So You Want to Mow a Penis Into Someone's Lawn...
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These are not the family jewels King Charles III waited for his whole life. The surprisingly symmetrical 30-foot-long phallus, landscaped on the pristine emerald lawn across the prestigious Royal Crescent in Bath, England, is hard to miss. The city had organized a celebratory picnicking event for the coronation, but this party decor was not part of the plan.
The penis appeared on May 4 on the lower lawn. (There are two, which are separated by the now-ironically named ha-ha barrier, a.k.a. a sunken fence.) Authorities are left hanging trying to figure out how the vandals managed to make the school bus-sized outline on the turf facing the esteemed Georgian architecture townhomes.
“Like the crop circles, this must have happened in the dead of night,” says Andrea Scharff, principal of Andrea Scharff Landscape Design in Los Angeles. While the initial aerial photo leads people to think that the giant genital was mown, Scharff thinks that this is the handiwork of chemicals.”The yellowing of the turf is the tell,” she continues, noting that a landscape contractor she knows used to write his high school team’s name with gasoline on the rival’s turf before a big game. “You can do this a week in advance by spraying something, it could even be fertilizer or a salt burn.” Historian and Bath resident, Kirsten Elliot Swift, seems to concur, tweeting that "it looks more like carefully applied herbicide."
But don’t try this technique at home. “The thing is, if this was just mowed in, all you have to do is mow it down and erase it,” Scharff says. “If it is a chemical burn you have to paint it [faded, brownish spots] green, you can’t mow it away.”
Without direct application of some grass-killing solution, the stealth penis design could have been done by a programmable robotic lawn mower. Some models come with GPS, remote programming via a smartphone, and are very quiet. Select models even come with a headlight, a perk for middle-of-the night shenanigans. In this case, Scharff surmises that the culprits would have attached a camera to the machine to ensure precision.
And what of your own DIY landscaping projects where size matters? Scharff says that a large-scale design is not difficult to pull off. “It’s easier to map out parallel lines,” she says. Tie a string to a pencil and use level-lasers to ensure the two points are straight, then follow the line with a lawn mower on the lowest setting. For something that requires a narrow trim, a string trimmer will do the job. For a circular design, place a pencil with string in the center, then walk out like a human compass to make an actual circle using marking paint, then use a mower or string trimmer depending on your needs. Scharff uses a push mower for a curvier motif. “We change the course of the paths in wildflower meadows all the time,” she says.
One thing to keep in mind: Unless you plan to broadcast your lawn design internationally, consider scale. “People make the mistake of making their designs so big that they can’t actually see the design,” says Miguel Camperos, vice president of operations of SunVara, a backyard supplies company. “Sure, you may be able to make it out when standing on your roof, but when is anybody actually going to be looking at your lawn from your roof? Determine where you’ll be viewing the design, and figure out the scale from there.”
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