In scrolling through the course offerings at the University of Maryland, where I’ve been taking classes for several years, I came upon this one: “Lawns in the Landscape: Environmental Hero or Villain?” listed in both the Environmental Sciences and the Plant Sciences Departments. So naturally I signed up!
I’ll have more to say about the rant-rich course when it’s over but for now, one particular assigned reading was such a shock to my system, I can’t resist telling you about it. The rant writes itself!
It’s a paper by two people at Macalester College’s Department of Geography, titled “Digging in: lawn dissidents, performing sustainability, and landscapes of privilege.” Are you triggered yet? You can read it here in PDF. (But GOOD LUCK figuring out what the authors are trying to say! I was so taken back by the obtuseness of the writing, I sent it to two editor friends and they had as much trouble figuring it out as I did. But you may have better luck.)
Those terrible “lawn people”
Fortunately, the instructor summarized the authors’ points for us in some readable PowerPoints, where the sins of “lawn people” are made clear. Chemical capitalism, really? I used to have a lawn and somehow it grew with no chemicals, minimal capitalism, and without turning me into a wealthy conservative. I’ll have to confess to being white.
Those terrible “lawn dissidents”
From the paper’s Abstract:
Lawn dissidents are people who violate norms of turfgrass yards often found in North American suburbs. This paper uses qualitative methods and engages a performance view of landscape to examine how these subjects’ sustainability-oriented lawn alternatives work unintentionally to create exclusionary landscapes.
And here’s the instructor’s summary of the authors’ case against lawn dissidents, which I suppose includes me over the last 20 years that I’ve gone lawn-free. Never knew I was excluding anyone by replacing my lawn, though. Food for thought? Or a good laugh?
Soooo, having concern for one’s neighbors is an example of privilege, and for some reason habitat signs piss off the authors, too. And why is that? Some quotes:
In effect, lawn dissidents shape their yards to demonstrate a more environmentally sustainable lifestyle that is coordinated with capital accumulation and disconnected from matters of race privilege, colonization, and social memory. In important ways, use of lawn alternatives is revealed as another way to mark belonging in an eco-conscious bourgeois class coded as white…
However, as these subjects produce landscapes that perform environmentalist frames of sustainability, they also ignore concerns of social justice, which are part of a broader view of sustainability. In effect, lawn dissidents in our case study enact narratives of land as a resource for culture distinction and affect white bourgeois esthetics. Without intending to, lawn dissidents thus cultivate landscapes of privilege that perform exclusionary narratives about urban sustainability…
Lawn dissidents link their individual yards to a more generalized liberal habitus of whiteness through cultivating edible plants and consuming locally grown food…
It is especially telling that even the most radical of lawn dissidents deliberately avoided the label of heretic and went out of their way to align their green positionality with bourgeois taste.
Takes me back, waaaay back, to when I was a smug 20-year-old pondering whether the radicals on campus were right about my parents being bourgeois capitalists because they had a nice home. (Or worse, since their home was in the South, they must be…fill in the blank. To avoid suspicion myself, I quickly ditched my Southern accent.)
What to do about my “privileged mind set”?
The purported solutions for my “privileged mind set” are the hardest section of the paper to decipher, and even the professor couldn’t come up with much to fill his slide: communal yards, shared economies, and posting signs acknowledging oppression.
Sure reminds me of my turbulent college years. But back then we had REAL things to criticize and demonstrate over – civil rights, women’s rights, war, the goddamn draft! So maybe it’s the paper’s authors who are demonstrating privilege in their attacks on people for just improving their yards.
Why assign this absurd paper?
The professor, who is excellent and about whom you’ll hear more soon, revealed that UMD faculty are told by the administration to include content in their instruction about “diversity, equity and inclusion,” and as hard as it is to imagine those concepts popping up in a class about the science of turfgrass, he managed to find this one paper. And inflict it on us.
DEI topics have been covered in several classes I’ve taken – where they’ve made sense. In this case, well, thanks for the rant!
Well, Susan. Yep, very rantworthy. indeed And, yep, the paper is a big dose of call it self-righteousness that’s particularly hard to swallow coming from our native progressives (Truth be told, I’m one, I guess, though Libowitz and Trudeau might call me a “revisionist” or something…)
I’m grateful that you shared it, and not just because I share your pain (how Boursie of me!) but because the paper is actually very useful. To me it isn’t an “absurd paper” at all, despite some annoying and obscure writing (in three languages!)
For one thing, garden teachers and service providers among us get ready. These questions, or ones like it, are coming to our classes and clients. Right up there with “isn’t all digging bad?” and “shouldn’t we only grow Native Plants?”
I also have to admit that my historical and cultural analysis of why and how I garden tends to be pretty shallow compared to the deep digging I do ecologically. It’s hard to accept that quasi-religious abstractions such as “the market”, “manifest destiny”, “progress”, and -yes- “privilege” have utterly altered our soils, ecosystems, and justifications for aesthetic choices. My garden is a sanctuary, but at the same time a mirror of the less appealing aspects of the world we live in.
I actually have to agree with them on some points. For one thing, damn straight, colonialism brought more to our world than tomatoes in Italy and camillias in Charlotte! The process of healing from the past has to begin with not denying or whitewashing (sorry) history, and honestly facing injustices that still exist as a result. No, for Pete’s sake, we can’t solve these problems directly in our gardens! However, we have to do better than hiding out behind a little mainicured bed of chartreuse /Echinacea/ nativars humming “No, no, no, it ain’t me, Babe…” (Not that any of us do that (well, once in a while I do, maybe – I like both some Dylan and some coneflowers, I confess.)
Anyway, I don’t diss these authors and their paper. Their perspectives are provocative and in some cases insightful in ways I hadn’t considered, even if I disagree. Your prof gets points for putting something in front of you that’s not just same-old/same-old. So, thanks to you and to him!
(So, after being an apologist for the authors, got to say the website for MacAlister College (https://www.macalester.edu) in Minneapolis (Give ’em credit! They’ve resisted the rampant name inflation of “university”!) opens with a photo of … a great big grassy college lawn…
Dammit Susan, I was just about to go out and express my privilege by giving a damn about my garden, and thought I’d check in first; and now I want to spend the next three hours eviscerating this “argument”, written in academic-ease meant to confuse readers with the authors’ moral and intellectual superiority.
Some will speak out, meeting this total horseshit head-on; but the vast majority of people a) wish to be seen as doing the right thing, b) don’t feel confident in the ability to express themselves well, and c) assume the underlying ideology is not as culturally pervasive as it is. They will therefore defer to those shouting the rules of the new morality the loudest. Also, yours is a college class filled with 18-22 year olds with vastly less life-experience who have a grade on the line and feel even less confident in their counter-arguments, and more desirous to fit in.
The racist aspect of their premise needs to be called out in the strongest possible terms for what it is. Whenever I see any reference to “white normative” or “white ideas”, I treat it the same way I would treat the words “black normative” or “black ideas” – with contempt and a turning of my stomach. It is a racist, neo-Marxist ideology and should be recognized as such.
Your last point is spot on. The authors are demonstrating their exceptional ‘privilege’ by living in a culture where, instead of spending 4 hours a day gathering food, 3 hours preparing it, and the rest of the time protecting themselves and their loved ones against cold, heat, animals, disease, natural disasters, and other people (as we have had to do as humans for millennia), they have the luxury of spending enormous amounts of time crafting asinine arguments attacking people for being stewards of their homes, neighborhoods and communities. I sniff a PhD in the works, or perhaps a $30K per pop speaking career.
Brava for bringing this one to the Rant. We must meet this ideology with courage and not be terrified to speak out. I know it’s tough folks, but be brave, a lot is at stake. – MW
Good point about the other students. We spent a whole class discussing this paper, and they were clearly taking it seriously.
Susan, great rant! I hope you will take all these comments (especially Marianne’s) back to your class and share them with your fellow students. And yes, the witch analogy was perfect. Let us know what happens.
Uh, Susan and Marianne, with respect, I think the students (one might have been me, and I’m no spring chicken!) who responded with curiosity rather than aggressive defensiveness may be on to something. It’s no crime to call out horseshit, but there are parts that aren’t horseshit – and even horseshit makes good compost once stirred and given time, no? Rantworthy topic, in any case – I see Elizabeth has ranted back. Turning the compost.
Thankyou!
