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| | More and more people are getting rid of their lawns and naturalizing their gardens. It’s a trend that Henry Koch, interpretive horticulturist at The Arboretum, University of Guelph, sees as a reaction to "a conquest against nature, literally," that began with the colonization of North America. Today, Koch says, people are reacting to the absence of nature in the urban landscape. "The psyche of the new, North American post-hippie is asking `Where’s nature? What is this absurd creature we have in a lawn? What the hell’s the point of it?’" "In the late 1800’s, people had just finished clearcutting," Koch says, a necessity to settlers who needed agricultural land and feared the both the bush and the Native American peoples who lived in it. Settlers also had a natural desire to recreate the pastoral, agricultural landscapes they’d left behind in Europe. It was a similar desire for re-creation that brought the lawn, with a little help from the hugely influential, public-minded architect Frederic Law Olmstead, to North America during the time of the Industrial Revolution of the late 1800’s. "The lawn of North America is inspired by the pastures of England that were grazed by sheep," Koch explains. Frederic Law Olmstead went to England in the midst of the Industrial Revolution and visited the lush lawned private estate gardens of aristocracy. At the same time, Olmstead observed the difficult living and working conditions of the Revolution in both England and North America. "Olmstead returned to America and persuaded the `chiefs’ of New York to have a public--not private--park, to provide relief from the working conditions of the Industrial Revolution," Koch says. Central Park, echoing the gardens of aristocracy but serving the people, was built, while, at the same time, the lawn mower was invented. Then Olmstead went on to design more parks and America’s first suburb, `Riverside’ in Chicago. Incorporated into its design was the `thirty foot set-back’ of houses from the road. Blanketing that expanse from house to sidewalk were and are--park-like lawns. Today it’s common knowledge that the conquest against nature has been all too successful. Koch thinks naturalization is partly a response to growing concern about the environment. "We’re looking at the world around us, and we read daily the horror story of species extinction, pollution, the horror story of the environment." Gardens are places for "the daily experience of natural relationships," Koch says, while lawns or brief yearly vacations `into’ nature aren’t. "The whole garden becomes a story. It’s full of surprises." "We no longer see that we are the all important thing in creation. It’s got a being of its own."
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