Why Do We Paint Our Lawns
There are some practices that are common to the concept of lawn care in Decatur, AL. Weeding, mowing, watering, the addition of fertilizer, all of them have an important point to play in one situation or another. A lot of it serves either an aesthetic or practical purpose. Then you get the weird trends. Like taking a can of spray paint to your grass. Wait, what?
Yes, every summer when I watch an example or two of lawn care in Decatur, AL, I see someone spraying their lawn in the most ridiculously unnatural shade of green that I have ever seen. Naturally, this piqued a curiosity. When was this a common practice in lawn care in Decatur, Al? When was it a thing ever? If you are as curious about it as I am, read on to find out.
When did Lawn Painting Become a Thing?
While there is no documentation that I could find on the matter, the general consensus was that it came into practice when golf courses were getting more popular at country clubs. I might have mentioned this before (link to previous article here) but lawns were considered a status symbol of the wealthy since the 16th century. This attitude carried over to North America during the industrial age. When goods and services were in mass production, land was no longer needed as much for farming purposes. The concept evolved into a symbol of the “American Dream”.
As blogger Frank Halpern puts it, Leave it to Beaver heavily popularized America aesthetic interest in happy suburban homes with manicured lawns and picket fences. This carried over after World War II, during the rapid suburbanization of the United States.”
Eventually, when capitalism had become the dominant market ideal during the Regan Era, lawns became a commodity in real estate. The better manicured a lawn, the more likely your real estate value would go up.
The combination of industrialization with this attitude of an ideal American appearance made lawns a status symbol again. It would make sense that the practice of painting the occasional dead spot on the grass would gravitate to lawns on personal property.
Why Do we Paint Lawns Today?
We paint lawns as furiously as playing cards can paint white roses red to combat severe drought. Water becomes scarce during a drought, and usually, the first thing to go for the sake of conservation effort is the lawn. However, the idea of keeping our grass green is so prevalent in our image of success and value. So much so, that a lot of people are willing to take up the water allotted for the rest of the community and pay fines for it.
So, the natural solution is to fake it. People found ways to paint their grass in the hopes of keeping it green in spite of drought conditions. Another factor is that it is just cheaper to paint a lawn instead of spending a lot of time and money, that most people don’t have, to try and improve it. Granted, you can only paint grass for so long until it can’t cover every single bald spot.
Is Lawn Painting Helpful or Harmful?
Most lawn painting companies, including a few folks that work in lawn care in Decatur, AL, are all for lawn painting as part of a service. They claim that it is non-toxic, temporary, and a smart fix for a problem. And it does their industry a world of good when it comes to meeting the demands of the customer base.
However, there are some companies and groups of people who are concerned by the implication of spraying a bunch of paint all over the grass in their yard.
“…brown grass is not actually dead grass, just dehydrated. While companies like LawnLift frequently describe their product as similar to hair dye, it not really the same: hair is actually dead, and you can do whatever you want to it without affecting the underlying growth. Brown grass, on the other hand, is part of a living ecosystem.”
There is also the fact that a lot of the lawn care industry, the formulas for lawn paint aren’t all that regulated. Aside from expecting repeat service calls from customers, there is little concern on the part of the lawn care provider to worry about the impact the paint has on the grass.
However, controversy or not, there is no solid evidence that lawn paint is either helpful or harmful to the grass. So, until then, it is an admittedly creative situation to an environmental problem.