It's always a wild card when I do an opener.
It's either gonna be something that I don't understand,
something I haven't read, and so on.
This one is outdated, but I think still needs to be read.
Title is,
Erie Geller vows to not mess King Charles' coronation
as it's Spoon he better not touch.
If you're confused by this heading,
then just listen because I'm gonna tell you all about why.
He's worried about a Spoon.
Spoonbender extraordinaire let his fans in
on one strange element of the coronation ceremony,
but promises he won't try to mess
with the priceless relic involved.
Spoonbending paranormalist Erie Geller
is very excited about the coronation of King Charles III
as he vows not to mess with the proceedings.
In a video filmed in his native Israel,
the showman who claims he was gifted
with paranormal powers by extraterrestrial visitors
tells the story of the ancient golden Spoon.
Spoon has been used to pour holy oil
onto every new British monarch since the 14th century.
Even then, according to historical documents,
it was already antique.
Quote, you can see it here right on the screen.
And quote, Geller says,
re-quote, this nearly thousand year old gold Spoon
will anoint him with oil,
and the oil was made here in the Holy Land
just three days ago.
This was more than three days ago in real time.
Then he jokes, that's one Spoon I better not touch.
The golden Spoon is first recorded in 1349
as preserved among St. Edward's regalia.
In Westminster Abbey and Maywell
have been used for his coronation in 1272, that's a year.
Described as being an antique form even then
in the time of the Black Death,
is regarded as a remarkable relic.
Wait, they can only find a Spoon
that goes back to the 1300s?
I feel like you can find way older Spoons if you really want.
You probably could.
I am unimpressed by this Spoon.
But this one's for anointing the kings and queens?
And Chelsea, do you remember,
does the name Eury Geller ring a bell for you?
Yes.
Okay, are we gonna bring it up or do we wanna do it now?
That's why I chose this article.
Okay, good.
We'll talk about it at the end then.
Okay, that's pretty much it.
I'm not gonna go into, I mean, it's just gonna repeat itself.
It actually goes on for a while,
but I feel like that got its point to cut.
We got the gist of the Spoon.
Yeah.
And for those of you who are listening
and who don't know, first off, why we're talking about a Spoon,
we're actually talking about Eury Geller, I believe,
more importantly, and of course, King Chuck,
who had to take the Dick's Some Lord move
of kicking his brother out to the curb.
Oh, right.
But more importantly,
I thought that's what we were calling British Andy now.
No, British Andy's the one who got kicked to the curb
for he was not paying rent.
I just assumed.
Cause he seems like that kind of guy, does he not?
He sure does.
Eury Geller was also on, what the freak was it?
The remote viewing?
Yeah, the remote viewing episodes.
Project Stargate?
Is that what it is?
Oh God, I can't remember.
Might have to listen to our episode.
Yeah, I know.
A lot of things happen between then and now.
Yeah, so when I saw King Chuck and Eury Geller
in one sentence, I was like,
I got to read this for an opener.
And hence, one of my infamous openers did we just receive.
And I think one of the things that I most importantly learned
from this intro is that Eury Geller's still alive.
He is still alive.
And you have to see this video too.
He's just like so eccentric as well.
And he's just like,
I only watched the first two seconds of it.
And you know he's so eccentric.
I like that.
Yeah, you can tell.
He seems like the type.
Yeah, I mean, he has to sell
that he's bending spoons and stuff like that.
Do you think he's just trying to steal the spoon for himself?
Might be.
He also, I don't really know what he's trying,
is he trying to get more people
to watch the anointing of King Charles or what?
To see if he'll bend that spoon?
Well, to be frank, I actually think
it's not gonna get the ratings that people,
I don't even know who would be thinking this,
but the people think that it will be getting.
I don't know that many people
that are actually interested in the crown.
No.
Of course, I also thought that Avatar 2
wouldn't do all that well.
And by God, is it like the third highest grossing film
of all time now?
So what do I know?
This had to have happened already.
No, it hasn't happened yet.
Oh, really?
Yeah, I just saw some contentious thing about it.
Well, that's right, with Harry's the one in Canada now, right?
I don't think he's in Canada.
Well, the one who's abandoned the royalty.
Yeah, Harry.
He's apparently going and it was a big deal
and that came out this week, I believe, for last week.
Okay, well then I'm right on time with this news.
Well, it depends.
This comes out in like two months.
True, true.
Okay.
Whatever then.
So man, is it gonna be weird if it happens
and Yuri Geller shows up and just like,
bends that spoon right in half and runs away?
Yeah.
Then boy, were we on the right track.
And Shaxet, I told you not to, shaking his fist to the sky.
Okay, so that's my opener.
Okay.
Just a little bit of reading and then some banter.
So now I'm ready for some episode.
Okay, perfect.
Well, let's get to that.
Okay.
From the unexplained to the mundane.
Come join us on a journey to the fringe.
Hello and welcome to journey to the fringe.
Now look, I know neither of us want to be here.
So let's sit through it, put in our time
and move on with our day.
We are your podcast hosts, Taylor and Chelsea.
And today we take a look at one of these mundane fringy boys
that you guys are always clamoring on about.
Today, of course, Chelsea, I'm gonna start this off
with a question to you so that we can actually
get into this topic.
For those of you listening at home,
just bearing through this,
you probably know the answer to this question
based on the title of the episode,
but please refrain from answering for Chelsea
or she is in the past.
They have a foot up on me, it's not fair.
Now, Chelsea, what would you say is the most irrigated crop
in North America?
Corn.
That is a good guess.
No, marijuana.
I would guess that marijuana is not irrigated,
mostly because you don't want people
knowing about it being there.
Well, some people do in Canada, if you're in Canada.
Yeah, fair.
I feel like I got corn.
I can't think of anything else you put me on the spot.
Okay, yeah, that's fair.
That's fair.
And you actually came up with a good guess based on that.
But corn is a distant second in this situation.
The most irrigated crop in the US at least
with 40 million irrigated acres in the US is grass.
It is our lawn.
Well, that's messed up.
Yeah, and actually, in fact,
if you were to take all of the next three crops
that are irrigated, that would be corn,
soy, and orchards, it still far exceeds all the other crops.
Lawn.
Which is just so bizarre.
And it doesn't even do anything.
No, exactly.
Just grass.
Not only that, it makes up almost 2% of land use
in North America.
So if you're to throw just a dart randomly at a map of the US,
there's a one in 50 chance that you hit lawn.
Okay, that's not that high.
I mean, it's pretty high considering all of the things
that are in the US.
That's what I meant actually.
It's pretty high.
Yes, okay.
I meant the opposite.
To be fair, just to put a disclaimer on that stat,
I just said, when it comes to irrigated,
technically more corn is grown,
there are 80 million acres of corn grown in 2018 in the US,
but we're talking irrigated.
Not all of that corn crop is irrigated.
When we're talking just irrigated, it is by far lawns.
And if you're not including irrigation,
I'm not actually sure I couldn't find a stat on that
other than the 2% of land in the US is grass.
Irrigated means watered.
It has sprinkler systems.
Okay, okay, good.
I was thinking of the right thing.
Just wanted to make sure we're all on the same page.
Today's episode is on lawns, just all about them.
We're gonna go through the history.
We're gonna talk about how there's such a horrible,
ghastly thing and maybe if there's enough time
at the end, we'll talk about how to fix it.
I'm down for that.
Okay, without further ado, let's get into this.
So Chelsea, if you were to place a guess
on how far back we can go in history for lawns,
how far back do you think they'd go?
I wouldn't think that far, if I was being honest.
I would think probably back to maybe the 40s or 50s.
Okay, not a bad guess specifically
with how we define lawns today.
I think you're gonna be surprised actually.
The first lawn came about in 1993
when Jerry Seinfeld installed one
to bring advertisement towards the show Seinfeld.
That of course is not true.
It goes back much further, but it was a fun fact to say.
And I'm not asking.
Yeah, I was like, I feel like this is a rate
because I've been alive longer than lawn.
You have been alive longer than lawns.
No, the first lawn actually,
it's hard to say how far back lawns go
because this whole concept kind of predates the word lawn.
Basically when we moved into a feudal system
and started raising cattle on the outskirts of the castles,
there was a grassy area for them to graze off of.
Is that really a lawn?
Well, it's kind of hard to say.
They may originate as grass enclosures
within early medieval settlements
used for communal grazing of livestock
as distinct from fields reserved for agriculture.
The word lawn apparently comes from about 1540
from the old French L-A-N-D-E,
which I'm going to take a stab at as landais.
I highly doubt that's how it's said,
but let's face it, French isn't a real language.
It's so not.
Which is a word used to describe heath,
more barren land or clearings.
Lawns actually become popular a little bit after this
with the aristocracy in Northern Europe
from the Middle Ages onwards.
In medieval Europe, open expanses of low grasses
became valued among the aristocracy
because they allowed those inside
an enclosed fencer castle to view those approaching.
Which you can see why that would be a good thing.
You would want a bit of a clearing around your castle
so you can just, you know, kind of take a peek around.
And see if there's anyone hiding out there.
Yes, or you know, see if the trees are encroaching
on your castle so as they can foretell your doom
as we see in Macbeth.
Exactly.
The early lawns were not always distinguishable
at all from pasture lands.
And that's why I say it's kind of hard to say
where they actually come into place.
Because pasture lands clearly predate lawns.
It's just when you would actually define it as a lawn.
Yes, I was not thinking pasture lawn
when I made my guess.
Okay, that's fair and that's why it is a weird thing to say.
And I also say like Northern Europe
because the damp climate of Maritime Western
and Northern Europe is what really made lawns
possible to grow and manage.
And really this is where most grasses
that you see today come from is these regions.
What? That's weird.
Yeah.
By the 1700s they have evolved into a form
of conspicuous consumption.
Which is to say that by having land which could raise food
but you instead use for decoration
you were demonstrating your wealth.
Lawns were deliberately cultivated by wealthies
in both France and England.
Though they were more likely planted with
more than just grass at the time.
So what you would actually see as lawn
would also include things like camel meal,
thyme, clover, dandelions, things like that.
Just you know, shorter things
that weren't necessarily a crop per se.
Dandelions, no.
Surprisingly what I usually thought of
is just a normal part of a lawn for a long time.
A beautiful flower.
And intentionally brought to North America.
What?
Oh yeah.
I mean we see these on lawns today still.
A beautiful part of everybody's lawns.
Yes.
In the early 18th century landscape gardening
for the aristocracy entered its
what's considered golden age.
And Chelsea what we're really describing here
when we say golden age.
Whenever you think of like those English mansions
or English estates and castles.
You just picture like there might be one or two trees.
You might see like a babbling brook.
And a few shrubs or shrubbery I guess
is a better way to say it.
Okay, I'm following, yeah.
Yeah, you know for the knights who say need.
Well what does it want?
We want
a shrubbery.
A shrubbery.
Anyhow, this is where this idea comes from is this era.
This all came under the direction of a few gardeners.
It's William Kent and probably the like biggest name
that we've ever said on this show.
Not based on like the infamir famousness.
Just Chelsea prepare yourself for this name.
Lancelot capability Brown.
What capability as a middle name.
It's quotation marked.
So I think that was his nickname, but what the fuck?
Capability is quotation.
Yeah.
You never know that could be his given birth name.
Yeah.
Capability and quotate.
I didn't know you could quotation the name.
You probably could actually.
Now that I think about it.
I think about that.
Yeah.
That is some name.
I'm also impressed that there are specific gardeners
that this goes back to.
Yeah.
The rich people love their gardeners,
especially right around this time.
Tip for all those listening and myself for the future.
I need to make note of this great fact for dinner party.
He's great.
I'm reshaping this.
And by the way, I am not shorting this
for the rest of this episode when it comes back to it.
It will be Lancelot capability.
And then maybe I include that last name of breath.
Because just you can't shorten that.
Love it.
OK.
