Turf wars: the artists who want to mow down the menace of lawns
This summer, the grass was not greener on the other side of the fence. In fact, there was no green grass so far as the eye could see, as heatwaves and drought turned our lush lawns into barren wastelands.
A quintessential feature in western gardens and landscaping, the lawn is at the centre of controversy. Its formal homogeneity and neatness imply reliability and constancy, and elicit our trust. And yet its unquenchable thirst for fertilisers, weedkillers and water, and inhospitality to wildlife, have attracted criticism and even spurred an anti-lawn movement in the US.
According to most historical accounts, the lawn grew out of the western world’s obsession with controlling nature. While this is true in part, the earliest mention of a garden lawn appeared in one of the world’s oldest gardening books, published in
