Lawn is “covering around 40% of the planet’s land surface, lawns are monocultures made up of a handful of species that require frequent watering, fertiliser and – often – pesticides.
Lawn is “nature under totalitarian rule”. Michael Pollan
"At a larger scale they also suggested a permanence and control that assuaged anxieties about the fragility of colonial control. Andrea Gaynor, professor of history at the University of Western Australia, argues that while some settlers appreciated the beauty of Australian landscape from early on, that “didn’t override the necessity to provide a civilised veneer that meant the colony could project an image of itself as stable, settled and prosperous, and therefore an attractive field for investment. So the cultural aspect is deeply entwined with the economics of the whole enterprise.” Simultaneously lawns helped encode and reinforce racial and social hierarchies. “Lawns were understood by Perth’s white residents as the antithesis of, and vastly superior to, Indigenous landscapes and cultures,” says Gaynor."
“Even in a drying climate we’d rather run desal[ination] plants than do away with lawn. It really shows how deeply ingrained lawn is in Australian culture as a symbol of civilisation and environmental control.”