So anyhow, Lancelot capability Brown
and this other dumb guy who I can't even
remember his name anymore because he wasn't named
Lancelot capability Brown refined the English landscape
garden style with designs of natural or quote romantic
and quote estate settings for wealthy Englishmen.
Lancelot capability are remembered
as England's greatest gardener designed over 170 parks, many
of which still endure.
His influence was so great that the contributions
to the English garden made his predecessors, Charles Bridgeman
and William Kent often overlooked mostly due to their names
as well.
We're just going to we need to include that.
It would have to agree 100%.
His work still endures at Kroom Court,
Blenheim Palace, Warwick Castle, Harwood House,
Bowwood House, Milton Abbey and in traces at Q gardens
and many other locations in the UK.
His style of smooth undulating lawns which ran seamlessly
to the house in Meadow, plumps, belts and scatterings
of trees and his serpentine lakes formed
by invisibly damning small rivers
or a new style within the English landscape,
a garden less form of landscape gardening,
which swept away almost all the remnants of previous formerly
pattern styles.
His landscapes were fundamentally different from what
they replaced and the well known formal guards of England,
which were criticized by Alexander Pope and others
from the 1710s.
Now that is a history you can really appreciate.
That really is.
And you know some guy who spent way too many years
at Cambridge University wrote that sentence.
That came right from Wikipedia.
You know that.
Oh, that's for sure like an art history class.
Seriously, you think like 301 or something.
Oh yeah.
Dude, Cambridge Maristocracy never had
to worry about wealth and day in his life.
So he was able to come up with that sentence
over the course of three to six months.
And wow, everybody's yard looked like shit before this,
before Lancelot capability.
What a guy.
Yeah, Lancelot capability.
You've really fixed the fact that everything was natural
and now you just made it grass.
Incredible.
What a time to be alive.
From there, the open and this is called the English style.
Thank you for that.
It should have been called the Lancelot capability style.
It really should have.
But let's just keep going on with this.
Of Parkland first spread across Britain and Ireland
and then across Europe, such as the Garden à la France.
Being replaced by the French landscape guard.
And by this time, the word quote, lawn and quote,
in England had semantically shifted to describe a piece
of a garden covered with grass and closely mown.
Wealthy families in America during the late 18th century
also began mimicking this English landscaping style.
And Chelsea, I just need to say it at this point
because we're talking about mown grass or mowed lawns.
What do you think that entails at the time?
We bring in the cows in to eat the grass.
That actually is at one very useful way of doing it.
It's usually sheep they bring in.
I was just going to say sheep, maybe.
Cows bring in unsightly other parts
when they are cutting the grass.
Whereas sheep also do that.
Sheep dropped a little pellets.
Oh, OK.
Another good guess.
I'm going to roll tonight.
You are.
But actually, if you were aristocracy,
how you would maintain your lawns in the day
would be with sites.
Oh.
The Grim Reaper, in fact, would be someone
you could call on to end the life of your too tall of grass
so that their short and brethren can take over.
OK.
This would take absolute teams of people
who might be able, a team of five,
might be able to cover like an acre a day.
Would that even work?
Chelsea, if you could go to YouTube,
you could type in siphon a lawn and you
can see people doing this.
Oh, I'm watching it.
I was way ahead of you because I'm not
understanding how it could happen.
You would think you'd need some sort of scissors or something.
You would.
But apparently, it's just a really fucking sharp scythe.
This is like something I would never be interested in.
I think you need to get the lawn particularly tall as well.
Because if you see them cutting it,
it leaves behind like hay-length stuff.
It does.
And it looks like a lot of work.
Now I'm just wondering how it came from this
to be associated with the Grim Reaper.
I mean, it could be because it looks like a lot of work.
We probably cover that in another episode at some time.
Fuck, I wish I was dead.
This sucks.
Or they just keeled over.
Never interested in doing that in my life for the record.
No, God, no.
That's awful.
Anyhow, the aristocracy of its day from North America
sees these fancy people in Europe
with their fanciful lawns and their fanciful sides
and all this shit going on.
And one of them being Thomas Jefferson,
he decides that he actually wants to do a lawn in his yard
in Monticello in 1806.
So he really brings this idea over to North America.
But that's just a little skip there.
We're going to come back to that idea to try to emulate it.
However, it should be noted that these were just
the upper echelons of society who are maintaining lawns.
That's all it is.
Although it was pretty much just grass,
it generally also had other things in it.
Dandelions, clovers, times, camomile.
There was some makings of pesticides in its day.
It was pretty much just salt and acid.
Oh, that sounds good.
And people would be using hundreds of pounds of salt per acre
to get rid of unsightly parts of their lawn.
It's really bad.
And the meals sound nice to grow in grass, though, and clothe.
Oh, yeah, it does.
All of it actually sounds pretty nice.
All of it soft on the foot.
And importantly, useful.
All of it is useful.
That does sound very nice.
From there, we're going to move back in time a little bit.
And we're going to look at North America now.
Prior to European colonization, the grasses
of the East Coast of North America
were mostly broom straw, wild rye, and marsh grass.
As Europeans moved into the region,
it was noted by colonists in New England, more than others,
that the grasses of the New World were inferior to those
of England, and that their livestock
sieved to receive less nutrition from it.
In fact, once livestock brought overseas from Europe,
spread throughout the colonies, much of the native grasses
of New England disappeared.
And in the inventory list from the 17th century,
noted supplies of clover and grass seed from England.
New colonists were even urged by their country and companies
to bring grass seed with them to North America.
By the late 17th century, a new market
in imported grass seed had begun in New England.
Much of these new grasses brought by Europeans
spread quickly and effectively, often ahead of the colonists.
One such species, Bermuda grass, became the most important
pasture grass for the southern colonies.
And Kentucky bluegrass is a grass native to Europe
or the Middle East.
It was likely carried to Midwestern United States
in the early 1600s by French missionaries
and spread via the waterways to the regions around Kentucky,
where it got its name from.
Like I said, these grasses that you consider on lawns,
none of them are native to North America.
They all come from Europe, just named differently
than you'd expect.
Like Bermuda grass, you'd think Bermuda, nope, Europe.
That's super weird.
