"Are Landscapes Expressions of Culture?
If our choices are not unconstrained and the scope of what we desire may be somewhat circumscribed, it might be tempting to think that our “culture”–the way of thinking and doing in which we were raised and live–might be the central influence on us. We make and create things, it would be sensible to assume, the way people within our culture do. Following this line of thinking, common sense thinking as well as generations of good academic scholarship has tended to view landscapes like lawns as “cultural.” Landscapes–those assemblages of buildings, plants, machines, infrastructure, light, color, and sound that provide the backdrop for our myriad daily actions–can be viewed as being shaped by human action, but usually in the constantly reinforced patterns of our larger community. In this way of thinking, certain kinds of people, from particular cultural backgrounds, tend to produce and live in certain kinds of landscapes. Amish people produce Amish landscapes. Chinese produce Chinese landscapes. Americans produce American landscapes.
Such an apolitical perspective on culture lends itself to a specific view of the lawn. The lawn landscape, although not unique to America, does appear to predominate here in a way that it does not even in its regions of origin in the Old World. Americans have tendencies, such as being gregarious and neighborly and romantic about yeoman farming, which are unique to their history on this continent and which might make their desire for lawns seem almost inevitable."
