Asklemmy

Because having a big yard of grass that you have to mow every week while using up gasoline is the American dream and a flex for some reason.

Littering your yard with food attracts things like rats, raccoons, squirrels, etc, which destroy property and infrastructure, spread disease, and cause injury to people and pets. I'm not saying I'm against fruit trees, but I do understand people who are. It's a legitimate concern. Some areas even have things like boars or bears which are extremely dangerous.

I'm also curious with the way you can sue people in the US what would happen if someone becomes sick after eating one of your fruits. I imagine it varies by state.

Probably need a permit and license

Wait...

There is a pretty great website called Falling fruit to map trees and other plants that you can pick from freely.

Rodents mostly

Grass lawns as a concept came from Europe as a symbol of wealth. If you could afford a large green lawn, you were likely rich.

Zoning laws in a lot of places.

We do? At least where I live I see mango trees all over, saw a longan the other day, there are loquats all over too, and until citrus canker there were orange trees in most backyards. At my old house we had loquat, tangelo, lemon, lime, carambola and bananas, and a papaya tree.

At this house we have lemon, lime, Valencia, and sugar bell citrus trees, a fig (all of these are dwarf trees) and a vegetable garden but all are in back. In front a small lawn, a few ornamental plants and sometimes I plant bulb fennel out there.

That will depend on what type of Home Ownership Association the house is on. Some of them mandate a well kept grass lawn and you get fined for not moving.

The 50s happened.

It’s a stupid reason. Historically, if you were a peasant and had been granted access to land, you grew food or herbs. If however you were a lord, you got your food from your peasants. You had no need to grow your own food. So they could afford to grow lawns as a sign of wealth.

This has transferred across into the modern psyche. Lawns are a way of saying “i’m so rich, i don’t have to worry about sustenance. In fact i’ll throw money at it to maintain this slab of green rather than have it provide food, or shade.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-modern-brain/202002/the-strange-psychology-the-american-lawn

Trees (e.g. apple trees or others) provide great shade and help lower the temperature. They are beneficial if you feel that summer heat is getting worse due to climate change. Additionally, if you have issues with heavy rainfall, trees can help by absorbing large amounts of water through their roots. This approach can be applied in most countries.

There are places where they have trees all around their houses. Like in California, where they just had been more fuel to the fires.

We do. Obviously not everyone can But I wager the number of Americans growing something edible on their space is decent. Usually it's easy stuff to grow, or someone's favorites.

Thinking about it and counting in my head I actually know dozens of people that grow tomatoes personally. They grow easily in large quantities in relatively small space and all taste better than store bought.

Citrus has been pretty plentiful my entire life too. Lemon trees especially.

I’m tryin’, man. Fruit bearing plants take a lot of work compared to the manicured suburban steriscape. They’re not super easy to grow (depending on where you live), require pruning and fertilizer, soil amendment, and unfortunately pesticides or fencing if you don’t want insects or deer destroying your hard work.

That’s way more effort than most people want to expend. HOAs or even local ordinances may also restrict what can be grown.

As someone who lives in an ex-industrial city (Birmingham Alabama), I’ve always been worried about air pollution and tainted soil (there are superfund sites nearby). I feel like every thing would have to be above ground and covered. That seems like a lot of work. Should I be worried?

I mean some of us hate grass so much we started a huge reddit community about it that made it's way too lemmy.

https://slrpnk.net/c/nolawns

In, or in the yard of? We're not talking about indoor houseplants, I assume.

If outside is what you mean, it goes back to the days of aristocracy. Having land you don't use for food was a form of conspicuous consumption, and you had sports for the elite grow up around stretches of short grass as a result, like golf and polo. The former is still synonymous with the well-off, even.

Then you have to skip ahead to the 1950's and 60's in America, where the "mid-century modern" philosophy of urban planning gains prominence. The idea was to get people out of the crowded, Victorian-style slums, which we might find quaint in hindsight, but at the time were very stigmatised. This extended to a certain disdain for cities and buildings in general, even - more nature was better. So, where do you put people? In tiny little rural estates modeled on the ones popular with aristocrats, separated by zoning laws from the other sections of the city.

The vision was that people would get home from their 9-5 jobs in the commercial-only zones in their very own car, and would hang out outside enjoying their government-mandated leisure time. The urban planners of the time probably pictured a giant croquet course going up and down a residential street, and the all-white 3.5 kid families that live there sitting outside on lawn chairs, playing friendly games against each other. These "white picket fence" suburbs had lawns, then, because you couldn't have semi-rural domestic bliss without them, according to some architects who graduated Harvard in 1920.

In practice, of course, none of that happened. Like so many other tidy ideas it failed to predict how the general public would interact with it. I've been around plenty of places like that. You know the names of your neighbor, but not much else about them, and the people a few doors down are suspect of being pedophiles or violent drug dealers. That fence line is sacred, each house becomes an island, and you're frightfully dependent on driving to get anywhere you can do basic errands. And that's not even getting into the racial issues that came out of it.

Now, in the 21st century, people assume houses have always had lawns, and messing with that formula irritates the local NIMBYs. New ideas eventually become rigid tradition, and as always it falls to the next generation to question the way things are done. Hopefully we will, but it will take a moment.

Growing crops is quite a bit of cost and effort and time. I have a little garden, but it's not like you just plant some seeds and you're all done.

Bugs, pests, and animals, at least where I live. Unless you build a green house, clear the yard of all other foliage, or somehow fortify your garden, only produce with natural defenses like peppers will make it to harvest. However, I am jealous of my friends on the west coast, who don't really have to worry about bugs or other critters eating from their fruit trees just passively growing in their yard.

HOAs say “ew no that’s for the poors” and good luck finding a house that’s not in an HOA within a reasonable commute to your job

Because this is illegal in most of America. You would be fined and the city would probably send a crew out to rip it all up and give you the invoice if you defied it and left it that way.

A lot of people are secretly cows and they actually eat that grass. Next time you say hello to someone and they respond “moo” you’ll know why.

Probably against HOA rules in many places.

The answer is they were a wealthy European concept brought to the colonies as a status symbol. They are still associated with wealthier people which raises property values, so are enshrined in local ordinances and HOA rules.

Some do. Grass just got into the pop culture as the "proper" look for a residential property. But having fruit trees is amazing, especially in spring when they are all in bloom with flowers.