Kentucky bluegrass, the one that most people think of
for grass, nope, Europe.
Not Kentucky at all.
And I do just want to add at this point too,
they're surprised that they brought these animals
that have evolved or at least been husband-dreed
to a point to survive off particular plants
that exist in Europe.
And then they brought them to North America
and were surprised when they couldn't sustain themselves
on the things that were there.
Makes sense.
So they said, oh fuck, I guess we gotta bring this stuff in.
That's more or less how it goes for a long time.
It's just kind of slowly propagates across North America
because people brought that in.
In a lot of places like in the South
you would have your plantations.
They happen to have what I can very uncomfortably
call a workforce going on around their plantations.
So they have the means of siding their lawns
down to a particular height.
In the North, you have some rich people
so it slowly picks up.
But really what makes it take off in North America
is the invention of the lawnmower.
Which Chelsea, do you want to take a stab
at the year it was invented?
1940, 30, 40.
1837.
What?
Oh, hold on, hold on.
Before I'm thinking of a riding.
You're thinking of the wrong kind.
Okay, so I go with what you said.
Okay, good.
And the guy who invented it,
he worked at a carpet manufacturing facility.
They had this thing that was used at the very end
when they finished making the carpets.
They ran this thing over to make sure
all the carpet strands were evenly lengthed.
And he said, hey, you know what's like a carpet
is green stuff outside.
I bet you could use this same tool out on the grass.
And he kind of just takes this machine,
adds wheels to the side,
a few gears to make the middle spin faster than the outside.
And he says, there we go, we got a lawnmower.
And invention.
I don't think he called it that at the time,
but that's what happened.
This thing absolutely takes off
in North America in the 1860s.
I would assume so.
Nobody wants to use fucking size anymore.
1860s most importantly, Chelsea, is post-Civil War.
So labor isn't as cheap as it used to be.
Yes, also correct.
And also around this time,
there was an increasing popularity of sports
in the mid-Victorian period.
The lawnmower was used to craft modern style sporting ovals,
playing fields, pitches, grass courts for the nation,
sports of football, lawnmowing, lawn tennis, and golf.
The rise of suburbanization in the interwar period
was heavily influenced by the Garden City movement
of Ebenezer Howard in the creation
of the first garden suburbs at the start of the 20th century.
The garden suburb developed through the efforts
of social reformer Henrietta Barnett,
and her husband exemplified the incorporation
of the well-manicured lawn in the suburban lifestyle.
Lawns began to proliferate in America
from the 1870s onwards
as more plants were introduced from Europe.
Lawns became smaller as they were filled
with flower beds, perennial sculptures, and water features.
Eventually, the wealthy began to move away from the cities
and into the suburbs of their own volition
because it got a little too industry in the cities.
And it was a little gross, pollution-wise,
and the trains kind of started to expand,
so suburbs actually became viable.
So this is also kind of what lawns take off as well.
There's so many points in history in which lawns take off.
There's just always a little tick up.
Always a little tick up.
There's always so much more potential for it.
In 1856, an architectural book was published
to accompany the development of the new suburbia
that placed importance on the availability
of a grassy space for children to play
and a space to grow fruits and vegetables
that further imbued the lawn with cultural importance.
Lawns began making more appearances
at development plans, magazine articles, and catalogs,
and the lawn became less associated
with being a status symbol
instead of giving way to a landscape of aesthetics.
And this is really, if you're gonna look at one point in time
where you say this is where the modern day lawn comes from,
it is post-World War II.
So 1940s, Chelsea, you are bang on.
After World War II, people come home
with their pensions from World War II,
and a lot of people are looking for homes,
and there is a baby boom, so people want houses.
The company Levitt & Co.
grates a town outside of New York called Levitt Town.
Sorry, Levitt & Sons, that's the name of the company.
A company by the name of Levitt & Sons.
I thought that was the name of the company.
Oh no.
No, Levitt Town is the name of the town.
Levitt & Sons is the name of the company.
So Levitt & Sons buys up 1,000 acres of potato farms
on Long Island just outside of New York,
and what they do is they plan to build 6,000 low-priced homes,
making it much larger than any other U.S. development
to that point.
On July 1st, 1947, Levitt & Sons broke ground
on the $50 million development of Levitt Town,
which ultimately included 17,000 homes
on 7.3 square miles of land.
In today's price, that's $607 million
for that area of land.
There were two kind of people involved,
Alfred and Abraham, they're the Levitts.
Alfred created the mass production techniques
used in design the homes and the layout of the development
with its curving streets.
Abraham directed the landscaping,
whose focus was two trees to each front yard,
all planted exactly the same distance apart,
and William was the financier and promoter,
and sorry, there's three Levitts, not two.
He created lawmakers to rewrite the laws
that made Levitt Town possible.
The houses, which were in the Cape Cod and Rancho style,
sat on a seventh of an acre lot,
and they had 750 square feet houses with two bedrooms,
a living room with a television,
and a kitchen with modern appliances,
an unfinished second floor and no garage.
This is super weird, they're just making the neighborhood
look exactly the same like they want it.
Yeah, they kind of take the assembly line,
mass production style, and they put it to housing.
I believe they had like a 27 step technique
for building a house,
and they just mass produced these things.
And Abraham Levitt also wrote this to kind of describe it,
no single feature of a suburban residential community
contributes as much to the charm and beauty
of the individual home and the locality
as a well kept lawn, end quote.
Landscaping was one of the most important factors
in Levitt Town's success,
and no feature was more prominent than the lawn.
The Levitts understood that landscaping could add
to the appeal of their development,
and claimed that quote,
increase in values are most often found in neighborhoods
where lawns show as green carpets, end quote,
and that for over the years, quote,
lawns, trees, and shrubs become more valuable,
both aesthetically and monetarily, end quote.
As well as symbol of the American dream,
Levitt Town would also become a symbol of racial segregation.
Right, sorry, I meant to say this.
Lawns are also kind of racist,
at least from where they come from,
because Levitt Town had a clause
in their standard lease agreement
that specifically said in bold type
that the house could not be used or occupied
by any person other than members of the Caucasian race.