I forgot to add how fascinating it is that no-one can escape these authors’ censoriousness – which is of course the point. The authors are moral beacons – priests of a sort. You are either a dirty white conservative capitalist for having a lawn and taking care of your garden and community, OR you are an exclusionary pseudo-dissident capitalist-adjacent useful idiot that puts your environmental concerns over social concerns. Neither of which you can truly solve, both of which plunge you into a never-ending cloud of self-loathing should you drink deeply of this Kool-Aid. You either drown and are innocent or float and are a witch. Either way you are punished.
Okay, NOW I will go and exercise that privilege by getting the hydrangeas pruned. – MW
I couldn’t agree more Marianne – they even worked gender politics into this neo-Marxist mash!
Susan thank you for bringing this to our attention and the referenced paper is well worth a close read.
Well said, Susan and Marianne – and here’s hoping this stuff takes a very long time in crossing the Atlantic.
By the way, you can escape your privilege, according to our Ben, by not pruning or even deadheading hydrangeas. This will be our experiment this year. Though on reflection, that will be the other kind of privilege…
I do this with only one of my paniculatas because they are such a horrible cultivar (Bombshell), and I made the mistake of planting many of them in an out of the way place, that I simply cannot be bothered, and what they offer is better than nothing. But I’m going to stick with pruning the others as usual right now. Take lots of photos – I’m interested in what the big ones look like. – MW
Take a look at Benjamin Vogt’s March Blog posting about daffodils. The same jargon. Capitalism, eco feminism, selfishness of gardening for pleasure and not the planet Privilege, blah blah blah.
Found it! https://www.monarchgard.com/thedeepmiddle
I had to do a double-take and check that you didn’t post this on April 1st!
I, too, thought it was a joke.
I just want to grow yummy food to eat to reduce our grocery bill. I didn’t know that made me a privileged person. Just about all my neighbors grow food for their families.
I teach at a university, and I gotta say, this mostly sounds like faculty members trying to survive the scramble up to tenure. One article, so many boxes ticked.
Wow. Rant-rich indeed. Love Marianne’s witch-test analogy. It sounds less like faculty than grad students trying to come up with a unique topic for a dissertation. They did RESEARCH on this.
Publication is based upon a master’s thesis and most likely basis for a doctoral dissertation.
I think I just won a bet there John 😉 —MW
Yep!
Oh, and horseshit and asinine, racist and stomach turning. I find it impossible to get past any of that to try to figure what the whole lawn thing is about. Maybe their parents made them mow a lot for spending money. Tho as far as I can tell no one does that anymore.
I wonder if any of the authors garden? It doesn’t sound like it.
I like that people have ideas and opinions; it’s good for gardening, it’s good for society, it’s good for GardenRant!
However, when will activists learn that endless labelling of this or that is a product of patriarchy/oppression/privilage/etc alienates the very people they’re supposed to be encouraging into change? Sneering at those who do not hold the same views just causes division, and when people feel attacked they dig in and resist. Insert some addage about ‘carrots’ and ‘sticks’….
In the UK we have a fairly lively ‘discussion’ about artificial turf, and I think it’s fair to say that it’s particularly pushed by two activists; one is Charlotte Howard, a garden designer, and the other is Richard Dowling, who is actually employed by the UK’s ‘Environment Agency’, an official government body. Dowling runs a social media account called ‘Sh*t Lawns’ (feel free to swap out the * for an ‘i’ if you wish, trawling through the Rightmove website and encouraging followers to submit photographs of artificial grass, while Howard stalks social media passing judgement on anyone who has the stuff in their gardens.
Their attempts at lobbying fall flat, so instead they’ve taken on to hate campaigns against fans and suppliers of artificial turf, but also anyone who doesn’t follow their extremist positions. They and their disciples have taken a position and are fighting hard, yet the whole thing has descended into anarchic chaos. Quite frankly people don’t like being told that they’re idiots by people who have taken it upon themselves to ‘save’ them.
I have a lot of sympathy for ecological concerns, but while this ‘holier than thou’ attitude might well create discussion it fails spectacularly in making meaningful progress.
Some people like lawns. Some people are forced into having lawns (thinking of your US HOA groups here). Some people would probably really love to embrace a new approach if they were educated and enthused rather than being scolded as morally inferior.
Well, as an old-84-trained gardener I have much to say, but Marianne has pretty much already expressed my point of view, I will only add that the one thing that really matters is that when we garden we consider what we do that affects the environment in which we all live.
Great Rant, Susan!
I’m very confused. These authors clearly won their game of buzzword bingo. So the “lawn dissidents” are actually the conformists while the turfgrass groomers are the rebels or are both reprehensible? Where exactly do I get my cultural capital and just how much is it worth? Should my sign just say “Sorry for everything”? The fact that younger college students and any faculty would treat this paper with any level of seriousness demonstrates the decline of western civilization.
So, according to this obfuscating paper, lawn use (or gardening in general) should always be politicized to connect and comment on inequality in our society?
I don’t care about DEI. I believe in merit and hard work, and my front yard (back and 2 sides as well) reflect my tastes and experimentation. I grew up poor, didn’t go to college, got a job, got married, raised children, kept working, put 3 of 4 children through college. All are upstanding contributing members of society. I am now retired and have the time (and money) to garden as I please. Oh yes, I am white (peachy beige, actually), and I have two small patches of lawn left because my husband likes it. My opinion: Avert your eyes if you don’t like it.
DEI seems to permeate most every aspect of our lives now and it has arrived at our garden gate. I’m not surprised.
typical anti-environmentalist rant–labelling any group elitist has a long tradition in this country of self-professed commoners (ever hear of populism?)
I keep checking to see if this is an April Fools joke…
Susan,
I believe you and many of your readers have fallen prey to a “straw man” argument. It’s a cheap way for person to attack a position in a debate by posing a flawed argument that can be easily proven false.
In this case, your professor appears to be taking an easy route to “present both sides” of current lawn issues. Fraudulently. He/she may deny that, of course. But do you really believe that a rational pro-lawn argument has now been presented?
With your acquiescence, I can provide a better defense of lawns. Lemme know.
John
Property rights are, by definition, inherently about exclusion and control and the environmental movement has for sure has rightly been called on the carpet for exactly this same reason. I don’t know why that so stunning to anyone who reads this.
The pursuit of a yard that you own predicated to putting a ton of money into it to achieve perfection that is yours and yours alone, no matter how you define that be it for a lawn or not, IS about keeping up appearances as is demanding everyone else adhere to that model is kind of the same thing, no? The concept of stay off my lawn is the same schtick that the all-hail-my-beautiful-sustainable-garden-that-cost-me-a-mint-to-create that masquerades as equitable when it is really not. Especially when the ability to participate demands wealth.
We all know that the gardening industrial complex is a real thing as is embodied by all the knowing remarks (wink, wink) about how expensive the gardening bills actually are and how much we jokingly brag about the costs of this “habit.”
So it got called into question. And it makes y’all mad?
What do fully participatory models of gardening actually look like that bring communities together and are truly equitable? That would be a far interesting pathway to explore.
I don’t put a bench in my garden to look at, I put a bench in my garden accessible to the public to invite them to sit down in it and eat a little while. It’s a public service on purpose. Do you see what I am saying?
I am kind of surprised by how many piled onto your rant in solidarity. Instead of curiosity, there is a doubling down and a missed opportunity to dig deeper (pun intended).
Lastly, and with respect, DEI when we are really vulnerable enough to listen to the truth is about questioning what world make the world a more welcoming place. You fell down the anti-DEI rabbit hole, that while it is very popular to do lately, it is still sad to read.
Thank you for your comment Melissa, forcing me and perhaps others to explain our positions more carefully.
I completely agree with your point that spending $65,000 on a re-wilding to create a ‘natural’ look, and touting that landscape to express moral or intellectual superiority is the very essence of hypocrisy.
On the other side of the [literal] fence, forcing others to adhere to one’s standards of taste in their gardens by chemically treating them to within an inch of their lives is just as repulsive in my book, and worthy of criticism.
Both are valid points upon which we can agree – but neither point was expressed to stand alone and be debated on its merits. Instead, they were both used to fabricate a racially-charged oppressor/oppressed narrative that, at core, seeks to eliminate private property rights, heighten racial tension, create division, and it seems, advocate for no gardening whatsoever. And, after reading the paper, to do so with the minimum of effort by invoking the typical pejorative DEI lexicon (which grows by the minute).
This is why it is worthy of strong reactions in readers who see it for what it truly is, and would rather get back to their gardens than lay out their thoughts. However, it should be answered.
Over the last decade, and particularly over the last five years, the concept of private property has been strategically and expertly tainted by defining it in moral terms as a tool of exclusion and control. This is true particularly in classrooms to the younger generation with little to no life experience and painfully little knowledge of history. You do so in your own comment.
