Suburbia spurns the lawn police: Peter Pringle's America

LAND of the free and the home of the brave - so the song goes, but when Americans step out of line with their neighbours they need more than courage to beat off the guardians of suburban purity. Outside the cities, in places where the air is supposed to be clean, and free, homeowners have found themselves pursued by lawn police and zoning arbiters who tell them how to build their fences and what colour to paint their houses.

Take the case of Walter Stewart of Potomac, Maryland, a rambling suburb not far from Washington DC with good-sized houses on plots of land permanently clipped and manicured as though lined up for a military inspection.

A few years ago, Walter's lawn mower broke and, being less than keen on mowing, he somehow couldn't get around to fixing it. He let the grass grow, as un-American an activity as turning up one's nose at apple pie. Failing to mow your lawn is a sign of laziness and eccentricity, neither of which is tolerated in suburban society.

Before the wispy strands of genus Gramineae had gone to seed and turned Walter's back yard into a meadow - which was what Walter had in mind - the neighbours pounced. They demanded that he mow his grass. It was the only 'appropriate' action for a member of the neighbourhood, they said. Walter told them he had decided that maintaining a lawn was a waste of time and money and a meadow was what he preferred. A meadow was a 'natural' environment, a haven for birds, animals, butterflies and the kinder and gentler things of life.

Still upset, and also vengeful, the neighbours contacted the local council and soon Walter received an official citation stating that his lawn was in violation of a city ordinance permitting grass blades to be no higher than 12 inches, that his meadow was a health hazard and should be cut within 12 days. Walter defended his meadow on ecological grounds and challenged the validity of the council's order. Much to his neighbours' annoyance, he won and was allowed to keep his meadow.

It turns out that Walter is in the vanguard of a lawn revolt, a turf war waged by biologists, environmentalists, social critics and even gardeners to persuade Americans that cultivating a perfect lawn can be a senseless and even harmful pastime. And the anti-lawn movement is part of a larger trend against the perfect suburban tract mentality that demands a kind of stylistic socialism.

Thirty-two million Americans live in planned communities governed by strict rules developed by private housing associations. More and more of them, like Walter, are beginning to realise that they are victims of 'housing police' who can be no less vicious in their enforcement of conformity than the once all-powerful Communist Party committees in the former Soviet state. A family in one of these communities could move into their neighbour's house and only the cat would notice the difference. The US Senate has received so many complaints about the petty, self- important dictators that Congressional hearings may soon be held.

Here is a taste of the evidence. A woman in Virginia was told to rip up her dollars 7,000 wooden patio because the railing was slanted instead of straight. A couple in Washington state were reprimanded for painting their house mauve, purple and teal. A Maryland man was told to tear up his concrete driveway because it was three inches too wide.

A man in Florida was taken to court for having a dog that looked as though it might be over the 30 lb pet limit. At an official weigh-in at the court the dog was found to be 291 2 lb. In New Jersey a man was charged with violating a rule banning anyone under 45 years old from living in his community. He married a 43-year-old woman and the board sued. The judge gave him two choices: move out or get a divorce.

But for most Americans it is the lawn that sparks the quickest controversy among neighbours. Traditionally, Americans have loved their lawns with a passion seen nowhere else except Britain, where lawns were invented and became the icon of English society in the 18th century. English immigrants to America quickly tried to tame the natural environment. Having a patch

of cultivated green became a measure of social status, from the lush east coast to the arid west.

In the US, lawns occupy more land than any single crop, including wheat, corn and tobacco. The 25 million acres of turf in America are almost equal to the size of the state of Pennsylvania.

But maintaining a lawn is much easier in the moderate, island climate of Britain than in the ravaging, continental environment of America. Billions of dollars are spent each year on grass seed, fertilisers, pesticides, water and petrol for lawn mowers. Americans spend dollars 750m on 400 million pounds of grass seed, use 10 times as much chemical pesticide per acre as farmers, and sprinkle between 30 and 60 per cent, depending on where they live, of the municipal water supply on their lawns.

These figures are published in a new book, Redesigning the American Lawn, by three concerned environmentalists from Yale Univeristy, Herbert Bormann, Diana Balmori and Gordon Geballe. They propose 'freedom lawns', allowing natural and unrestricted growth of grasses, clover, wild flowers and other broad-leafed plants that lawn-obsessed people regard as weeds.

The revolution is gathering force as communities seek what they call 'anti-monotony ordinances' to end the development of cookie-cutter housing. One such ordinance in Illinois is seven pages long, with specifications for roof height, window shape and paint colour. Let freedom ring as the suburbanites progress from enforcing conformity to encouraging variety.