Oh my God, that's horrifying.
Such discriminatory housing standards
were consistent with government policies at the time.
The Federal Housing Administration allowed developers
to justify segregation with public housing.
The FHA only offered mortgages to non-mixed developments,
which discouraged developers
from creating racially integrated housing.
And before the sale of Levitt Town homes began,
the sales agents were aware that no applications
from black families would be accepted.
As a result, American veterans who wished to purchase
a home in Levitt Town were unable to do so
if they were black.
William Levitt justified their decision
to only sell homes to white families
by saying that it was in the best interest of the business.
He claimed their actions were not discriminatory,
but intended to maintain the value of their property.
Oh my God.
The company explained that it was not possible
to reduce racial segregation
while they were attempting to reduce the housing shortage.
So yeah, that's fun.
Basically, whenever you're going back to pre-1960s,
you're gonna find something deeply racist.
Unfortunately, yes.
Hey, has its roots in basically our modern world?
So look at that.
Yep.
Now, that's where the idea of the American dream lawn
comes from.
It's the two trees in the front yard,
the green lawn, the white picket fence.
That's where Levitt Town is what that's based off of.
Levitt Town, white people.
Yeah, white people like the picket fences
really just all works together.
Really?
What did you really do?
They really matched well.
Yeah.
Also, after World War II,
a surplus of synthetic nitrogen in the United States
led to chemical firms such as DuPont
seeking to expand the market for fertilizer.
The suburban lawns offered an opportunity
to market fertilizer previously only used by farmers
to homeowners.
In 1955, DuPont released Uramite,
a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer
specifically marketed for lawns.
The trend continued throughout the 1960s
with chemical firms such as DuPont and Monsanto
utilizing television advertising
and other forms of advertisement to market pesticides,
fertilizers, and herbicides.
The environmental impact of this widespread chemicals use
were noticed as early as the 1960s,
but suburban lawns as a source of pollution
were largely ignored.
Also, during this time,
it is discovered that, well, clover
is always been a part of the lawn,
and it actually has a really useful trait
in that it takes nitrogen from the air and deposits
into the earth where your grass can use it.
It was usually accepted or even encouraged
as part of a lawn until the early 50s.
It only acquired weed status
because the earliest broadleaf 2,4-D herbicide
killed it off along with dandelions.
So the first dandelion pesticide also killed clovers,
so they marketed clovers as a weed
that also needed to be cotton rid of.
Of course they did.
And that's really where the monoculture grass
really starts to take root
as right around that time with herbicides, pesticides,
and fertilizers being introduced.
And that's the history of lawns, Chelsea.
It continues on, but I think that's enough,
mostly because we've been talking for 40 minutes almost now,
and there's a lot more to talk about.
That's very interesting,
and there are some surprising things and factors in there.
But overall, I think it just really,
that's the word I'm looking for.
It meanders forward?
It took a meander in the direction I thought it would,
where it ended up.
Well, and it's just incremental changes.
Like I always say, this is a big uptick.
It's incremental increase.
Yeah, it's just improving on what they had,
leading up to, and I think of the white picket fence
in the 40s and 50s after the war,
is where I saw it coming,
because that's where everyone's owning a home,
having a family, there's a baby boom and everything then.
Yeah, let's just everywhere.
Yeah, now you have like strata's and homeowner associations
that monitor these things and still want everything
to look uniform on the lawn and stuff like that.
Yeah, and I just need to say this now,
the HOA portion of this episode,
the Homeowners Association, I'm not gonna get into.
That could probably be its own episode in itself,
because they heavily lead to a lot of the issues
that we're gonna talk about coming up now,
but unfortunately, it's gonna be a long episode,
so I already have to like pick what I'm gonna talk about.
Okay.
So the first thing I wanna start off with, Chelsea,
what would you define a weed as?
An invasive species?
And I think that's what people kind of want you
to believe a weed is.
Sometimes it can technically be correct.
It really depends on what you mean
by an invasive species too, because.
And invasive, I'm meaning what I would think
a weed to be, something that you don't want,
that is going to kill healthy things.
But I feel like what is referred to as weeds
is just something that's not aesthetically pleasing.
Aesthetically pleasing are just not intended
to grow in the spot that it is growing.
Yeah.
I think that's the fairest way to put it.
What it actually is, for the most part,
what you have in your front yard when you look at a lawn
is a devastated ecosystem.
Okay, that makes sense.
Basically, if mother nature were to look at your front yard
and a forest that has just been destroyed
by a forest fire, it's gonna see little difference.
That grass that is growing there is not natural,
nor should it actually be occurring there.
And none of the natural parts
of the ecosystem exists there.
So if you actually were to look at a cycle of an ecosystem
from devastation back to a climax ecosystem,
so basically, after you have a fire,
the first things that are gonna come back
are called pioneer species.
They're small, they withstand a lot of harsh treatment.
They don't live that long, and they treat the soil
so that it can actually be used by the next species,
which are called intermediate species
and climax communities.
Pioneer species are basically everything
that grows in your yard that you don't want it to.
It is trying to turn your yard back just into nature.
Oh.
Most weeds are pioneer plant species
that have evolved various traits
that adapt them to thrive and reproduce successfully
in the recently disturbed habitats.
Each kind of disturbance presents certain stresses,
whether it be temperature extremes, exposed subsoil,
poor retention of moisture,
or in the case of agriculture,
the likelihood of frequent habitat disruption,
and certain opportunities,
such as the removal of shade and competing vegetation,
release the soluble plant nutrients, things like that.
And weeds are plants that have evolved mechanisms to cope
with stresses and exploit the opportunities of disturbance.
They are trying to make the ecosystem more natural.
That's very sad.
Yeah.
That's also why, Chelsea, when you think of the weeds
that you might see in a yard,
like particularly dandelions,
if you're out on a hike, do you see dandelions?
No.
Because eventually pioneer species are pushed out
for a climax ecosystem.
Once it's like established.
Exactly, yes.
Or just there to help the big guys out.
They're there to reset the situation
so that they can reestablish a climax community
within the ecosystem.
