Max

As someone who spent several years working at an arboretum (ie someone who frequently tended to gardens and lawns), I’m gonna challenge the folks claiming it’s because lawns are easier to care for. Keeping grass looking nice and uniform is difficult and resource intensive any place in the world, whereas a thoughtfully planted garden of local flora can require relatively little intervention. It’s all about how intensely you want to stick a middle finger up to Mother Nature and try to grow plants that don’t belong in the environment. Lawn grass doesn’t belong anywhere so it’s always a challenge.

As an absolute ground floor starting point, I’d suggest getting some 101 level textbooks of any non-explicitly Marxist intro political science course taught in a US university. That will introduce you to general topics and the unique language used in the field; you can read on specifics from there using other textbooks or sources given in the 101 books.