remember I went to a fourth of Julycelebration at the embassy in Nepal in
Kathmandu after I was studying in Indiaand we were on a huge piece of lawn and

(26:16):
but nowhere else in Kathmandu did I eversee a lawn.
But I didn't think about it until I readthat and I was like, wow, yeah, I haven't
seen any lawns in Kathmandu except forwhere we were.
And so tell us about that.
Okay, so it's like this conspicuousconsumption and it's really so much more

(26:40):
than just like, it's a green lawn outhere.
This is really culturally...
In the early days of the lawn, this is anand throughout its history, this is a an
equivalent of saying.
Here is how I represent myself in thissociety.
Here is how.

(27:00):
Good you know our family is.
Here's how well kept we are as Americans.
This is how civilized we are as a people.
Our lawn looks so good and clean and andall these things.
Tell us about just some of thosephenomena.
Well, a lot of it had to do withadvertising.
And of course, with the with the newlawnmowers being produced and other, you

(27:28):
know, and the and the landscape architectsand the people building suburbs and the
idea of setting your house back from fromthe street.
A lot of communities adopted setbackregulations.
You have to put your house back from thestreet.
If you go to older communities in theUnited States, the houses are right there

(27:50):
on the street.
There might be a small strip for a frontgarden, but that's the aesthetic was, you
know, your space was behind.
And I noticed in England, people havefront gardens, but if they have a lawn,
it's behind the house.
Generally, there might be a small patch ofgrass as part of your garden, but it's

(28:14):
not.
The lawn is Americans know it.
And.
As this aesthetic developed, garden clubsdeveloped and started to.

(28:40):
I think it was about the time of theColumbian Exposition in Chicago, the
World's Fair in 1890s.
That was an aesthetic that reallyimpressed Americans.
There was a lot of lawn grass in thesepavilions of various buildings set in the

(29:07):
park -like setting.
And people went home and really liked thataesthetic.
And then garden clubs and communityorganizations started to decide that they
wanted to clean up, fix up theneighborhood and the neighborhoods that

(29:33):
they thought were eyesores.
And.
So there was a lot of pressure for, theyhad good lawn contests and good garden
contests.
And they even went into the public schoolsin some places to teach immigrant kids
what the proper aesthetic was so they gohome and tell their parents and teach

(29:58):
these kids how to grow a lawn or how togrow flowers, not vegetables, want to grow
flowers.
in flowering plants.
But this was this was completely anaesthetic thing.
It wasn't wasn't for food.
It wasn't productive.
It was so it would look better.

(30:21):
And then.
And it would look up to it would look upto the the ideal of the upper class,
essentially.
Right.
This was an upper class ideal that theywanted everyone else to fall in line and
all of these different grassroots thingslike the garden clubs and and even, you

(30:44):
know, the the golf association.
They were all trying to work into gettingpeople to to uphold this ideal in the
masses.
Mm hmm.
And so you talked, you were getting intothe golf part and I remember something in
the book along the lines of.

(31:05):
more and more as it was developing, therewas they put out this idea that you as a
basic homeowner needed to keep up with theextreme aesthetic of the golf course now
that the tight greenness and the shortnessand just this the way that look that was

(31:26):
kind of setting the bar for hey, this isyour standard of what you should be
achieving as a homeowner.
Well, I think.
golfers like the aesthetic, you know, thatthey enjoyed the sweeping, you know,
greens and all for the golf courses.
People, as these golf courses developed invarious places around the country, golfers

(31:54):
would build their house next to the golfcourse.
And so the aesthetic became that the golfcourse kind of continued around your
house.
There wasn't a big demarcation betweenwhere the golf course ended and your own
property.

(32:14):
And so, of course, there would be a littlepressure because the golf course, you
know, the club didn't want a lot of weedseeds blowing into the golf course because
it made it harder to maintain.
So there was pressure on you to keep yourlawn.
in the same shape as the golf course andforget the dandelions and other weeds.

(32:40):
Right, so now there's this kind offeedback loop developing where it's
feeding itself in a way.
That's interesting.
You mentioned, I mean, so when you wrotethis book, had you ever
from the advertising component, becausethe advertising component might be the

(33:01):
most fascinating component, in my opinion,coming from a branding and marketing
perspective and background for myself.
Had you ever done any work like thatbefore, where you were kind of essentially
doing this deep, you know...
dissection of the advertising industry atthat time.

(33:23):
And I imagine you must have gone throughhundreds of different advertisements of
the era and that's how you were analyzingthings.
Had you ever done anything like thatbefore?
No, this was all new.
I was having a wonderful time.
I lived in the Washington DC area andspent days and days and weeks and hours at

(33:44):
the Library of Congress.
It has a wonderful collection of
magazines and and homeowners manuals andall kinds of things that I discovered.
Must be an old mine.
yes.
I also visited the what is it called?

(34:10):
Fairlawn, New Jersey, there's the AmericanGolf Association headquarters with an
archive that was very helpful.
I've found that the American Garden Clubhave an office in New York City, and I
visited that and looked at their archives.
It was great.

(34:30):
It was so much fun because there's so muchof it.
All the popular magazines from the early20th century.
And so from my understanding, and this iskind of unique that
The beginning of the lawn industry is alsothe beginning of the magazine industry

(34:56):
booming.
Is that correct?
The magazine industry started late 19thcentury, but of course, the 20th century
is when it really blossomed.
And late 19th century, you've got, I'mtrying to remember the name of them, these

(35:16):
cards.
advertising cards that you could pick upat the hardware store and had very
attractive pictures of that.
These were ads for lawnmowers,particularly I was looking at these

(35:37):
beautiful estate homes and these greenlawns around them and people playing
croquet or tennis or whatever.
And then you'd have this picture of thisyoung woman or even a girl with a
lawnmower.
And it would have been impossible forthese young women dressed in their high

(36:04):
-heeled boots and their corsets toactually have used the lawnmower that was
being advertised.
It was kind of cheesecake, you know?
It was so, you know, this is so easy even.
a girl could do this.
Right.
And this was this was you mentioned thatin the beginning of and this is

(36:26):
fascinating because this is literally Imean, this is the work I used to do, which
is when when creating a new industry or asector.
So like when I was in India, when we werebuilding a new type of healthy snack
brand, the concept of a healthy snackbrand didn't exist.
And so when doing advertising for that,

(36:47):
Instead of typically advertising is youversus your competitive set of whoever
your competitors are.
But if there's no frame of reference, ifthere's no specific sector for this idea,
then the first thing you do is you justbuild the overall idea.
And you're not necessarily worried aboutplugging your own product or talking

(37:12):
yourself up versus the competition.
You just want the people.
to get this idea in their mind that, hey,there's this thing as a lawn and you want
a lawn and you want your lawn to look inthis exact aesthetic and you will use
these things in order to accomplish that.
And you did a really beautiful job of kindof showing that that is like the very

(37:36):
beginning and then you cataloged all theway through the evolution of that.
Right, and every spring these magazineswould have articles about how you could,
what to do in spring and what to do foryour yard and for your lawn.
And there would be advertising and how -toarticles and advice columns.

(38:04):
It was just on and on and on.
And a lot of it, and it was changingrapidly.
I mean, from one catalog to the next, itwas, this no longer works, or hey, we said
put 10 pounds of fertilizer, and now it'sjust put five, or no, double it, put 20,

(38:24):
and things like that.
And it's changing rapidly.
Yeah, the Scott Seed Company isfascinating.
They started out in...
providing various kinds of hayseed in the19th century in hardware stores.
And some of these golf courses, the clubmanagers and all, found that Scotts seed

(38:52):
was, some of the Scotts seed was very goodfor the golf courses.
And then Scotts caught on and realizedthat their real market was going to be
lawns.
rather than agricultural, you know, farms.
And so became a frequent advertiser aboutlawns and how to keep your lawns.

(39:18):
And you could write away for a freebooklet about how to, you know, how to
start a lawn, how to maintain your lawn,how to improve your lawn.
And the drum beat just went on and on andon.
And what and tell us about the what weresome of the
the metaphors and the type of languagethat was used, such as like control and

(39:43):
things like that.
What were some of the things that youdiscovered through that process?
Well, initially, to go back a little bit,the idea was to have this carpet around
your house.
And initially, the language was a Persiancarpet, because it would be a combination
of

(40:05):
with low -lying flowers and grasses, butit was kept short.
And then eventually it became a greenvelvety carpet, you know, with nothing
except long grass.
There were monoculture, you know, theviolets and the daffodils, I mean the

(40:25):
dandelions and all were gone.
These were no longer consideredattractive.
And so the screen velvety carpet was theideal what you were striving for.
And.

(40:48):
This lasted up until...
basically the World War II.
when rationing and the industrialdevelopment was all into war goods.

(41:10):
And so nobody was making lawn mowers.
They were making jeeps and tanks andthings.
But all the way through World War II,there was this still in the magazines and
advertisements and cartoons and that youhad to keep the home front looking like

(41:34):
your loved one in the military rememberedit.
You know, he's dreaming of home and thispicture of the cottage with the grass and
the roses.
And it's your duty to keep this up for himwhen he gets home.

(41:55):
and even though it became harder andharder to do.
Right, it was harder because all of theresources that would have been used for
this growing lawn care industry,everything halts essentially.
The military took all the lawn seed formilitary bases around the world, for

(42:22):
munitions factories to keep the dust down.
around the factory for airstrips forairplanes.
So for domestic use, there were no lawnseats available.
There were no lawn mowers available, butthe people were still being pressured.

(42:43):
And the other thing is that so manypeople, women and everybody went to work
and were working long hours.
They didn't have the time to...
to maintain their lawn.
This was really something crazy, butadvertising really pushed the aesthetic to

(43:08):
keep it going through the war.
And then at the end of the war, lawnmowersare available again.
Grass seed is available.
And now is the time to get out there andimprove.
And of course, after the war, there was atremendous suburban spread, GI Bill and

(43:33):
helping veterans buy their own homes, theLevittowns and all.
The cheapest thing to do was you buildthis suburban development and just sow
grass seed.
So and then it's up to the homeowner who'dnever.

(43:55):
you know, had to deal with this beforebecause they lived in an apartment in the
city.
The homeowner had to figure out what to dowith this grass or this plot of land that
their house was sitting in.
And then there was pressure from theneighbors to to keep it up.
huh.
huh.

(44:15):
And so.
Tell us about the...
through the advertising study of, youknow, there was great quotes and things
that you would bring up of, you know, it'sa symbol of man's control of or

(44:36):
superiority over his environment.
And just the relationship that we have,right, and this, because this seems to be
the most broken thing that we have intoday's society.
And it's obviously not just today'ssociety, but along this timeline is,
at, you know, in the, I don't know, it'sbefore the obviously, you know, the

(44:59):
colonization of America, but this ideathat man dominates nature, and the
advertising industry really ramps this up,right?
It really takes this idea that's been acultural norm developing through Europe
for some time, but it really takes a holdof that and now really elevates it to a

(45:21):
whole nother level.
But it became a battle.
It became a war against Mother Nature.
And over and over again, you had to fightMother Nature.
And.
even to using arsenic and DDT and allkinds of chemicals and everything to, you

(45:45):
know, to win this war against things thatwere wanted to grow in your yard other
than grass.
And it's very hard to keep monoculturegoing.
Right.
It's, it's, yeah, it's, it's almost, yeah.
And you talked about that of howmonoculture is.

(46:06):
I mean, it's literally designed to havepest and disease issues and other issues
because it's a monoculture.
It doesn't exist in nature in any way.
So therefore, if you're a company sellingthese things, it's the perfect scenario to
have a monoculture because it is 100 %dependent upon the industry to keep it

(46:28):
going and you to keep it going.
You had another quote that was, it was,the individual lives in alienation from
his environment, competing with it,exploiting it, resisting it, or ignoring
it.
which was, you know, it's, it's.

(46:49):
And so tell us a little bit about wementioned a little bit ago of control, but
talk about how the the the idea of theinterconnection of the idea of of what a
man and his lawn, the relationship betweena man and his lawn was supposed to be.
I find it fascinating that the lawn becamethe men's the man's sphere.

(47:12):
The garden was women's.
that it was up to the man of the house tomaintain the lawn.
Even though a lot of the advertisingshowed a woman with a lawnmower, I don't
think they really meant it.
I think it was just to say, look, this iseasy.

(47:35):
Even a woman could do it.
You can do this.
Right.
It was just symbolism and metaphor to saythat, hey, look, this doesn't take.
strength or a huge amount of effort.
Right.
And so here you are with man with hisweapons against Mother Nature.

(47:59):
Woman's nurturing the garden.
The man is fighting against the insects orthe weeds or the whatever.
And
using weapons of mass destruction.
It's just amazing.
When I was at a church in Maryland, I wason the board.

(48:28):
I became the property person one year.
And I was the first woman who had thatposition.
And in the past, all the men had, youknow,
mowed the lawn around the church.
So I was mowing the lawn around the churchand several people were horrified.

(48:49):
I shouldn't be doing that.
I should get the men to do that.
And I said, well, I don't mind, you know,this is, you know, this is, this is fine.
You know, this is my job.
But no, I wasn't supposed to be doingthat.
Right.
And what is this before after you wrotethe book?

(49:12):
During.
Wow.
Okay.
Yeah.
That's really, I grew up with, we didn'tmow the lawn.
I didn't mow the lawn.
And, you know, for years I lived inapartments or, you know, places that
didn't have a lawn or, you know, somebodyelse took care of the lawn if there was

(49:34):
any.
And finally having, you know, having ourown.
my own living in my own house.
And I was writing this book.
And I said, you know, I've never mowed alawn.
Maybe I should try it.
See if you like it.

(49:54):
What's it like?
Yeah.
So and that's it's funny because itactually brings up a memory for me.
So I remember my grandfather was thelandskeeper for.
for their church growing up.
And I do remember, yeah, on some Saturdaysthat I would sit on the mower and we would
go, I mean, it's a really big property.

(50:18):
It's actually really interesting becauseI'm looking for some of the future
episodes.
I am actually been researching Protestantgroups and Catholic groups and Christian
groups that are pro climate change, thatacknowledge.
climate change in these differentinstitutions, because typically we view
that conservatives do not believe in it oractually not.

(50:44):
No, I'm no longer using the word believein it.
I ask people if they understand it versusbelieve in it.
I think it's a better language.
But there are groups that exist.
They very much exist.
And so I'm excited to interview somepeople on that in the future.
But yeah, it brings up a reallyinteresting memory of writing on that
mower.
as a kid and I grew up bowing the lawnevery weekend for my home and family.

