The concept of rolling green grass and perfectly kempt lawns is very recent in the America. The earliest city dwellings were mostly dirt and scattered native plants. In the frontier, homesteaders were more preoccupied by avoiding bears, starvation and dysentery than the proper blend of bluegrass to fescue. Late in the 19th Century, wealthy Americans began traveling to Europe and admiring the gardens of English estates and Parisian parcs. Green with envy, they returned and began our love affair with grass.
As early as 1868, Amariah Hill had secured a United States patent for a reel mower. This first wave of lawn mowers were nearly identical to the those created in England. Bulky and expensive, these designs only served the rich. In 1870, Elwood McGuire of Richmond, Indiana designed an extremely lightweight, human powered lawn mower. His egalitarian design and the rotary-blade lawn mower patented by John Burr in 1899, found commercial success. By 1855, America was manufacturing 55,000 lawnmower each year both for domestic and international sale.
According to the EPA lawns now cover 25 million acres of our nation (the equivalent land occupied by Pennsylvania).
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