Though I will not deny that there are those who see it, and use it, as such (including paradoxically the righteous and rich-as-hell leaders of DEI-enthusiastic countries and socialist dictatorships), the vast majority of everyday people owning their own property for the first time – whatever it is – see it as empowering, exciting, challenging, joyful and profoundly rewarding.
For them it is a physical embodiment of hard work, smart decisions, and self-sacrifice. It is not a straightforward process, sometimes involves luck, must be maintained, and can be taken away in an instant. It is precious and worth working towards.
Unfortunately, the minutiae of the ownership process, and its daily requirements, is invisible to someone looking in on it. Only the outcome is observable. It invites envy and our basest feelings of who deserves what based only on what we can see and assume. I could write so much more on this, but I invite you and other readers instead to pick up a copy of my book Big Dreams, Small Garden, which tackles the subject of envy and its results in our lives.
We read a lot of comments on our own posts and on the posts of the other contributing editors here and thus get a general idea of our audience. I would offer that it is a highly engaged, environmentally-aware and community focused group that more likely than not, helps in some way to make gardening “fully participatory” – teaching, volunteering, working with young people, starting community gardens, joining groups and making plant friends, etc… Many of us here at GardenRant write on some aspect of this topic regularly.
Lastly, the statement that those opposing DEI initiatives simply need to be “more vulnerable” to “listen to the truth” about what would make the world a more welcoming place is not-so-artfully dodging the tougher work of satisfactorily answering their fellow interlocutor’s concerns about discrimination, racism, societal control, freedom of speech, merit, private property, and who, exactly, gets to decide who is good and who is not and who has what and who does not.
I prefer to discuss an argument on its merits, not be told it can’t be discussed because I’m not vulnerable enough to hear the truth. Replace ‘vulnerable’ with ‘spiritual’ and we are regressing into pre-Reformation and indeed, Enlightenment territory. And here we were discussing lawn care. 😉 – MW
I like your comment a lot. I *want* diversity, equity, and inclusion to be the way of the world. I personally, whatever the dictionary definition, don’t buy that it goes both ways. Oxford reference says “A set of social relations that is used to discriminate against people based on their assumed race. Given their political power, wealth, and historical precedent, racism is usually expressed as discrimination by white populations against ‘non-white’ people. Racism can be both overt, explicitly expressed through discourse and law, and materially through forms of violence, and covert in nature, working in more implicit and subtle ways to disenfranchise people through the restriction of life opportunities.” The history of racism is so horrific that if white people are criticised, even in a blanket way that doesn’t have nuance or recognise individuals, I can’t agree with calling it racism.
I also think that historically if one looks at gardens in other countries and here, poorer people often did not have lawns and, at least before there were grocery stores handy (which they aren’t in “food deserts”, often grew food and herbs in both front and back gardens.
I am deeply aware of the privilege that, even though I am working poor and per government guidelines have been close to poverty level most of my life, I do own a house, and that goes back to WWII when my rather poor white dad could get a GI loan and help from his brother in law, who was well-off due to his own GI benefits and a college education. Black soldiers found it much harder to benefit from housing assistance after WWII and couldn’t buy in certain neighbourhoods, as we all know. My parents were poor when I was little, but by both of them working, managed to pay their mortgage and slowly moved up to lower middle class. When I grew up, in Seattle, I often had family dinners with relatives in the Innis Arden neighbourhood, a place of beautiful 1960s style garden and lawns back then, without ever realising that only white people, not people of color or Jews, could buy houses there. The privilege of the GI benefits that my dad got (and maybe my mom, too, she was in the Marines in WWII but I just realized she probably didn’t get GI benefits) cascaded down to me in that at age 25 I was able to buy my grandmother’s house from my wealthy uncle when no bank would have financed a self employed housecleaner. That set of circumstances is why I now have my home and garden and why I live in a beach community where, if I had a mortgage or rent to pay, I could never afford to live. On a middle class scale, I benefited from generational wealth that was strongly related to being white. Having been political to the left since my early adulthood, I don’t think a day goes by when I am not aware of this. What I do to assuage it a bit is to make volunteer gardens in my little town, and to donate money when I can to a local group that helps protect local immigrants from deportation…but that privilege is something I can’t ever repay…to the world….if that makes any sense. I really don’t do much else compared to some more politically active friends of my age, so my awareness of privilege actually doesn’t do much good. I live for my garden and my favourite way of life is to never have to leave my own property. But I do think it is important to acknowledge the privilege that lays under my life, and I do believe in the value of DEI.