(51:10):
That was kind of one of my jobs and Iliked it.
I liked making the straight lines and feellike there's instant gratification with a
lawn, right?
As soon as you go over that long grass andyou look behind you, it's just like,
there's no better gratification than thatin terms of instant gratification.

(51:31):
It seems a lot of men...
learned actually learned to mow lawns anddo lawn care in the military.
Because, you know, military bases and, andthey were golf clubs for the officers and
whatever.
So people who had never been exposed, youknow, farm kids or city kids were exposed

(51:59):
to lawn care.
and just part of their military service.
Wow.
And so going back to you, you were usingthe language of weapons and mass
destruction, but that's not you.
That's not your interpretation.
I mean, there's literally that type oflanguage in these old advertisements.

(52:21):
Is that correct?
Absolutely.
After World War II, there's even one isthe nuke, the Jap beetles.
I said, come on.
wow.
Yeah.
Wow.
dear.
Yeah, that.
yeah.
It's yeah.
The language was everywhere.

(52:42):
And I'm imagining because the the warmetaphor, the battle metaphor is actually
a very deep metaphor in the human species.
I mean, even, you know, ancient Chinesetexts, ancient Chinese medicine texts have
that.
And we noticed that in like in the medicalindustry.
the war metaphor is huge and disease andfighting and we saw all during COVID.

(53:06):
But it's a very ancient metaphor, but Ican see how it would have ramped up after
World War II or during World War II.
And I believe that you talk about that alittle bit in the book.
Yeah.
And of course.
DDT is a product of World War II.

(53:31):
And it was in wide use in the 1950s.
And what was DDT and what was it used for?
It was a pesticide.
And actually, during the war,
refugees and people were actually delousedusing DDT.

(53:55):
It was a very powerful pesticide and beenshown to cause cancer and it's been banned
in most places, but it was in wide usein...
And Rachel Carson in their early 60s wroteSilent Spring about how the birds were

(54:21):
dying because the eggshells, the eggs thatthey laid, the shells were too thin to
support the hatching of new birds.
And the...
American bald eagle was endangered speciesand falcons and other a lot a lot of

(54:44):
different bird species right right and soshe sort of started saying you know
something's wrong you know something'sreally wrong but even in Vietnam Agent
Orange people were you know encouraged youcan use that on your grass and you know

(55:07):
the
the broadleaf weeds in your yard.
Again, it's another carcinogen.
And so with DDT, were they using this inthe US?
Were they using it for?
Was it for just any pest or was itmosquitoes or what?
What were they usually targeting with it?

(55:29):
Well, grubs and things, you know, moles,whatever else is, you know, in your yard.
Yeah.
Ants, who needs ants in your yard?
Right.
And people were applying like massiveamounts of this, right?
Like it was even where like the averagelawn owner would apply like twice as much

(55:52):
as a farm was using or something.
Sure.
You know, if some is good, more is better.
A lot of people have that attitude.
People's garden sheds would be wholearsenals of, you know, poisons and.
pesticides, insect herbicides, all kindsof stuff.

(56:12):
Right.
Horrible.
And so World War Two is interestingbecause it also is what led to the
fertilizer industry.
And I think it will.
It's the fertilizer and she existedbefore, but there was a German scientist
who created the new method to manufacturelike massive, massive amounts of of

(56:35):
fertilizer.
Tell us a little bit about what youlearned on that.
Actually, not a lot.
Not a lot.
Yeah, I've been reading about that andsome other sources.
And it's actually very fascinating becauseI was getting some numbers together the

(56:57):
other night.
And so as of today, there's three milliontons of fertilizer used per year on
American lawns.
There's currently roughly 40 million acresof land that has lawns on it.
And there are, it's amazing.

(57:18):
The water number, I can't even read it.
It's like 235 trillion, 224 billiongallons of water per year on American
lawns.
It's America's number one irrigated crop.
It's very interesting when I read thatbecause we don't think in our heads of a

(57:43):
lawn as a crop, but it is that's reallywhat it is.
It's just producing nothing besides acultural aesthetic.
That's it.
But every time when I hear that ofAmericans, number one irrigated crop, you
just go, what?
And even with the nitrogen or thefertilizer now is that it's going to be

(58:09):
interesting with carbon footprint stuffcoming up because it takes four to five
tons of carbon for every ton of nitrogencreated.
And so I think it'll be quite aninteresting.
I'm interested to see the future here.
But.

(58:29):
Now we're so we have World War Two andthen all of a sudden in the 60s, it seems
like things are culturally things arestarting to shift a little bit.
Just a little bit.
Yeah, there there was, you know, there wasRachel Carson and there was some concern
about the environment and what washappening.

