Class conscious - Andrew Martin is above worrying about his lawn
Published 02 May 2005
My lawn is covered in clover and moss, because I am above worrying about it
The general election is upon us, but so is the lawn-mowing season. I have the choice, in my garden shed, between two mowers. One definitely works (a bit); the other is electrical, and because our shed is not completely waterproof - to say the least - I'm wary of using it. The first mower is mechanical, but it doesn't have one of those heavy rollers that used to characterise English lawnmowers and which, I read in the Daily Telegraph (mostly devoted to lawnmowers a couple of Saturdays ago), are hard to come by today.
A well-cut and well-maintained lawn has been an aspiration of the English middle classes ever since Edwin Budding invented the lawnmower in 1830. In an attempt to show how dangerous and rebellious his band was, Lemmy of Motorhead said: "If we moved in next door to you, your lawn would die." Today, however, people will settle for short, neat grass, which can be produced by a cheap mechanical or electrical mower, whereas 30 years ago the aim was to have a lawn striped with alternate light and dark lines - a Wimbledon Centre Court effect that can be achieved only by using a mower with a heavy roller.
I grew up on a new, open-plan estate. All estates are open-plan now, but at that time it was a new idea: no gates, no garden walls, no hedges (at least, none of these at the front). The concept might have been thought up by lawnmower manufacturers, because not cutting your lawn was not an option. Everyone could see how high your grass stood, and if it was more than about three inches tall, they would begin to talk. The houses were all semis, and the usual arrangement was that you would cut your next-door neighbour's front lawn at the same time as your own, and he would cut yours in return the next time.
As soon as I hit my teens, my dad delegated all lawn-mowing duties to me even though - a fact often mentioned by myself - I suffered badly from hay fever. (But in truth, I didn't mind doing the job, because it gave me the chance to look through the neighbour's kitchen window at close quarters.)
Our mower was of the normal type for the 1970s in that it was made of steel, and if you pushed it over concrete it sounded like a traction engine. It was made by Qualcast, and the side panels were decorated with a picture of an English village cricket match with the sun beaming down. Because it featured a heavy roller, our mower was capable of producing the above-mentioned Wimbledon Centre Court effect, and indeed I would sometimes create a couple of alternating light and dark lines over the length of the lawn we shared with our neighbour. But I couldn't be arsed to keep it up, and would quickly resort to whimsical circles or impulsive diagonals.
Our neighbour, by contrast, was a very orthodox mower, so our front grass alternated between looking like something fit to be bounded across by Virginia Wade and something cropped by sheep, and not very hungry ones at that. Our neighbour would also pull up any weeds in the two lawns, but I felt that here, reciprocation was not strictly required by the neighbourly contract. He pulled up the weeds presumably because he enjoyed doing it, and that was his lookout.
Today . . . well, I have no front lawn, but people do occasionally come round to lunch and inspect my back lawn. There's a lot of clover, a lot of moss . . . but the way I look at it, these things are all green. They blend in. Besides, I went to the very fine garden of one of the big Georgian houses nearby, and its lawn was covered in clover and moss. The woman who owns the house told me, "It's a waste of time to worry about a lawn", by which she meant that she was above doing so - and so am I.
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