A lawn is an area of recreational or amenity land planted with grass, and sometimes clover and other plants, which are maintained at a low, even height.

Lawns cover a significant area in the United States. In a recent NASA-sponsored study, researcher Christina Milesi estimated the area covered by lawns to be about 32 million acres. This makes lawn grass the largest irrigated crop in the United States, about three times that of irrigated corn.

Maintaining grass at a low height and controling pests in a lawn is a labor and energy intensive practice. 

Estimates of the amount spent on professional lawn care services vary, but a Harris Survey put the total at $28.9 billion in 2002, which averages to around $1,200 per household, spread over the 24.7 million households who use such services.

Households that do not use professional lawn care services still have to spend a considerable amount of money and effort to maintain lawns.

For this reason, it is worth spending a good deal of time and effort developing a good plan for your lawn and garden landscape.

There is no clear distinction between lawns and gardens. Grass is just one plant of many types in a garden. Few lawns lack some garden features but many types of gardens have little or no lawn area.

In general garden features in a landscape reduce maintenance and other costs.  Lawn features in a landscape add maintenance and other costs.

The type of grass used in a lawn depends on the intended usage of the lawn and the climate. Vigorous, coarse grasses used where active sports are played or for high traffic lawns. Finer, softer grasses on low traffic, ornamental lawns.

It is also common to mix grass types in a lawn for the particular climate. One type of grass grows well in winter and the other grass grows well in summer.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia