21 March: Lawns

In the 21st century, today is, on average, the day people in the UK mow their lawns for the first time.

1. What is a lawn? It is generally defined as an area composed of grass species which is maintained to keep it weed free, Green, and of an acceptable length. The word is used to refer to such areas around houses, commercial buildings and parks. However, some grass areas meeting this description are not seen as lawns at all - turf, court, pitch, field or green are used to describe grass areas used for sport. If you define this type of space as a lawn, then the most expensive lawn in the world is the Centre Court at Wimbledon, which is composed of perennial ryegrass.
2. The word lawn comes from the Common Brittonic word landa, which means heath, barren land, or clearing.
3. The word was not used to mean a managed grass space until the 16th century. Back then, a lawn would be virtually indistinguishable from pasture fields.
4. In the 17th and 18th centuries, lawns became a status symbol for the aristocracy and gentry; it showed the landowner had enough land that he didn't need to use it all for producing food.
5. Most lawns are composed of grass. Grasses are technically called “graminoids” and are herbaceous plants with narrow leaves which grow from their base.
6. There are over 10,000 types of grass species in the world, and more than 20% of the vegetation cover of Earth is grassland. Scientists have found a species of seagrass in the Mediterranean Sea dating back 200,000 years, making it one of the oldest living organisms humans have ever discovered. The largest species of grass is giant Bamboo, which can grow up to 151 feet tall.
7. A typical lawn has about six grass plants per square inch. That’s 850 per square foot; a square foot can contain as many as 3,000 individual blades of grass.
8. The average lawn grows at a rate of about three inches per month.
9. About 65% of all water used in American households is used for watering lawns. Also, more chemical fertilizer and pesticides are used per acre of lawn than on an the same area of cultivated farmland.
10. The state of one's lawn has become symbolic in films of how good a person someone is - the less pristine the lawn the more corrupt and unpleasant the character is likely to be.

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