Thank you for this. You say much of what I would want to say, in response to both the original Rant and subsequent comments.
John, my next post about this course will do that. The current post wasn’t intended as that. (Sorry I’m getting my “reply” placements mixed up.)
Dang. And here in my 8th decade I always thought gardeners were nice, calm people. I can only say “Judge not; lest ye be judged.” Sheesh.
Bev – I hear you! – remember when gardening was fun?
Melissa: To help me understand the argument, could you say more about how or why the environmental movement is being criticized? Something about a connection to property rights?
Susan I’m curious. Did anyone in the class evaluate the study itself? For example was the specific hypothesis clearly stated, review method, sample selection bias? Number? Did they look at the survey itself and examine validity and reliability? Statistical methods used? Did the professor address any issues regarding the structure of the study and comprehensiveness of the review? – John
I’d have to answer no, not from the class discussion. Here’s the assignment the class was given about the paper.
“The paper Digging in: lawn dissidents, performing sustainability, and landscapes of privilege, uses the 3 principles of sustainability to frame how the actions of many lawn dissidents only partially achieve the goal of producing a sustainable landscape. The authors further discuss how transitioning away from a landscape embraced by lawn people does not necessarily lessen a lawn dissidents desired to conform to neighborhood norms. Briefly review how the paper’s authors build the case to argue that the landscapes of lawn dissidents are not always sustainable. As part of your review, discuss how the actions of a lawn dissident can heighten the perception of a lawn alternative being viewed as an elite privileged landscape. What solutions do the authors propose to achieve landscapes that are truly sustainable? Lastly, do you see any contradictions in the proposed solutions? “
Very helpful, Susan. Seems like a thoughtful approach. As you mentioned, you’ve got a good teacher.
Thanks Susan. I would hope the instructor did citation analysis or other bibliometric methods on the journal article before assigning it to determine if the study is important and relative (example how many authors have cited this particular study). I think John above made an important point. As always your rants are thought provoking.
Totally agree! The paper didn’t merit the attention given to it.
Relevant not relative 🙂
Perhaps the authors are saying, in academic terms, that anti-lawn folk can sometimes come across as smug and self-righteous.
Yay for Melissa A Ehrenreich! I find her response thought-provoking AND much better written than the original piece we are asked to comment on. I’m sad no one chose to engage with her. I thought the connection she made of the environment movement to property rights was clear and made more specific further in the response. Rage can sometimes make us willfully blind. True, I have found at rare times in Susan Harris’ writing a waft of the suburban, but never enough for wholesale damnation of another viewpoint, however woefully expressed. I believe with Melissa A. Ehrenreich curiosity is called for. Let’s get beyond the kneejerk ranting. Everyone responding here I feel has something deeper to say than to join in an unattractive piling-on.
Sorry, but this suburbanite is still curious about the connection between environmentalism and property rights. Could you or someone expand on that with examples?
(Btw, do I at least get credit for living in a co-op? I don’t even own my home, just the right to live in it. lol.)
Or how about a bonus point for living in a suburban county that’s only 27% white? Diversity in the ‘burbs! Maybe the stereotype needs updating.
*cringe*
Many of us do have much more to say, but very little precious time over the weekend. I’m sure many would be happy to answer once they come back to the discussion and I hope they will. I have now done so myself. – MW
I liked her comment, too, and replied, probably digressing way too far from gardening for this space. I appreciate your appreciation of her comment.
Susan (and all),
Some are attempting civil discussion. And, some here, are having fun.
On the serious side, the harangue is not “neo-Marxism”. It’s straight Karl Marx. His utopia was common ownership of property for the good of all. There are those who are still true believers. It’s amusing to me that the Russians sent Bulgarian emissaries to Cuba to install collective farms there. The Russioan Communists knew the approach would fail. But this way, it would be the Bulgarians would get the blame.
To this day, the ideal of complete common property ownership has failed as an economic system in every country it has been tried. There remain, however, aspects of it that survive in lots of places today. Central Park is one example. The writers of the rather incendiary piece were, I think, looking to the British “common green” as their model. Folk had free access to it for grazing sheep and like pastoral pleasures. In that sense, the private ownership of lawns today is considered by some to be “capitalistic”. I still believe your college professor was having some fun by throwing this grenade into your classroom.
