I found out that short flat green lawns ate a British nobility thing. Lots of other cultures had elaborate gardens and other cool things, bit the British were boring as fuck and colonized everyone.
Back before lawn mowers you had to be super rich to hire someone to pretty much full time take care of your lawn. It propogated to all of their colonies, including Africa where they would use a ton of water and non-native species to “make it feel like home.”