They fix themselves, eventually.
If we let them, yeah, they'll just fix themselves.
It takes a long time.
A climax community likely takes about 100 to 150 years
to establish, but it will.
Also, with that, this is just going to be very straightforward.
Lawns reduce biodiversity.
Shocking, hey?
Once I process that sentence, not shocking at all.
Especially when lawn covers a large area.
Fish and all lawn often replace plant species
that feed pollinators requiring bees, butterflies,
to cross waste plants to reach food and host plants.
Yeah.
I've been talking about like the, sorry,
we as a podcast have not, but it's kind of been in
the zeitgeist of society for some time now
that there is a huge problem with pollinators,
particularly bees.
This is part of the problem.
Is they're flying over yards and yards and yards
that are just for all intents and purposes,
sand below them.
They offer them nothing.
That was so sad.
Lawns promote homogenization
and are normally cleared of unwanted plants
and animal species, typically with synthetic pesticides,
which can also kill unintended target species.
We'll talk about that later.
They may be composed of introduced species,
not native to the area, particularly in the United States.
This can produce a habitat that supports
a reduced number of wildlife species, which it just does.
And I think anybody anecdotally can just say
there are not as many bugs as there used to be
out there either.
Wildlife has had it hard, particularly in these areas.
Yeah, I would believe it.
We've gone on road trips before.
Do you feel there are as many bugs on windshields
as there used to be?
You know, I can't say that I've ever kept track or noticed,
but I'm gonna go with no, actually.
And that's just based on recollection.
Well, I remember, because we went on road trips together,
when you get gas, you had to stop
and wipe your windshield clean of bugs.
Klugea.
Yes.
They literally never do that.
Which we don't have to anymore.
Oh, I don't have to.
It's true.
I never noticed.
So we are killing an ecosystem
and we're making sure that it dies
by not letting the natural parts come back.
Hmm, not good.
Chelsea, if you had to guess,
and I don't want you guessing outlandishly,
I want your real answers for these, just because it...
It's all been real answers today.
I know, I know.
That's good.
Very accurate.
We treat water for human consumption.
What percentage of that do you think is used
for lawns, for grass?
It's gonna be higher than I would think it would be.
But what do you think it would be?
What would you hope it is?
I'm gonna go...
I would hope it would be like 1%,
or like nothing, because like why?
I'm gonna go with like 25.
Okay, irrigation makes up anywhere from 50% to 70%
of all residential water use in the United States.
What?
Just for landscaping.
And sorry, I shouldn't have said irrigation,
it's just for landscaping.
50% to 70% of all residential water in the United States
is used for landscaping.
Irrigated lawns take up nearly three times
as much space as irrigated corn.
And to maintain that amount of grass on a daily basis,
nine billion gallons of water is needed
to be allocated to our lawn.
Oh my God, that is a crazy amount.
Yeah.
That's really bad.
And particularly in places like deserts
where grass shouldn't fucking grow.
Yeah.
Where they have decided to put golf courses
and lawns and everything, and just know.
And they make sand look nice?
You can make sand look nice.
You could, you can make like nice designs on it.
Yeah.
Like rake it all nice, like those meditation thingies,
put some nice rocks.
And like I've seen so many different like estimations,
none of them drop below 30% of water consumption.
So the EPA estimates that about a third of all public water
is used to water grass with most municipalities
using anywhere from 30 to 60% of drinkable water on lawn.
And if you're in an area without substantial rainfall,
you likely need to take water stored
into pleading aquifers to maintain the grass.
As droughts increase around the world,
this creates further strains on precious resources,
particularly in the more arid regions of the world,
Arizona, Nevada, California.
Their aquifers are in rough shape
and they still have their lawns.
Yeah. California, especially you hear
about their droughts every year.
And people like to blame the almonds for that,
but everybody has watered their lawn off the Colorado River
prior to it getting to California.
So don't start with the almonds.
Like there are so many more things
that we could fix with that.
Nobody's even brought up almonds until this point.
Well, I've heard it brought up, but that's...
On this plug, yeah.
Apparently I have different conversations.
Corn was brought up, not almond.
Yes, not in this episode.
Yes. Next up, like this is just an insane number.
I couldn't find the exact numbers,
but several people quoted it.
The US spends over $100 billion a year on lawn care.
Like that just, to me, sounds insane.
And that's everything from the pesticides,
the herbicides, the fertilizer,
to the mowing, to the irrigation,
to the begging of leaves,
which we'll get into eventually, to everything about it.
But we're gonna focus here on the lawn equipment.
So lawn equipment mostly is gasoline power,
typically being of one of two types,
two stroke or four stroke engines.
If it's handheld, it's most definitely a two stroke engine.
If it's a little bigger, it's probably four stroke.
To fuel this equipment,
it takes about 800 million gallons of gasoline annually.
Two stroke engines also pose a unique environmental hazard
because they don't have an independent lubricant system.
So fuel and oil are mixed together.
Usually when you see like machine gas
labeled in somebody's shack, that's what it has.
It's oil and gas mixed together.
So when you do this, 30% of the fuel won't combust completely.
30% of your emissions is just straight up what you put in it.
Okay.
Thus releasing toxic gases into the air.
A 2014 study examined a combination of the harmful gases
that are emitted by two stroke engines.
And it was found that the level of emissions
were 124 times higher from an idling scooter
than from a car or a truck.
Four stroke engines are also used in some equipment.
And while they are slightly more environmentally efficient,
in total, they are also very harmful.
A four stroke lawnmower operating for one hour
equates to a vehicle traveling about 500 miles.
Oh my God.
Just so many surprising things.
And according to one study done by quiet communities,
this equipment was responsible for 26.7 million tons
of pollutants in 2011 alone.
Furthermore, in the same year, another study demonstrated
that a consumer grade leaf blower releases more hydrocarbons
than a pickup truck or sedan.
What percentage of like total emissions
for air pollution in the US?
What percent do you think is lawnmowers?
40.
Okay. Not quite there.
It's actually a hundred percent,
but I can see how you would get that.
It's five percent.
