THE PRESIDENT'S COLUMN Fall 1999

This summer our lawns looked terrible. We could have been in Northern California with our parched, light-tan grass, the only green supplied by trees and shrubs. I suspect we all started worrying more about lawns.

As a child, I thought that dandelions were beautiful. Their yellow is still a perfect color to me, and I never seem too close to examine in detail the beauties of their round seed packet. Clover in a lawn is also exciting. I have never found a four-leaf clover but have spent many a happy time sprawled out over a patch of green, lush clover looking for four leaves on one stem. When that close to the surface of the lawn, I often saw itsy, bitsy flowers down between the blades of grass. In one area of my parent's lawn, thyme had taken over and it was always a thrill to smell its scent when I walked on it.

We had an old power lawnmover, chain driven, with a heavy roller as the rear wheel, which at the age of ten, or so, took all my strength to turn around. I would take the handle bars, push them with all my might to one side and then hold on and have the machine swing me around. Maybe the worst part was that the machine had no reverse. I soon developed a strategy where reverse was rarely needed, but still my weekly chore of mowing our large lawn became a dreaded event.

"Soon I realized that lawns pale in comparison to the explosion of life in a meadow."

About this same period of my "lawn dread," I discovered a meadow in the back forty. Open patches had andropogon grass, interrupted with huge blueberry bushes. Scattered along the edges were white birches, just perfect to climb and bend, and on the shady northern exposure were maple trees with luxurious mosses growing underneath. Many a glorious summer day I spent there and soon I realized that lawns pale in comparison to the explosion of life in a meadow.

Ed's lawn in two years? (photo courtesy of Larry Weaner)

My father, though, liked lawns! Later, I came to realize that he was frightened to go into the fields and meadows, believing that snakes would attack him as he walked. My mother wanted to duplicate the large green expanses of grass she had seen on English estates, so she kept enlarging our lawn, taking over areas of the bordering fields.

As for my own house, I have never tried to duplicate the green carpet of grass leading up to the front of most American houses. I love meadows more, with all the insects busily buzzing from plant to plant, the birds drawn there too, and the various flowers that come into bloom over the summer.

I like my neighbors, and, over the years, they have accepted my weedy and dandelion-covered lawn. I have solved my dislike for cutting lawns by paying others to do this repetitious job. Now, though, I might have a problem with all the friendly folks living up and down my street. Wildflower meadows are becoming fashionable in certain areas, and I want a low-maintenance, ecologically sound, naturally beautiful landscape, instead of a lawn.

What will my neighbors think when I try to tell them that my lawn will no longer wake them up with the loud buzz of the mower and that the leaf blower will no longer overpower their conversation? Will they whisper to each other that I must have invested in the wrong Russian companies and now am forced to save money?

When I explain the ecological soundness of meadows which do not need large quantities of water, inorganic fertilizers and herbicides, or pesticides, as do our lawns to keep them green and lush all the time, will they believe that these treatments can damage our environment? Or will they start thinking I'm crazy?

When they hear me explain that meadows will increase the groundwater recharge and reduce the runoff in my beloved Wissahickon, will they be turned of and start thinking golf? Am I elegant enough in speech to overcome their ideas reinforced by years and years of advertisements preaching that perfection is a green velvety carpet of grass? Will they enjoy the beauty of my natural meadow with all its variations, or will they be like my father and think of all the bad creatures that could inhabit these meadows?

Am I that good a salesman to overcome my neighbors' fears that I'll ruin the neighborhood? I don't know, but I sure hope to get my nerve up this fall. Maybe if I just convert a small patch of weedy, dandelion-covered lawn...