Ta!
Some of it is straight Marxism, certainly John. But this moves out of the economic and into the racial fairly quickly with the DEI lexicon, which is why I choose to term it neo-Marxist. – MW
Agree, partly. However, we have a different discipline and path here, don’t we, in geography? With its own interest in spacial/temporal analysis, it isn’t purely political economics, which explains why I find (some) geographers still make for interesting reading despite Landsat and Saint Exupery https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/410fYDlf1OL._AC_.jpg
Speaking of that, after reading Elizabeth’s reply and all the rantcussion here, I’m going to take my eyes over to the article and read it, with the prof’s questions in mind.
Got to say, I’m with Melissa when she says “And it makes y’all mad?” “The gardeners doth protest too much, methinks”. Maybe? Just a litte?
Just an aside – since the conquest, all the land in the UK is and was owned by the Crown, so those ‘Commons’ were never owned by the people. And usually were actually part of the local landowner’s estate.
After reading my own comment, I thought I might need to connect the dots . . . (and, I AM NOT a proponent for the professor’s paper. I’m only trying to addrss your question, Susan.)
Marxism prioritizes the good of all over individuals’ benefit. So, privately owned property would involve interests inimical to the overall benefit of the environment enjoyed by all. Casting private ownership as an “evil” assumes that private ownership will always detract from the overall good.
This reasoning, I feel, belongs in the compost pile. But, obviously, there are others who would disagree,
I don’t understand, then, why the criticism isn’t aimed at all homeowners all renters anyone who doesn’t live in a commune? Why are people with habitat signs in their front yard singled out?
Susan,
I was attempting only to mansplain the connection between property rights and environmental concerns. As you and others have pointed out, there are many angles open to question. However, I don’t have the answer to your question. My wrist is fatigued from repeatedly turning over my Magic 8-Ball. It just says: “Reply hazy. Try again later.”
J.
It seems to me that the professor was either lazy about selecting a quality paper for the discussion, or deliberately chose a shoddy work in order to sabotage a legitimate question. Also, in response to people who want to pretend that gardening has nothing to do with race: It’s a privilege of white people to pretend that there are little fences across which racism can’t cross into “nice” areas of life. As a white person who was raised to feel like we were “working poor,” I’ve had to learn to try to recognize that white privilege plays into nearly every aspect of life. Regardless of economic background or “how hard we worked.” It’s the water we swim in.
For example, I literally have had conversations with my husband about the fact that, as a white family, we can let our yard “go wild” without the same level of fear of being judged and potentially abused by neighbors or local authorities that would be experienced by BIPOC families in our neighborhood. Never mind the fact that private land ownership is actually a cultural inheritance largely derived from our European ancestors (which they succeeded in imposing on most of the planet through violence) -not a universal truth common to all humans- and the land my family owns and tends was stolen from the Wampanoag, who had very different ideas of land rights than my cultural ancestors.
These acknowledgments of privilege might not ultimately change what I do, and it doesn’t mean I spend my days in terror of being called racist or politically incorrect. But when I think and talk about things that matter to me -like gardening- I do try to consider the potential privilege I might be relying on, try to acknowledge it, and allow that understanding to inform my thoughts and actions. Because once I’ve seen it, I can’t un-see it.
I’m as lefty as they come and extremely “anti-lawn” becauseI live in drought-stricken California, and even I roll my eyes at that paper.
I agree that a lot of landscaping can be elitist. I also agree that a lot of signage around “pollinator habitat”, etc., can be condescending and exclusionary. I also agree that it requires a lot of privilege to even care about landscaping at all. All that said, I firmly stand against the idea that unless everyone can participate in a certain form of art (or activism) then it ought not be pursued at all, or that people should not pursue the art/activism that speaks to them and their priorities. Directives like adding benches to front yards to make private space more communal just gives ammunition to extremists who accuse environmentalists of condemning private property rights and comes across as judge-y to people who happen to affluent and also engage in gardening for non-political reasons.
Just because many Americans do not have the privilege to care about the environment and landscape accordingly doesn’t mean nobody should. I also don’t think my front yard is a space to fight economic injustice. They can be critical of my choices, but that knife cuts both ways. I think it’s absurd to tell people they should add benches to their front yards and install “sturdy ground cover” instead of caring about managing rainwater, or planting oak trees, or any number of other positive alternatives to traditional turfgrass.