Five percent.
Which is actually ridiculously high.
If you were to ask a random hydrocarbon in the air
where it came from, there's a one in 20 chance
it was a lawnmower.
I prefer not to ask them though at that point.
No. And they're kind of jerks.
They only talk to certain people.
Yeah, they are. They're assholes.
And this is a sobering warning
from the California Air Resource Board in 2017.
They reported the following.
By 2020 gas leaf blowers,
lawnmowers and similar equipment in the state
could produce more ozone pollution
than all the millions of cars in California combined.
And this came from a study out of Nashville.
A hectare of lawn in Nashville, Tennessee,
produces greenhouse gases equivalent to 697
to 2443 kilograms of carbon dioxide a year.
The higher figure is equivalent to a flight
more than halfway around the world.
And lawnmowing is one element of the lawn culture
that causes a great amount of the submissions.
So just owning a lawn could be the equivalent
of taking a flight annually around the world.
It's pretty crazy.
Just for your carbon footprint.
And most people would never break it down like this.
It's just like embedded in our head
that we must have a nice lawn.
It sure is.
And then this is just from the actual use of the product.
You actually have to put gas in these products.
And refilling gas powered lawnmowers, leaf blowers
and other garden equipment is a messy business
that can easily lead to fuel spills.
It is estimated that nearly 64 million liters
or 17 million gallons of gasoline
are spilled each summer while refueling garden
and lawn care equipment in the United States.
That equates to 50% more than the oil that was spilled
during the Exxon Valdez incident
or one-tenth of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.
Wow.
So every 10 years there's a Deepwater Horizon oil spill
that just happens from us trying to hook up
the Jere can't write.
And that's just that.
Imagine how many other things we don't know
about are going on contributing to that.
Exactly.
And this spilt fuel can get into your lawn,
garden beds, groundwater, nearby ponds and so forth.
And some of the oil evaporates in the air.
It's volatile organic compounds.
Not exactly great for the environment or your lungs.
So yeah.
Now, lawn maintenance also generally includes
fertilizer and synthetic pesticides,
which can cause great harm.
Some are carcinogens and endocrine disruptors.
They may permanently in the environment
and negatively affect the health
of potentially all nearby organisms.
The United States Environmental Protection Agency
estimated in 2012 that 32 million kilograms
of active pesticide ingredients are used
on suburban lawns each year in the United States.
There are indications of an emerging
regulatory response to this issue.
For example, in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Kuwait,
and Belize, they have placed restrictions
on the use of many herbicides, including that 2-4D,
which we talked about for clovers.
The University of Massachusetts reports
that the typical lawn service company in that state alone
applies five to seven pounds of pesticides per acre
of lawn per year.
Per EPA records, this is at least twice the amount applied
to the most pest plagued of agricultural crops,
sweet corn.
That is staggering and terrifying.
And because lawns serve as a primary space
for our kids and pets to play,
14 of the 30 most commonly used lawn pesticides
are neurotoxins that are known or suspected to be carcinogens.
And two thirds of them may cause
reproductive harm in humans.
Not to mention the fact that many of the chemicals
we dump on our lawns are herbicides meant to kill weeds,
which we talked about earlier, what exactly is a weed,
that potentially also may offer benefits itself.
Studies show that hazardous lawn chemicals
are drifting into our homes when we're doing this,
as they are contaminating the indoor air and surfaces
exposing children to levels 10 times higher
than pre-application levels.
Of the 40 most commonly used lawn pesticides,
26 are linked to cancer, archarcinogenity,
carcinogenicity, that is really hard to say.
12 are linked to birth defects, 21 with reproductive defects,
32 with liver or kidney damage,
24 with neurotoxicity,
and 24 with disruption of the endocrine or hormonal system.
Of these same 40 lawn pesticides,
21 are detected in groundwater,
24 have the ability to leach in drinking water resources,
39 are toxic to fish,
and other aquatic organisms vital to the ecosystem,
33 are toxic to bees, 18 are toxic to mammals,
and 28 are toxic to birds.
And by the first decade of the 21st century,
American homeowners were using 10 times more pesticides
per acre than farmers,
poisoning an estimated 60 to 70 million birds every year.
But worth it for a nice lawn, right?
Am I right?
But we gotta have that green lawn,
which is not an ecosystem in any way.
Yeah, we need it to be sterile,
and that goes for all the humans living around it as well.
That's just like our pee.
The lawn should be like the pee,
sterile and nothing can live in it.
Exactly.
Drinkable, if you will.
So yeah, lawns are fucked,
and everything we do to them to keep away this thing
that is actually like really good for the environment,
keeps every, the ecosystem in check.
We're trying to absolutely fucking,
we may not know it, but we are.
I was just gonna point out that exact thing.
It's such a mundane thing that's part of,
or everyday life.
Yeah, it's part of modernity.
You see lawns everywhere,
and you're like, wow, that's a nice lawn.
Look at how well they take, not even thinking, like, wow.
It's killed an entire ecosystem.
Well, and that's something we've actually been
culturally trained to think.
And this came up actually, it's in the lawn wiki
about like the social implications,
about how a yellow patch in your yard
can show that you are not an upstanding citizen,
and how it is important to maintain
that perfectly green yard.
And some people have taken that to the extreme
and completely ripped out grass
and put in that synthetic green shit.
Yep, now you see those two as well.
Because that's the implications,
is that the socially correct thing
is they have a perfectly green plot of carpet.
Whether or not it's actually alive
doesn't matter at this point.
Yeah, crazy.
You should know when I'm saying the word lawn,
I'm not just talking about that 10 by 20 foot plot
of land in front of your house.
I am also talking about the sides of the roads.
I am talking about the meridians
in the middle of the roads.
I am talking about the parks that we play in,
the football fields that you throw the ball in,
and the golf courses you pitch and put in.
This applies to all of them,
and they all fall under these same issues.
Anything that's maintained, right?
Yeah, also, I didn't put it in my notes,
but I should just briefly bring it up.
Some people will say that at least lawns act as a carbon sink
in that they will absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere
and put it into their systems to grow.
