Green light of horticultural hubris swims in seas of pesticidal progress

“He had come such a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it.” The stereotypical American dream regularly features owning a house in a friendly suburban neighborhood with kids running around on a picturesque, nearly artificially appearing lawn. Since suburban neighborhoods were mass-marketed in the 1950s, this imagery has become a backbone to how American life is pictured. 

Although these hives of habitats house millions of American families, their lawns deprive wildlife of needed biodiversity while simultaneously polluting surrounding areas. 

However, Americans weren’t the first to surround their house with grass. In fact, manicured lawns originate from the aristocratic traditions of Europe where the elite would leverage their lawns to ultimately symbolize their superior social status. Estate owners could show off their wealth to the commonfolk by proving they didn’t need to use land for agricultural purposes in order to make ends meet. These sprawling gardens also require the labor of others, incurring an even greater cost. The manicured grass of the European upper class can still be seen today when visiting different castles and mansions. 

After Europeans immigrated and settled in the United States, many wanted to mimic the same wealth and prosperity of the elite in Europe, which led to the popularization of manicured lawns. In the United States, slaveowners like George Washington and Thomas Jefferson can be credited with popularizing lawn culture. Both founding fathers relied on unethical slave labor to trim and crisp up their grass. These features are still observable on estates like Mount Vernon and notably the White House. Lawn culture simultaneously symbolizes the desire of colonists to have their nation be interpreted as prosperous as well as the amoral foundations the United States was built upon. To this day, the White House serves as the emblem of American botany, featuring 18 acres of pure green. 

For decades on end, the availability of lawns extended exclusively to the wealthy elite of American society. This all changed in 1870 with Elwood McGuire’s invention of the push mower, which turned lawn care into a commodity. The device was advertised under the belief that sprawling acreage of green symbolized how unique and open the American community is. Perhaps that’s the ‘green light’ Fitzgerald had in mind.   

Although the invention of the push mower already started pushing biodiversity away from American neighborhoods, the introduction of lawn chemicals made an effort to eliminate it altogether. After World War I ended, the Chemical Warfare Service was left with an extreme surplus of dangerous gases and liquids. In an effort to maintain relevance, they underwent rebranding to the Chemical Peace Service and sold their poisonous phosgene and chlorine based chemicals as not only effective, but even good for the user. After World War ll, they rebranded once more into the Chemical Corps, now advertising the chemical DDT. For nearly 30 years, the pesticide DDT poisoned wildlife and was eventually linked to cancer in humans, until finally being banned in 1972.

Despite the ban of DDT, countless other types of harmful pesticides continue to be bought and sold on the market. Currently, nearly 170,000 lawsuits have been filed against pesticide companies like Bayer and RoundUp. The majority of these cases for RoundUp have to do with their product’s correlation with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, while Bayer’s cases have centered around their usage of glyphosate, which is a known carcinogen. Exposure to pesticides and herbicides isn’t a rarity. American consumers spend, on average, over three billion dollars annually on home and garden pesticides, according to PubMed Central. Seventy million American households report using pesticides regularly, which likely leads to harmful health effects in the future. 

The continued legality of such harmful chemicals gradually harms American citizens. Regardless of pesticide usage, nearly all Americans are exposed to harmful chemicals through the usage of pesticides. The continued propaganda that the picture perfect lawn is an imperative part of American society not only hurts the American public, but also biodiversity across thousands of acres of land. Health isn’t the only thing harmed. The average American homeowner spends anywhere between $100-$410 per month on their lawns. Lawn care includes purchasing mowers and fertilizers, but homeowners report that the majority of their costs are allocated to pesticides. 

These pesticides are sprayed across an estimated 40 million acres of the United States. The effects of the monoculture result in deserts for pollinators and animals alike, which results in a struggle for survival. These manicured lawns with pots of pesticides eliminate flowers, which are necessary for the survival of different species and pollinators. The abrupt placement of lawns among animal habitats ultimately results in fragmentation of ecosystems for nearly all animals. 

The generous usage of these chemicals to maintain the perfect lawn benefits no one. They deplete animals of their rightful habitats and hurt the lives of Americans who fruitlessly pamper their lawns on a daily basis.  Despite ceaseless arguments that argue how ugly and messy lawns with dandelions littered across land, people fail to acknowledge that the sense of entitlement to a completely green lawn originates from slave owners flaunting their wealth and the abundance of labor at their fingertips. These lawns pose an ugly outdated status symbol that serves no one.

However, it’s not too late to change these lawns into biodiverse areas for creatures to rejoice. Native plants are not only low maintenance, but benefit local wildlife. Plants native to Wisconsin include Butterfly Milkweed, Black-Eyed Susans, Purple Coneflowers, and much more. Local garden centers and garden clubs often sell native plants, and local gardens frequently offer these very plants for free. Native plants offer a colorful and beneficial alternative to the bland lawns that plague American society. Once native plants are welcomed to people’s lawns, an influx in butterfly and beautiful bug populations can be expected. Ultimately, the current state of lawns in the United States offers an outdated display of wealth that disregards both the lives of animals and their human counterparts.

by Zosia Bowlus-Jasinski

Published May 26, 2026

Oshkosh West Index Volume 122 Issue VIII