Urban sprawl is not a new phenomenon, and the battle between environmentalists
and developers is well-known. But perhaps the issue is not that the land is
being utterly stripped of life and replaced by cookie cutter houses or
factories, which has been a controversy for decades. Perhaps the fighting has
exposed a deeper problem: the American acceptance of a false outside, seen
through lawns that mimic interiors. People often perceive that any green space
is nature. As Michael Ventura says, “America is form opposed to content”
(216). Contractors leave some existing trees on lots not because it may be
costly to remove them but because those trees also serve as a selling feature
for the houses built between. Most people would rather spend their weekends at
an official, regulated and landscaped park rather than hiking through some
un-named forest track. While there is the standard human desire for new
experiences, people often are only willing to try pre-tested experiences. Even
when one realizes the societal manipulation, it still seems difficult to jump
over the railings and really cut a new path. So if people are aware that
they’re being led by the nose through a sterile, pre-chewed and mocked-up
environment, why don’t they respond? Here’s why: People are simply cannot
deal with vast expanses of "nothing." Afterall, it is more or less the
American motto to “tame” the wilderness, to take what the land has to offer
and use it to better the standard of human living. Just “being there,” a
more Eastern philosophy, seems only a waste of both money and resources to
American thinking. The court system has even ruled several times along the lines
that a “loss of open space amounts to an insignificant impact” to dissuade
new housing developments (“Preservation Groups Lose Favor”). The planet
alone has been deemed worthless without us, a belief which already ties in
nicely with some Western religious rationalization, for “the ease of human
interface, comfort of use, the accuracy of human perception” (Viola 226). Even
the National Park Service doesn't seem to seem to be championing the planet to
simply safeguard natural ecospheres (“Mission Statement”). They state:
Government has always had an interest in the development of [American] land in a
beneficial, efficient, and aesthetically pleasing manner. Since these variables
are highly subjective, land use law, which covers environmental takings and
zoning issues, are among the most contentious issues facing local, state, and
federal officials. They preserve the land as it is because it will serve them in
some function, that of some obscure goal of outside recreation for the people.
Our “recreation” truely is based on “re-creation,” as Ventura points out
(216). The noble act is revealed as a selfish one, something that will ensure
their remembrance as “good ancestors.” They wish to please as many people as
possible, marketing the land to satisfy expectations. However, “safe, clean
and aesthetically-pleasing” is not natural nature. Powerful storms become
“natural disasters” to our eyes, and weather is judged “inclement” based
on our perceptions. And those perceptions are not just the normal range of
senses dictated by species, but are directly affected by the environment. The
senses are heightened or dulled depending on dangers encountered in daily life,
and the more one is shielded from the environment, the less one is prepared to
handle it when it changes suddenly. A person living in a so-called
under-developed country more easily accepts local phenomena - such as sand
storms or tsunamis - than someone caught off-guard by an earthquake in a city. A
resident of Florida posted desperate pleas on the Family Gardening message
board, under the thread of “How do I get the sand out of my lawn? HELP!”
after one particularly heavy rain (“Message Posting”). The trouble just
seems to come with the territory, yet fifteen concerned replies did follow,
explaining just how to remove the foreign matter from the sacred backyard.
“What is real,” Viola suggests, “is what is psychologically meaningful”
(229). People now look at the stripped-down ecospheres surrounding their
dwellings as an extension of their property: something that is owned and must be
used. Artificial images do not portray reality accurately, as “they aspire to
be the image and not the object” (Viola 226). We know that crabgrass and
dandelions exist, but lawn-owners insist that such defects shouldn’t. Lawns
are worse than simply a photograph--which, if manipulated, is still an image. On
the other hand, a lawn is actually a three-dimensional space that we can enter,
observe from all angles, drive by and judge the proficiency of weed-whacking.
The introduction to a lawn care website sums it up best: There's nothing like a
lawn. Large or small, lawns are the irreplaceable pieces of American life. Our
lawns are the welcome mats to our homes. They present our best face to visitors
and neighbors, frame our houses, cradle our children, connect our property to
our neighbor's but also serve as friendly boundaries (“Site Entrance”). That
opening alone can convey more patriotism than the monuments of the entire East
Coast. The startling aspect of that passage, though, is that it functions on a
much more personal level than official tourist attractions, putting the pressure
on the home-owners. A good friend of mine for the past nine years comes from
such a family. At any time, I could find her deeply engaged in lawn care chores,
ranging from the simple task of mowing to the raking of leaves to the
fertilization of carefully arranged flowers. She did not enjoy wasting away her
free time with such work, but she never complained, not even to me as I hung out
in her room playing video games until she was eventually through. The reason for
her lack of protest was that it was required and expected in her neighborhood to
tend yards in a certain way, giving a uniform appearance to the blocks and
blocks of expensive but uninspired homes. I’m so grateful to have never have
lived in a sub-division of any kind--though I can see what the housing
developers had in mind when they implanted this brain-washing into their
customers. Such regulations are needed to ensure a certain status quo;
home-owners aren’t just buying a building to live in--they’re buying into
the neighborhood. All you need is one spirited but artistically-untraditional
individual--say for instance, someone like me--to lower the surrounding property
values with a non-conventional treatment outside the house. With the
mass-production of subdivisions today, the neighborhood’s “personality”
must be pre-fabricated, and the neighbors depend on each other to upkeep the
illusion. Instead of the residents individually defining their living space (as
was the case before the 1950’s), the community image is dictated by committee.
Just as Michael Ventura argues that Americans have lost a sense of history to a
vague nostalgia, maybe people have also have lost their connection to the real
landscape, which leads toward that loss of history. Respect for the land is not
wide-spread in America--perhaps because we have so much to spare. Conversely,
the more Eastern philosophy probably derives from the fact that space is a
commodity there. Just as lawns speak for American views, bonzai can easily
represent the opposite. The art of bonzai does not seek to contort nature into
human perceptions. It's main purpose is to thoughtfully imitate the larger
theme. Instead of bringing the entire surrounding environment "down to our
level," bonzai helps the viewer realize the enormity of real nature. While
the typical American scurries around trying to meet the least common denominator
in their lawn’s appearance, there still remains some artistic expression in
the world that can coincide nature without infringing upon it. Bill Viola, too,
looks for the residual human presence in the vast expanses of nature, just as he
finds the residue of nature in the urban non-places of parking lots. Nature and
civilization are not essentially oppositions to face off, one against the other,
in predictable bouts of logic. Rather, one is contained within the other,
sometimes hidden. However, Ventura also says that “we have stripped the very
face of America of any content, and reality, concentrating only as its power as
image” (216). Landscape, therefore, conceals as much as it shows. While most
of us cannot install a self-sufficient forest preserve on the small plots of our
“property,” it is up to us to ensure that the image is the only nature left
in the end. Good ancestors don’t dictate what their descendants should see.

Bibliography
“Message Posting.” Family Gardening Web Site Forum. 22 Nov. 1999. 24 Nov.
1999
“Mission Statement.” National Park Service Webpage. 1 Dec. 1999
“Preservation Groups Lose Favor.” PAW Archives. 13 Jan. 1995. 29 Nov. 1999
“Site Entrance.” Meiyger Lawn Care & Products. 15 Aug. 1999. 29 Nov.
1999
Ventura, Michael. “Report From El Dorado.” Vision and Revision: A Reader for
Writers (Second Edition). Acton: Copley Custom Publishing Group, 1998. 211-23.
Viola, Bill. “The Visionary Landscape of Perception.” Vision and Revision: A
Reader for Writers (Second Edition). Acton: Copley Custom Publishing Group,
1998. 224-29.