It's a stretch, you're reaching.
Well, not only that, it's a lie outside
of very particular regions,
because that is only grass growing
in its ideal environment.
When it's not growing in perfectly pristine growing conditions,
perfect amount of rain, perfect amount of sun,
it acts as a carbon deficit
and it even allows the ground to absorb more sunlight.
So it actually leads to more global warming.
And if you're going to give it its ideal situation,
then guess what?
You're irrigating it, you're fertilizing it,
and you're cutting it,
or at least adding all these carbons
that are clearly offset.
Any sort of carbon footprint that it might be reducing.
And another thing I just didn't mention,
I should have put it in my notes, but I didn't.
Keeping it green is ideal for a lot of people's minds,
which actually includes leaves.
When the leaves fall from the trees,
you have to beg them up and send them off
to wherever they end up going.
Oh yeah, I've heard.
Usually the dump, hopefully a compost area.
First and foremost, that is trees leaching nutrients
from deep down in the soil and putting it back
into a higher level of the soil by dropping the leaves.
By taking those leaves away from it,
you are destroying the nutrition of that ground,
which fertilizer is not going to fix on itself.
Next up, the entire area below decaying leaves
is an ecosystem in itself that many feces rely on
for a part of their life cycle.
By destroying that area,
you are destroying an ecosystem again.
So it's just something I had to add there.
I forgot, it didn't kind of.
I actually heard that.
I can't remember where I've heard that recently,
but someone saying just leave your leaves.
Like it's not that big of a deal.
Yeah, just leave them.
And actually, this is the one where the solution,
although I am fully leaving out the HOA side of this
as I talked about earlier,
the solution is to be as lazy as possible.
You know the best solution for the issues
I just talked about?
Rewilding your yard, which yeah,
you can actually go out and grab plants
that live in your area and plant them,
or you can just fuck off and let nature take its course.
People will get pissed off with you,
but that is actually the best solution
is just let nature take its course.
Chelsea, I don't know.
Have you ever taken a walk in a drought?
Maybe, depends on what you're getting at.
I live in a desert.
So we're constantly in like drought conditions
near the end of the summer.
If you walk in areas that are not maintained,
they are lush and green and beautiful
because they know how to withstand the environment.
If we just stopped watering
or just let nature take its course,
you will get some beautiful plants growing.
Sure, they might be weeds at first,
but it helps the ecosystem.
I've also seen people asking
when they're like building homes as well.
Actually, I can't remember the instance
in which they're asking about what's better
than just the standard looking grass.
Like someone was asking about cloves
and just even just planting wildflowers to go
instead of having to maintain the lawn
and what's better for the environment.
And that's actually the first time I thought
there's something else other than just having a nice lawn.
Exactly, yeah.
And the answer to that, what's better?
If you actually want to take active steps,
what's better than grass in your yard
is going to vary greatly from environment to environment
if you wanted to take proactive steps.
Probably just leave it there.
So talk to your local garden groups
or greenhouses about what's natural or what would work
if you wish to actually pursue an active effort
into rewilding or a more natural yard.
That's cool.
Think about that next time you see
not a lawn that's not mowed.
Mowed?
Yeah, exactly.
And then something just came to mind
when you're talking about that.
Chelsea, do you remember the Levittown,
how they had those two trees in the front yard
that they were freshly planted?
That is absolutely a part of development.
The reason they do that is because they can clear away
the entire land and they put in new trees
when they finish that so that they don't have to worry
about working around trees or things that are big
or a nuisance in yards.
That's nice of them.
So when they're building a larger development scale,
they just clear everything and then they put
in those two small trees.
And generally those trees have been bred to be only male
so that they do not create seedlings
that will leave unsightly growths in your yard.
Yeah, that makes sense.
As a developer, of course.
Yeah, and not wanting to worry about nature,
just the bottom line.
Oh yeah, nature can fuck off.
Yeah, if you can't be too lazy,
if we can't say just sit on your ass and do nothing,
you say, but that does seem so hard.
Well, probably the best thing you can do
is stop spraying anything because those chemicals,
I think are worse than the CO2 you're putting
into the atmosphere.
So just don't spray anything or talk to your local city
council or local regional government
about what's actually banned and see if they can look
into banning more because there honestly are pesticides
probably in your neighborhood that are absolutely terrible
for the environment.
I wouldn't doubt that.
If you can't be bothered that,
then just leave the leaves alone
and maybe mow a little bit less.
The issue with regular mowing is that it favors grasses
which grow from the bases of the plant
and low growing species such as dandelion and clovers.
Other species that have their growing tips
or flowering stems regularly removed by mowing
can't compete allowing plant diversity in urban lawns
to increase has the knock on effect of increasing diversity
of other organisms such as pollinators and herbivores.
So those are the steps I could think of.
There's a bunch more, but we're verging on an hour right now.
Those are good stepping stones,
good easy ways to get started.
Yeah, I think that's where I'm gonna leave it.
You're at least aware of the problem
and awareness is half the battle.
So at this point, yeah, you do you.
I would encourage you to be as lazy as possible,
but you do you.
That's, I think, if nothing else,
the cat phrase in this podcast,
which we've never set up until-
Be as lazy as possible.
And you do you.
Okay, I thought it was the other one.
It can be both.
It can be two things.
I don't think so, but I live in a place that has a strata,
and they hire someone to come mow the lawn.
So next time they come mow the lawn,
I'm gonna go out on my balcony and just shake my fist.
Hey, fuck you.
Kirstie, where is thy scythe?
Really, there shouldn't be-
Or, you know, at the very least,
you should be yelling out,
you're no Lancelot capability brown.
Yeah.
And then they'd be so offended.
They're so sad.
Because that's why everybody gets into landscaping.
Yeah.
And so good old Lancelot capability.
And if nothing else,
I hope you took that name from this episode.
Anyhow, I have been Taylor here with Chelsea
to clearly not well-named people.
I'm sorry if anybody who named me is listening.
We are Journey to the Fringe.
Thank you all for listening,
and we'll see you next week.
Thank you for listening, too, Journey to the Fringe.
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