(58:50):
But the launch is still being pushed.
Suburbs are still developing.
Riding mowers.
robotic mowers would do it for you, allkinds of wonderful inventions.
So you could still have your lawn.
And so, I mean, as I was thinking, I wasthinking and contemplating this the past

(59:12):
couple of days, I mean, is this is thiskind of one of the bigger failures of of
the?
the progressive movements in the US overthe past 50, 60 years.
I mean, I don't see how it couldn't be ifat that time in the 60s, you have this,

(59:33):
you know, you're having the hippie timeand all this cultural happenings.
But it doesn't seem to like really carryforward where, you know, still, I mean, my
grandparents are, you know, hardcoreliberals who, you know,
who actually did take out their lawnseventually, but I also grew up where

(59:56):
grandma was having me spray the dandelionswith, what's the one now that's shown to
have cancer causing effects?
Roundup.
And I remember getting roundup on my handsand stuff.
And now I look back and I'm going, I hopethat doesn't come back to bite me.
I was wondering about, but as I thoughtabout it, I thought, you know,

(01:00:20):
Really, as I look through all thedifferent mechanisms of climate
destruction and climate change, it reallyfeels like the lawn is the one thing that
the average American who has a lawn, it'sa quick fix for your carbon footprint,

(01:00:45):
your water footprint, your fertilizerfootprint for all these things.
but it didn't seem like the 60s movementdid that much.
Not at all.
When I was doing research for the book,late 80s, people were starting to talk
about zero escaping using.

(01:01:08):
indigenous plants and instead of importedgrass seed, doing something about getting
rid of lawns, but it didn't really havemuch impact.
And would you say that's because justculturally the idealism was so strong and

(01:01:30):
the neighborhood battles were so strong?
Yeah, there were court cases.
People tried to grow a home meadow.
and they were taken to court, you know, orthe town would come and mow it.
This was not appropriate.
You know, they said to harbor mice or ratsor snakes.
You don't want that in the neighborhood.

(01:01:51):
And right.
So again, this this rejection of MotherNature, that this diversity of animals
should not be present.
Right.
And, you know, those those are dangerous.
And also all the, you know, the.
the last hundred years of zoningregulations have meant that houses have

(01:02:15):
these front yards that you need to dosomething with.
And to fill them with flowers or plants ismore expensive and more time consuming
than just keeping your lawn mowed.
What

(01:02:36):
do you do?
And even in the late 80s, the variousplaces were offering to pay people to take
their lawns out in the southwest and inthe west.
It didn't seem to have that much impact.

(01:02:58):
I mean, some.
And it continues to have some impact.
But.
I think as people move from the Northeastto retirement in communities in the say
the Southwest, they took their aestheticwith them.
They wanted to recreate the lawn and treesand flowers around their house that they'd

(01:03:25):
grown up with, that they were used to,that was right, that looked right, instead
of cactus and desert plants.
stones or whatever, that's just not right,you know, for our aesthetic, even though
it's right for the environment.
Right.
And then.

(01:03:48):
Yeah, it's just it's just such afascinating.
I mean, this was kind of my originalintroduction to the entire topic, which
then I still didn't go any deeper becausemy grandparents replaced their lawn in
Bakersfield, California.
probably 10 years ago, maybe, and that wasbecause the state was then offering a

(01:04:11):
rebate because of the drought happening.
And so there was a rebate program where ifyou kept all your receipts, if you took
photos of the front lawn before and after,and you submitted all these documents to
this government website,
then you would get like, I think we gotmaybe $1 ,200 or $1 ,500 back and it

(01:04:32):
probably cost us a couple thousand, Iimagine.
And it's interesting because still todayin that neighborhood, I would say, I bet
you that we were the only house that didit on the street out of everyone.
And then everybody hated you.

(01:04:53):
Yeah, well, you know, fortunately, mygrandma has a knack for for landscaping
and for for like, you know, do dads andstuff and that that yard, you know, yard
art.
And so people generally always like whatshe does.
But but the interesting thing that I see alot of people complaining about now is the

(01:05:15):
they'll say, well, you know, 10 years ago,they told us that we need to put in these.
you know, rock landscapes or whatever.
And now they're telling us that we need tohave other things because we need to
capture carbon.
And so, you know, because because mygrandma's we actually put like a black

(01:05:37):
liner underneath everything because mostof its rock, right.
So now the problem is, is that you're notinfiltrating water when it rains.
for the most part, and you don't have anykind of vegetation that's able to pull
carbon and sink carbon.
And so it's one of those things where Ithink that people this goes back to how
estranged we are in this relationship withMother Nature, because at the end of the

(01:06:03):
day, we we probably shouldn't rely on thelatest government ideas, because
governments usually way behind in thatway.
At the same time, we should have we shouldjust do our own research of, hey, what is
the natural environment of this areasupposed to be like before we came through
and made all these changes.

(01:06:23):
And California's, there's lots ofmeadowlands and things like that that are
just completely gone now.
But it just had such a big impact on mebecause I kind of led the project of
transitioning it.
But then now obviously with like, okay,there's the whole, the carbon issue.
I'm looking at that yard going, man, we'renot capturing any carbon here.

