Gimme Green (Video)
From sod farms to subdivisions, our love of lawn has grown into a $40 billion industry. How did this happen and what does it mean? Gimme Green takes a wry look at an American obsession and its hidden costs.
Gimme Green has received numerous domestic and international awards.
A Very Brief History of the American Lawn with Virginia Scott Jenkins (Video)
The first lawns arrived in the US in the 18 century, popularized by wealthy landowners looking to reproduce an English aesthetic. At the time, maintaining a lawn required more open land and labor-intensive upkeep than most people could afford.
By the mid 19th century, the lawn had begun to attract more egalitarian champions, like the urban developer Fredrick Law Olmsted, who designed the Chicago suburb of Riverside.
Nearly 75 years later, advances in mowing technology and selective herbicides, along with a post World War II housing boom, all helped the lawn become a mass phenomenon.
Here lawn historian Victoria Scott Jenkins traces the growth of that phenomenon, from George Washington’s Mont Vernon estate, to Olmsted’s Riverside, to the suburban aesthetic we know best today.
About the artists:
Eric Flagg and Isaac Brown are filmmakers and instructors at the Art Institute of Jacksonville, Florida.
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