Do it right and a lawn is all upside: cooling the vicinity by up to 10 degrees compared with paving, improving air quality, providing balance to the garden and offering the best place to lie down and watch spring’s scudding clouds. | Robin Powell
The English gardener Monty Don managed to get gardening into the news cycle last northern spring when he suggested that British men should stop obsessing over their lawns. Controversial!
Settler gardens in Australia were equally lawn-conscious. Colonial Government Houses featured lawn terraces on which to entertain local dignitaries; and the grandees followed suit. By the early decades of the 20th century, most of the country was in on the game, with lawns spreading across the new suburbs.The game-changer was the relatively light, cheap and easy-to-use petrol-powered Victa, invented by Mervyn Victor Richardson in 1952 in his backyard in Croydon.
With the greatest respect to Richardson’s ingenuity, the petrol-fuelled lawnmower’s day is done. We can no longer afford the emissions.
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