(01:06:45):
It's all rocks.
But would it be appropriate to?
There are other places that's much moreappropriate to take.
Right.
That to me is the question.
The other thing is that I look around atthe yards and I go, okay, well, the carbon
footprint of an orange,

(01:07:06):
that gets shipped to you is way differentthan a cart.
I mean, there's zero carbon footprint foran orange that you pick off of your own
tree.
And so, you know, where we're from inBakersfield, I mean, the average home is a
sprawling city.
It's not stacked up high.
There's, you know, it's not a lot ofapartment complexes.
It's all individual homes with yards.

(01:07:27):
And you just look around, you go, wow, ifeach family had one citrus tree in their
yard,
this entire neighborhood would never haveto go to a store to get anything.
I mean, if 20 houses had lime trees, 20houses had lemon trees, 20 houses had
orange trees, everyone could go around andpick these things off and never have to go

(01:07:49):
to a store and pay for those things orhave the carbon footprint of growing it.
But would you have to irrigate it?
You would have to irrigate it.
And that's another major problem is wateruse.
Right.
And now, but water use for a food productversus water use for a lawn, you know,

(01:08:11):
much, much better.
That's right.
But what so hang on, but this is aninteresting part of the conversation,
which is the local regulations.
And so how how is that typically takingplace?
There's a height requirement.
On how tall you can let a grass go, andthat's how they determine if you will be

(01:08:33):
fined or not.
In many communities, yeah.
I mean, if it got taller than four or fiveinches, you know, you could find and if
you ignored it, you know, some themunicipality might even come in and mow
it.
And or an unruly neighbor who gets pissedoff might come in and mow your lawn for

(01:08:56):
you without your permission.
That has happened.
Right.
And I think you mentioned that a couple ofpeople were actually able to successfully
either sue the city, because the citycouldn't prove actually going back that it
was taller than what they said, becausethey didn't have any record keeping.
Yeah.
Wow.

(01:09:17):
Wow.
And what?
It's a real mess.
Yeah.
And one idea I liked that I want people toknow of.
So for all those out there thinking aboutconverting your land to something
productive, such as a garden or herbs ormedicinal herbs or, you know, trees,
whatever you can do on your land, therewas one there was one woman who heard her

(01:09:41):
method was to put the ugliest yard artpossible in her yard.
I think it was like pink flamingos orsomething that you mentioned or pink.
It was something that was just reallywacky.
Do you remember that part?
I'm trying to remember that part.

(01:10:03):
It was some form of like just things thatshe put in the yard and said, look, if you
don't let me grow my natural landscape,I'm going to put these horrible looking
things which are within regulation on myproperty.
I can legally have, you know, 10 pinkflamingos standing in my yard as an

(01:10:25):
eyesore to just prove the point becausethere's no regulation stopping me from
doing that.
So either you let me have my landscape orI'm going to have my pink flamingos to
just piss everybody in the neighborhoodoff, which I thought was brilliant.
So for all those out there who may have aneighbor that doesn't want them to have a
natural landscape, you can always, youknow, I don't even want to say it, but you

(01:10:49):
can wage your form of war against themwith pink flamingos or something.
But.
So, I mean, do you now, I mean, you livein Vermont, right?
That's right.
And do you now, do you keep any kind oflawn or garden or?
No, actually we do.

(01:11:11):
We bought this house four years ago andit's got grass around it.
I wouldn't call it a lawn.
It's certainly not a green nobody carpet.
We haven't fed it or watered it.
But...
I do, Mo.
There was a side yard that has decidedthat, you know, we're not using this.

(01:11:37):
Why mow it?
So I've been trying to get a meadow togrow, but the first year my husband hated
it.
It was ugly.
The second year better.
I'm hoping that this year it'll be evenbetter, but it's not easy.
Yeah.
To get something.
I mean, you think of a meadow and youthink of lovely grasses and flowering

(01:12:00):
plants.
We've got some ugly weeds.
-huh, -huh, right.
And are these indigenous weeds orindigenous plants or would these be plants
that came over from Europe?
Probably a mixture.
A mixture.
Yeah.
Right.

(01:12:21):
And then even going back into your storyof how a lot of the, quote, weeds,
that the war has been waged on, even ifthey were from Europe that were
transplanted here, these are actually veryprominent medicinal herbs.
I mean, dandelion is a very medicinalplant that's used in Western herbalism a

(01:12:46):
lot.
And I think you mentioned, I don't know, Ithink you mentioned like five or six
species and the interesting part was allof them are used in Western herbalism.
Plantains, right?
Yeah, which is interesting because thatits other name is called white man's foot
by the indigenous peoples.

