How lawns became a status symbol in America

Children play with their father in their backyard. (Mark Leffingwell / Digital First Media / Boulder Daily Camera / Getty Images) "There are, in the United States today, somewhere between 60,000 and 65,000 square miles of lawn," said Ted Steinberg, the Adeline Barry Davee professor of history at Case Western Reserve University and author of "American Green: the Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Lawn.""If you take all that lawn and you put it all together, you get a state about the size of Florida."Lawns have a long history, with names such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson having their own lawns, according to Steinberg.However, lawns in their modern iteration are a relatively recent invention and one that rose to dominance over three different periods in history.Advertisement for a lawn mower, featuring a young woman pushing the mower, ca 1885. (Universal History Archive / Universal Images Group / Getty Images) The first period ran from the 1870s to the 1920s, when the lawn became a part of suburban development.

Several factors were at play, such as education and technology.According to Steinberg, books are written about how to tend to suburban grounds, with people being urged and advised to take care of the landscape around their homes.

Newsletters were sent out by lawn care companies to teach homeowners how to plant and maintain their lawns while selling them products along the way.An illustration of a man using a horse-drawn lawn mower, from the volume 'Everything for the Garden: 1906,' from the Henry G.

Gilbert Nursery and Seed Trade Catalog Collection, 1906. (Smith Collection / Gado / Getty Images) "We also see during this period between the 1870s and the 1920s refinements in the lawnmower, so that it becomes.