It’s that time of the year again. Time to get out the mower and weed whacker. Time to find out what you forgot to do before putting them in storage. Time to remember what gas is in which jerry can and how old. Every year, I seem to like to challenge myself with ignoring these details. And I still battle with even having a lawn. But there’s something tranquil and serene about a lush, well-kept lawn, n’est-ce pas?
We can blame England and France for our love of lawns, where they became a much-desired form of landscaping in the 17th and 18th centuries. But the fashionable style and design of these green spaces we know today were created centuries after, in order to replicate the look of a manicured English garden, “trimmed grassy areas to within an inch of its life, the borders cut with geometric precision.” They soon became a status symbol and a sign of wealth of the uppity throughout the British Empire.
Lawns are still a status symbol in our world. But it wasn’t until the 50s and 60s that lawn-fever really started to take hold, with the residential suburban boom of post-war North America. Everyone wanted to show everyone else they had money, and lawns were an easy way to do it. Which has led to the obsession many homeowners have today with that “sprawling sweep of green mowed in crisp diagonal bands.”
With all the grass, homeowners needed mowers. In 1830, Gloucestershire engineer Edwin Bear Budding crafted a series of blades around a cylinder to earn the first patent for a mechanical lawn mower. Forty years later, Elwood McGuire, an Indiana machinist, became the first to design a lightweight push mower. In 1935, Leonard Goodall, a Missouri mechanic, developed a power rotary mower, which could cut to one inch, but the blades needed constant sharpening. Since Budding’s initial invention, the evolution of lawn mowers has been marked by incredible innovation: ride-on mowers, robotic mowers, hover mowers, and solar power mowers, to name a few.
I used to mow for other people back in the day; now I just have one large lawn I take care of. As we all know, mowing on these Islands can be rather hard on our mowers. Rocks, tree roots, more rocks, branches, and random inanimate objects constantly abuse our blades. I took a mower into town a while ago for a fix and the guy immediately knew I was either from Denman or Hornby by my blades.
I’ve gone through a lot of lawn mowers over the years. I still can not believe that I mowed football size fields with a gas PUSH mower for three seasons. When I purchased my first self-propelling lawn mower it was an epiphany. That is, once I learned to let go of the propeller bar when turning. If you have ever ridden the Tilt-a-Whirl, you get what I mean – kind of fun but really hard on one’s back. Eventually, we bonded. Today, I have the highest level of lawn mower before the ride-on level. She’s a beauty, double blades, fuel efficient, fold down handle and starts every year with less than three pulls. I’ll give you a hint, her name is Rhonda.
But don’t be fooled by her looks. We are more at risk of being killed by a lawn mower than by sharks, alligators, bears, snakes, spiders, cows and dogs combined. In 2020, the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (take a breath) tracked over ten years of injuries associated with lawn mowers and other garden equipment. Lawn mower accidents were responsible for the deaths of an average of 90 Americans annually; while snake bites killed an average of six people and venomous spiders killed an average of 11 people a year.
Surprisingly, only four freak accidents were more likely to kill Americans annually than death by lawn mower: deer attacks (200 people); electrocution (400 deaths); carbon monoxide poisoning (430 deaths) and unintentional falls, which accounted for an annual average of 36,338.
And take note. The older lawn mower-user you are, the higher the chances you are of being involved in an accident. The majority of those who were hurt by lawn mowers (48%) were between the ages of 49 and 69 years old. And further stats, that should give one pause: Lawn mower accidents are most likely to occur on weekdays between April and September; hands and fingers were the most commonly injured body part; and one in five lawn mower injuries required amputation.
Do we need more incentive to ditch the lawns? The birds and the bees. One study showed that being a lazy lawn mower actually improves the diversity and abundance of bees. They cut some lawns on a weekly basis, some every two weeks and others just once every three weeks. The study found that the lawns cut every third week had the larger number of bee species, but not significantly different than those cut every two weeks. The most frequently shaved lawns had the lowest diversity. Not surprisingly, some from the three-week treatments said they had to keep well-meaning neighbours from mowing their lawns for them.
It’s hard to change the mindset that manicured lawns are equated with status and house value. Maybe high-density artificial grass, made with four-tone grass yarn with “year-round green and turf enjoyment” is the answer. Ask the Joneses.
