What is a Beautiful Lawn?
Fashion in gardens,
like those in clothes and cars, began with the need to meet
a utilitarian objective and then became the object for trend-setters
to embellish.
It is likely that the precursors of our lawns began in Africa
where land around communities was cleared so people could
see whether someone or something approaching was friend
or foe. Grasses grew on this cleared land and was kept short
by animals or through human effort. This practice was transported
to Europe and England where eventually garden and landscape
design became a more formal statement of the relationship
between art and nature.
Andre Le Notre designed the gardens at the palace at Versailles;
he may have created the first LAWNS when he used imported
grasses from Asia in large expanses of tapis vert or green
carpet. Using exotic grasses made an important statement:
Louis XIV was very wealthy and could afford anything he
wanted. The French king became a trend-setter because other
people wanted to "keep up with the Jones's".
English gardens had traditionally been places in which beauty
was combined with use, pleasure with profit and work with
contemplation. In the mid 1700's, the famous Lancelot "Capability"
Brown's work was praised for its modern style and its lack
of formality and seclusion. (His nickname came from his
frequent remarks about the gardens of country estates having
great 'capability' for improvement). He used not only ground
but also wood, water, rocks, buildings in his 'natural pictures'.
As fashion ebbs and flows, however, by the end of the 1800's
brambles and briars had become attractive, and his once-praised
work was now described as being too formal, stiff and artificial.
As the less wealthy became land owners, they imitated the
gardens of the aristocracy by planting lawns and enjoying
the pleasure of gardening in front of their houses, thus
showing others that they didn't need to work their land
to provide food for themselves.
Today, modern gardeners can follow the trend setters of
several centuries ago and feature green carpets in their
gardens or they can create uniquely beautiful pictures by
using different colours, textures, shapes and sizes of plants
in arrangements that consider their own needs, comfort and
tastes.