BOOK REVIEW
Figure 3 : Villa Arcadia from the lawns ( Heritage Portal – 2014 ). world . My most interesting encounters with a lawn in other cultures came with visits to Moscow , Germany and England . In Moscow I encountered a city beauty spot - with a park where people spread themselves in summer , grass grew soft wild and tall but there was no lawn . I asked the innocent question ... why do you not mow the grass and make a lawn and back came a rhetorical question – “ why ?” I could only share a laugh ; it solved my Russian linguistic inadequacies . In Manheim , German policeman far more aggressive than the Russian park keepers chased us off the lawn in front of their very modern art gallery – their lawn was no place for a civic picnic . When playing the part of the tourist in England , I was conscious that one did not tread on the grass of Noel Coward ’ s stately homes . There was a sacred quality to the lawns of the Oxford Colleges or Hampton Court . The National Trust is the custodian of the lawn and now I can leave them to it . When there are cultivated lawns at hand the shortest distance between two points is never a straight line across the diagonal of the lawn . Quite the opposite , its two sides of a rectangular .
Let ’ s delve into lawns and this book . This is a clever book - the author is smart and has a critical mind . He does not think the lawn is a civilising device at all . He ranges widely over the subject , a familiarity with all of the socio-cultural theories is evident and competently handled . The strengths lie in the literary and artistic analysis of what the lawn represents , where it came from and why it is here .
Figure 4 : Riverclub Golf Course ( Heritage Portal – 2018 ).
This book appealed because it spoke to the personal experience of living on the Highveld from childhood to adulthood . I know exactly what is involved in the art of the lawn ; it is another suburban accoutrement to worry about . In winter the lawn on our Witwatersrand ridge needs water to stop that fade from verdant green to dying toughened ragged brown and reverting back to veld . In summer the lawn sprouts aggressively , weeds and grass grow in fierce competition , encouraged by the summer rains . The Lawn needs trimming , mowing and edges neatened . You need the tools to do the job and not only is a lawnmower required but an edge trimmer and someone to assist with what is fast becoming hard work . Someone has to be a willing husband ( boyfriends will never mow a lawn ) or you employ a gardener and in no time you are on the slippery slopes of master-servant relationships amidst the greenery of Africa .
I must share a secret . I am a failed gardener and lawn keeper . A few years ago I tried to spread grass seed on a rocky stretch of open land that pretends to belong to my garden and the resultant grass only looks good at a distance . Close examination still shows up insistent weeds and those hard little ‘ klippies ”. Sometimes bigger rocks creep to the surface - these items of geology that must have been there when Bezuidenhout was the farm owner and there was no suburb . Now I know precisely why I have failed and why I can blame the whole lawn enterprise on my ancestors and on history . Having read this book I can give up lawn cultivation , I can carry on reading soothed by this book , feet up and a relaxing tipple at hand in a deck chair on what was the lawn but now happily reverts back to veld and bush . All guilt about a failed lawn disappears .
Nonetheless , we find lawns all over the
He uses the metaphor of the lawn to tell the story of the taming of the landscape , and the conquest of the country by colonists who wished to transform red earth into controlled and managed spaces of green on bowling greens , golf courses and private gardens . Gardens , lawns and suburban houses were combined in a neat geographical layout of the city according to the prevailing economic and political markers of who could live where in Johannesburg . If the lawn civilized , it was with effort and to maintain a lawn in a garden in the suburbs required the employment of a servant class which takes me back to my point about a quality to judge a prospective husband is how good a lawn aficionado he is . Or we have the problem of a servant class when you engage a gardener .
The lawn is about the making of place and the sense of individual home ownership in the garden city suburbs . Lawns are personal parks in enclosed gardens . The politics of apartheid and segregation comes into the story because new townships did not worry much about lawns . Lawns are manmade but with
49 Grassroots Vol 21 No 1 March 2021