“..though the facade of the houses bore no decoration, and the trees had been removed as a hindrance to construction, the suburban homeowner retained the greatest outside ornament of all, the front lawn. This sacrosanct strip of greenery, facing squarely toward the street, performs no function other than decoration...Americans might like to persuade themselves that in caring for their front lawn, they were satisfying some kind of primeval urge to return to the good agrarian life. Is there really no parallel? No crop ever had the loving and fussy care--watering, weeding, and cutting--that is lavished on the average suburban front lawn. This vast waste space, sometimes occupying more area than the house itself, stands inviolate, accompanied by three small and banal shrubs, two around the front door, one at the left corner of the house.” (71)

(Donaldson, Scott. The Suburban Myth. New York: Columbia University Press, 1969. Print.)