(01:13:08):
Indigenous people call it because everyplace the Europeans went, this plant
followed them.
Right.
Right.
But it actually and it actually is,though, too, it is good medicine.
It's a very it's a very good healing herb.
Did you did you?
What were some of the, were you gettingyour mind blown at points in time during

(01:13:32):
your research?
Were there certain things that were justlike huge moments for you that you
couldn't believe it when you found it?
I think the World War II advertising wasone of them.
Couldn't believe that people were pushingthis aesthetic during the war.

(01:13:56):
I found the whole thing fascinating.
It was a wonderful project.
Right.
And then and what was the reception of itwhen you kind of released it originally?
But I got an award for it, which wasgreat.
wow.
And what award was that?

(01:14:21):
Sue.
It was an American Studies Award, bestbook of the year.
wow.
Yeah.
And then while you were doing it, you saidthat, before you said that, that a lot of
people were just, you know, why is thisimportant or what is this?

(01:14:44):
My mother said, but dear, what can I tellmy friends?
I'm working on why Americans have frontlawns.
He's like, what?
Right, even though she wasn't the biggestfan of them.
Right, she said, you know, and then myaunt said, well, the family is stunned by

(01:15:06):
your choice of topic.
OK.
Yeah.
But.
I think that because it's still in print,it's just the most amazing thing to me.
You know, that this is my dissertation wassomething I was interested in and, you

(01:15:31):
know, followed up on and it turned out tobe, you know, fascinating and
multifaceted.
And it's still an issue.
It's still a thing.
And do you keep up with this issue?
Like, are you interested in?
the evolution of it in terms of, you know,you know, issues in California or in

(01:15:55):
Arizona or these other states?
Or do you keep up with it in any way?
Only reading the popular press.
But not scholarly, no.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, it's it's interesting times becauseI think the I mean, it's just I saw in the
last year where Utah is now wanting their.

(01:16:17):
allotment of the Colorado River, whichthey have not been taking for a long time.
And the Colorado River is already at alltime lows from California and Arizona and
I think Nevada drawing from it.
And now Utah wants to build communitiesvery similar to that of Arizona where it's

(01:16:39):
a desert landscape that has no naturalgrass like that or anything.
And
And they want to build up their golfcourses and all these things.
Yeah.
And people want to move there andreplicate the landscape they think is
appropriate.

(01:16:59):
Right.
And how do you think that I mean, what dowe what do we do moving forward?
I mean, how do we solve some of this?
You know, I taught a class at the CatholicUniversity in Washington.
It was 1992 on the American West with agreat emphasis on water problems.

(01:17:25):
But it seems like people at that time weresounding the alarm and talking about
misuse of water and how there wasn't goingto be enough.
But people still keep moving there.
People still keep growing things there.

(01:17:45):
Nobody's listening.
Right.
And do you think that it's, I mean, isthis something that that we need that
we're just going to have to say that, hey,this is a spot that government has to step
in because the individual doesn't seem tobe able to control the the desire for it

(01:18:05):
or?
I don't know.
I don't.
If we definitely think we need a newaesthetic, but it's.
Awfully hard.
to develop one.
It took several hundred years to developours, you know, and a lot longer than that
in other countries, you know, for theiraesthetic, you know, landscape and home

(01:18:29):
building aesthetics.
And, gosh, you know, at one point I wanteda Fulbright to go to New Zealand to see
what they were doing, you know, as a...
colony of England originally, and takingthe British landscape aesthetic with them.

(01:18:54):
What had they done?
But unfortunately, didn't get it.
And so, I mean, do you think that newaesthetic is, would you say it would be
edible landscapes or permaculture type ofthing?
Or do you think it should just be

(01:19:14):
replicating, rewilding, and just doingpurely as much wild as possible?
Or what do you think it should be?
it's got to be a combination, I think,depending on where you are.
But we have developed so much, we keepbuilding houses.

(01:19:38):
We keep more and more agricultural land isbeing turned into housing.
The easiest thing to do with that is toplant grass seed.
Keep the dust down and it's a quick fix.

(01:19:58):
And so like you're saying is that it'sbecause this is such a cultural thing that
the only real way is a new aesthetic isthat we have to slowly adopt the new
aesthetic culturally.
Yeah.
And I don't see any product ororganization that's really beaten that
drum.

(01:20:19):
Yeah, it's interesting.
I've been I'm thinking about it a lotthese days because I'm actually in.
I'm currently in Greenwich, Connecticut,which is the wealthiest of the wealth.
And this is really part of the area wherethis idealism started.
And so I'm just I'm wondering is, is, youknow, do is it convincing all of these

(01:20:42):
wealthy?
Do we do the same thing again, but with abetter idea, which is, you know, do we
need to convince all the wealthy peoplethat they should be doing permaculture?
and edible landscapes and rewilding thatway then it'll filter down society again.
Or is there a bottom up approach to it?

(01:21:04):
But because in your story of how you showthe evolution of it, this is very much a
top down thing, where this is the upperclass, the wealthiest of the wealthy, and
it trickles down to the masses as the ideaof the cultural transmission.
And so I'm really, I'm curious because Ifeel like this time it could go either way

(01:21:28):
where it's possible that, you know, peoplefeeling the crunch of inflation and higher
food prices that, hey, it could actuallybe people on the, maybe not poor side, but
people who have, you know, a little spaceof lawn where they're able to convert that
into some sort of vegetables or somethingfor themselves.