Omg so well said! Thank you!
If it helps you feel any better, Susan, I doubt anyone is really listening to the kinds of people who write those papers. It’s the writing of someone who loves the sound of their own voice, not someone writing in order to be understood. The consequence of their pompous style is that few people will understand them, and their words won’t outlast their student loans.
I couldn’t agree more Sarah.
I imagine you’re right, and thanks. But selfishly – and for the sake of the rest of the class – I wonder what content we missed because the prof made time for that damn paper (except for which the course has been remarkably good).
Oh, golly, Sarah, as a transplanted coastal Californian now gardening in the US South, we’re in the process of putting a bench in our front yard under two big ol’ majestic /Quercus phellos/, along the street. I mean, I think we’ll be the ones who sit on it mostly, but there are lots of benches in our neighborhood, all up and down the street. For us, the bench is an element – you know, as in design? – a human element that fits within a ‘wilder’ looking (and hopefully more sustainable, for lack of a better word…ecologically functional?) landscape. Key idea from drawings and sitting and looking – it’s not _instead_, it’s _part_ of the rainscape, and the overstory, and the understory. Part of the story.
I’m probably going to put a bench in my front yard too, as a place for me to sit and greet neighbors and place bags of excess citrus fruit for passersby to take – because as a Californian, you know how it goes when you have citrus trees! Too many all at once!
Good on you for having/keeping your oak tree. 🙂
I am shaking my head in dismay. According to these “experts” no one can win. Must anyone who cares about how her property looks apologize for it? Is there no sacred space left in this world where we may just be one with nature while nurturing our souls without politics, morals, and guilt being introduced?
Don’t miss Elizabeth’s subsequent post about racism and exclusion in the gardening world, where I left this comment:
“Thank you, Eliz, for pointing out where gardening and social justice/inclusion etc really do come together – in the serious, consequential ways you mention. (NOT whether someone has gotten rid of their lawn or posted a habitat sign – risible criticisms that undermine legitimate ones.)
Btw, my other course this semester is “Environmental Media,” where we spent two weeks on environmental racism, watching several documentaries and enjoying 4 meaty lecture/discussions on the topic.. https://gardenrant.com/2024/04/the-effects-of-our-racist-and-exclusionary-history-linger-even-in-gardening.html
Well, good call, Susan! This rant has scores of replies, and that’s what the Ministry is all about. Bewilderingly, however, I just don’t get most of them. After reading the article, it’s neither terribly written nor simply a snide Marxist screed (or neo-Marxist.) Susan, thank you for sharing an interesting perspective. As I read it, the authors simply surveyed folks in a Minneapolis suburb who’d decided to minimize their turf, then interviewed some of them. The quotes sound like also things I say sometimes. The analysis? Well, I don’t agree with all of it, but the authors share some points I hadn’t considered (and they say some kind things about community gardens, something I work on a lot. Always appreciate that – I like it when everyone (who wants to) can find a place to garden, and there are economic barriers to access in our culture. Just how it is.) Anyway, with respect and affection, I think I’m going to move any additional comments I may have to Elizabeth’s co-rant on this subject, and maybe even submit a community-garden-eye view as a guest rant. Before I do that, I also want to thank the chorus of ranters who have howled in harmony with Susan. You are the good folks in my classes, folks like me who love to garden and to think for yourselves. Your responses have been at least as helpful as the original article in helping me unearth my own blind spots and assumptions. We all, no doubt about it, garden first with our hearts.
As a card-carrying Lawn Dissident* who is white – but FAR from affluent – I was intrigued to read this paper. There are some valid points esp. about the virtue-signaling going on and the privileged mindset of those who can afford to go to an all-native landscape in one growing season.
However, the paper is deeply flawed in that the authors barely acknowledge that the gardeners who are going lawn-free are actually striving to break out of the capitalist system that we are all chained inside of in this country. The authors even point out that most lawn dissidents participate in sharing economies – but they call that a contradiction and even an anomaly and struggle to reconcile that with their thesis. IMHO, that sharing of plants, produce, seeds, knowledge, etc. negates their whole premise of their argument.
*author of Groundcover Revolution and founder of Reduce Your Lawn Day