GRASS VERGES

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 99, 28 April 1937, Page 13

GRASS VERGES

PLEASING TO THE EYE

WHEN LAWN MOWER IS -USED

Poets have become enraptured, planners have planned and gardeners have insisted upon more and. fresher beauty in greensward, but even their combined enthusiasms bring no result unless, the. man' with the lawn "mower joins in as well. Four or five years ago—perhaps longer, for it seems unlikely that auch a tangle could grow in just five years —most of the wider streets h\ one of the eastern suburbs were narrowed by the setting but of brick-edged verges between the used width of the roadways and the channels. Then theoretically each householder was to be ever so keen about keeping his frontage smart and tidy, to the mutual advantage of himself and his neighbour, to the end of higher property values in the suburb, and, purely incidental, to the reli(?fjof the district fund, for it does stand to reason that the maintenance of a narrow roadway must be lower than that of the full, width.

The first two ideas haye not worked at all. By frontage and milage the untidy verges have won Hands down, and the few ; householders who do carry on cannot get mucli^furi out of; Sunday morning, for forty feet of-close-cut grass do not look nearly sp; good with four hundred'jraxds.pf :'w.e,eds and tangle stretching out on eithex-^ side. It is right hard to uphold; the model frontage ideal' under t6o?e circumstances; still, giSine stick to it. The very, finest, example" of neglect' of all is the long frontage, to three' streets, about the district school, but obviously there the dif&cuttJLeg m.t(st,bej great, for. school equipment does not■' normally include lawn mowers, arid1 the likelihood of there being' a. single! volunteer pusher among the yoiujig* sters is so remote as to be scarcely^ worth canvassing.

The tangle and neglect and dowji-< right untidiness :of these carefullyedged verges and plots raise a doubt whether it is worth while making provision for such theoretical residential street improvement when new model blocks of homes are being planned. Some householders will do their part, for a start; a few householders will carry on, long after it is patent that their good example is.wasted on the others; but the general result is worse than just plain roadside weeds.

The grass front plan does work in some cities and in some suburbs, but it obviously will not work in that suburb. English town planners found the same thing, and if English garden towns are bonny, it is not because everyone lends a hand, but because the town authorities warn everyone off the verges, except the town gardeners.