Quite a bit of the appeal is status and expectation, as the author says (repeatedly). Some is aesthetics--it looks nice.
I wonder though--did the author ever watch little kids playing on the lawn? It's a more forgiving surface than dirt, and the kids track less of it into the house. And the tall grass the author suggests can hide things. Ever wonder why African villages have bare earth? Traffic is part of it, but it's nice to be able to see snakes before you step on them.
We didn't throw chemicals on the lawn, and about half of the old lawn is now taken up with gardens of one kind or another--but gardens need a lot of tending--including, it turns out, rescue from the encroachments of said lawn. Convenient, attractive (so long as you don't look too closely--and if you care that much, fix it yourself!), comfortable for the kids--and it's green™.
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Is there an automatic response that if the bourgeoisie likes it, there must be something terribly wrong with it, somewhere, somehow? My son in Norway who worked at one time for a greenhouse above the Arctic Circle (not many of those), expressed his contempt for lawns, which he described as "grass gardens." I wondered if he still lived in Romania whether he would still feel the same way. Context, context.
Maybe. There's the story of the father from the Old Country who did not understand his son's enthusiasm for beautiful lawns. One day his son found him on his knees plucking dandelions and rejoiced--"You're weeding the lawn, papa!" His father grumbled--"The first useful thing to grow in this good-for-nothing grass, and you call it a weed!"
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