As fall approaches my neck of the woods and I look forward to putting up my lawnmower, I was wondering how people maintained their landscaping before the lawnmower.
Hi, there's lots of room for more contributions on this topic - it's a pretty popular one that could still use some in-depth analysis - but you can get started on a couple of old threads
/u/rosstafarii provides a quick background in Did the French aristocracy really invent the idea of having a lawn?
When did "trimmed-lawns" become a popular thing? covers more recent history in the UK and US
For a general background on the concept of lawns (aside from the mowing part):