Redesigning the American Lawn: A Search for Environmental Harmony, Second Edition, (Paperback)

Publishers Weekly,Lawns are celebrated in America as a mark of civility and achievement: nature bowing to the well-gloved human hand and the lawn mower. But American fanaticism about the well-kept family turf does not always serve the best interests either of the turf or of the American. A product, in part, of a 1991 Yale graduate seminar, ``The American Lawn,'' this work of scholarship and suggestion seeks to improve our attitudes and our front yards by cutting down on pesticide use, replacing power mowers with the hand-held kind, adopting types of grasses best suited to one's habitat and maybe even allowing a true-blue meadow to develop, clover and all. Lawns are impositions of will, not of nature, and the idea of returning will to nature--or collaborating with it more respectfully than we have--will not appeal to everyone. But the idea is sensible and fair, and this book--also sensible and fair--may, with luck, help to spread it around. Bormann is an emeritus professor of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University; Balmori is a lecturer at Yale; Geballe is assistant dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved,Publishers Weekly,Publishers Weekly,Lawns are celebrated in America as a mark of civility and achievement: nature bowing to the well-gloved human hand and the lawn mower. But American fanaticism about the well-kept family turf does not always serve the best interests either of the turf or of the American. A product, in part, of a 1991 Yale graduate seminar, ``The American Lawn,'' this work of scholarship and suggestion seeks to improve our attitudes and our front yards by cutting down on pesticide use, replacing power mowers with the hand-held kind, adopting types of grasses best suited to one's habitat and maybe even allowing a true-blue meadow to develop, clover and all. Lawns are impositions of will, not of nature, and the idea of returning will to nature--or collaborating with it more respectfully than we have--will not appeal to everyone. But the idea is sensible and fair, and this book--also sensible and fair--may, with luck, help to spread it around. Bormann is an emeritus professor of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale University; Balmori is a lecturer at Yale; Geballe is assistant dean of the Yale University School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. (July) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved