Plants depend on their anchorage to the soil to support their own mass and maintain a vertical orientation. Failure to maintain this establishment is called lodging and results in a number of deleterious outcomes, including wounding, reduced photosynthetic output and exposure to hazardous micorenvironments. This work synthesizes findings from the disparate fields of biophysics and plant molecular genetics to uncover a novel strategy by which plants deposit thick secondary cell walls to proactively maintain their root anchorage. In the first chapter, I present a review of plant secondary cell wall regulation, including recent findings relating to environmental modulation of cell wall development. In the second chapter, I describe the development, and the genetic and environmental regulation of secondary cell wall fortified cortex cells in the grass shoot-borne root system.