What caused monoculture grass lawns to become the norm in many places? What were lawns like before this transition?
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The monoculture lawns you often see in the US are partly the product of herbicides used to control weeds.
Lawn seed in the US (a fair few decades ago) used to come with a variety of grasses included in it, including things like clover, which has several beneficial impacts on the lawn ecology.
But then there was a fashion move towards pristine lawns – not necessarily targeting things like clover, but more dandelions, crabgrass, etc. The weed selection varies by region. So herbicide products came out that target these leafy “weeds”.
But the herbicides are “broad spectrum” and wipe out virtually everything that isn’t grass, including plants that were previously considered normal in lawns. The lawn care and herbicide companies did a marketing push to sell the idea of a uniform lawn free of anything other than select grasses as the “ideal” as part of their strategy to get people to overlook wiping out beneficial plants during their lawn care treatments.
Over time this led to a move of viewing anything other than the right type of grasses as weeds and an aesthetic desire for an extremely uniform lawn.
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