(01:21:49):
Or is it we go back to the top and say,hey, we need all of you guys to do this
first so it looks fashionable andinteresting to people?
Well, you know, during the pandemic lastcouple of years, a lot of people around
here have started vegetable gardens,people who were not growing their own
food.

(01:22:09):
And interestingly, they use the nameVictory Gardens.
Yeah.
And what is that related to?
Well, World War Two people.
actually were encouraged to pull out theirlawns by the government and grow their own
food because of rationing and needing tosend food to the armed forces and to

(01:22:32):
refugees in Europe.
So there was a lot of interest in VictoryGardens.
And on the other hand, people were saying,well, you don't have to pull out your
front yard.
Do it in the backyard.

(01:22:57):
I don't know.
And then, of course, it's a lot of work.
You know, growing growing vegetables isnot necessarily easy.
And and you need quite a bit of space togrow enough, you know, other than, you
know, pop a cherry tomato in your mouthoccasionally.
Right.
It's a whole different way of thinkingabout things of living, of eating and.

(01:23:26):
Whether individuals have the time or theenergy or the ability to do that in their
own property.
Here in Vermont, there's a big push forsustainability and to grow more vegetables
and food locally and to share it locally.

(01:23:53):
Whether that's happening in other states,I don't know.
I don't know either, but I can say thatfor sure I have not seen another state
like Vermont when it comes to likecommunity gardens and other things.
It seems to be, you know, I just I haven'tseen any other state where I see more
flyers.
I see more things happening therecommunity wise oriented toward gardening

(01:24:16):
and urban farming.
I was really impressed with with withVermont in that way.
It's it's.
It seemed like it's far ahead of mostother states in that way.

(01:24:39):
Yeah, this is I'm glad I'm glad we didthis.
I'm trying to think I have I had so manyso many questions, so many ideas on here.
But I think I think we covered quite abit.
I think we have and and I will I'll beputting a link to your book in the the the

(01:25:03):
notes of wherever this is posted so peoplewill be able to.
find the book and they can go through andsee some of the more, you know, the
specific, you know, cataloging that youdid of the advertising industry and things
like that, which are very fascinating inhow you did that.
There's some great illustrations.
Yes, yes, there's some very, yes, verygood.

(01:25:26):
The illustrations of there were fantastic.
So, you know, I just want to, I want tothank you because I think this book is
very much a...
of service today culturally, because Ithink that it can provide people with that
initial, you know, impetus to thinkdifferently about, OK, wait a second, even

(01:25:46):
if I don't have time to build my owngarden or, you know, we don't need to grow
all of our own food, we don't have to dothat.
But hey, can I produce 10 percent of ourvegetables at home that I know have no
pesticides, that I know have no syntheticfertilizers that I know that I also.
you know, I'm able to, you know, enjoy theprocess of gardening and that the health

(01:26:09):
that comes along with that, or to have thekids in the garden, to reimbibed the
culture in a, in a harmonious relationshipwith nature.
and I think that this book is good becauseit challenges a very unconscious behavior
and belief system around lawns that wehave, because right now.

(01:26:33):
you know, whatever we, you know, whenwe're born and we come up into the world,
whatever we see is just status quo.
And so for us today, the law on his statusquo, and it has been for several
generations now.
And I think it's important to show thatthis was not always a status quo, that
this is actually very much a created idea.

(01:26:53):
And we can now proceed forward with abetter created idea.
Yeah, we didn't even talk about.
sports fields and the interstates with allthe lawn grass and the medians.
I mean, this country is just amazing.
Right.

(01:27:14):
Right.
The aesthetic is just everywhere.
It's everywhere.
And I'm doing the next episode is going tobe on the dead zones around the world, but
particularly the Gulf Coast dead zone,which is connected with the fertilizer and
excess nutrient runoff.
from the Mississippi watershed, which haslots to do with farming primarily, but

(01:27:36):
also golf courses.
Golf courses are a huge issue with, youknow, a lot of them are in protected areas
or close to protected areas or to veryvibrant ecosystems.
A lot of them are next to coastal wetlandsor estuaries or the ocean.
and we're running off all thesefertilizers and chemicals into those

(01:28:00):
waters.
And so the next episode is with a marinebiologist who wrote a book on the dead
zones.
And so I think it's a good segue, I think,from your work of the lawn and the
fertilizer and pesticides to now we'llmove to the industrial scale as well.
But thank you so much.

(01:28:20):
And I look forward to.
I look forward to possibly doing somethingwith the banana book at some point.
That would be fun too.
Yes.
Yes.
Thank you, Joe.
All right.
Have a good one.
Thank you, Virginia.
Bye -bye.
Bye -bye.