A Publication of the

Foundation

for Landscape Studies

A Journal of Place Volume vı | Number ıı | Spring 2011

Essays: Cities Going Green, The Urban Landscape as Food 3 Timothy Beatley: Inventing the New Urban Farm: Field Notes From Detroit Ben Helphand and Laura Lawson: The Culture of Food and Chicago’s Community Gardens Jane Garmey: Rooftop Revolution: Culinary Gardening Aloft in New York City Jane Roy Brown: They Built a Fahm in Hahvud Yahd: A Tiny Garden Strives for Global Impact Katherine Harmon: Lessons in the Dirt: School Gardens Grow in Brooklyn

Place Keeper 16 Paula Deitz: Twin Maples, Litchfield County, Connecticut

Book Reviews 18 Elihu Rubin: Delirious New Orleans: Manifesto for an Extraordinary American City By Stephen Verderber Alice Truax: Farm City: The Education of an Urban Farmer By Novella Carpenter Elizabeth Barlow Rogers: Parks, Plants, and People By Lynden B. Miller

Contributors 23 Letter from the Editor Corn was grown in unprece- Berkeley, California. More produce sections of super- phy is based on “the princi- dented quantities to provide than a restaurant, it became markets a two-tiered offering ple that access to sustainable, oil, sweeteners, and feed for the prototype of the new of fruit and vegetables has fresh, and seasonal food is a the cattle that would enter American cuisine. Other become common. In places right, not a privilege.” The y the end of the way system stitched together the human food chain as restaurants in other cities like Whole Foods – the Edible Schoolyard (ESY) pro- nineteenth century it hinterland and metropolis, hamburgers sold by fast-food followed suit, and their ecosavvy fresh food empori- gram sponsored by her Chez became impossible making long-distance truck- franchises. Profitable junk menus, like that of Chez um that has fanned out from Panisse Foundation originat- to “keep ‘em down ing to and from multiple foods filled entire supermar- Panisse, began to detail the its home base in Austin, ed at the Martin Luther King on the farm”; people delivery points possible. ket aisles. provenance of baby lettuces, Texas, to many other parts of Middle School in Berkeley Bbegan moving to cities where So what is there not to The seeds of reaction to goat cheese, lamb, figs, and the country – there are “con- and now has affiliated pro- factory jobs and bright lights celebrate about much bigger industrial agriculture were so on. Waters was not only ventionally grown” and “cer- grams in New Orleans, Los beckoned. A hundred years harvests and the liberation planted in 1962 by Rachel hailed as the pioneer of a tified organic” labels on Angeles, San Francisco, later, with four out of every of the 20 percent of the pop- Carson with the publication simpler native gastronomy everything from avocados to Greensboro, and Brooklyn. five Americans living in met- ulation who remained on of Silent Spring. In the book, but also as the originator zucchini. Aimed at combating the ropolitan areas, the country the farm from a legacy of Carson called attention to of what some now refer to as But just because it was junk-food craze, it integrates was no longer an agrarian drudgery? Isn’t abundance a the dangers lurking in the the locavore ideal, whose grown without chemical learning in the school gar- nation – a fact of momen- byword for the American way arsenal of chemical weapons proponents maintain that assistance doesn’t mean that den with learning inside the tous social consequence with of life? And shouldn’t we that had been developed to locally grown meat, dairy an organic blueberry isn’t as school. As part of the ESY a corresponding effect on take into consideration the control pests and improve products, vegetables, and much a product of the curriculum, students cook the way in which people fact that the export of grain yields. The seeds she sowed fruits taste better and are industrial agricultural sys- their garden produce in the were fed. and other surplus crops is began to sprout in 1970 with healthier for you than those tem as a conventional one, kitchen classroom. Such The industrial revolution good for the balance of the first Earth Day and the you buy in the supermarket. for organic and local are not things as scaling down wasn’t just a matter of the trade? burgeoning of the environ- Not surprisingly, in cities necessarily the same thing. recipes are presented as growth of manufacturing in Throughout the twentieth mental movement. Docu- the philosophy of locally With sufficient consumer math problems. However, and around cities. Machin- century the cornucopia pro- mentation of the poisonous grown food hit the street – demand and willingness to although part of its mission ery irrevocably changed the duced by industrial agricul- effect of agricultural chemi- literally – with the prolifera- pay higher prices for organic is directed toward school- character of farming: the ture was poured out on the cals on animals and birds, as tion of farmers’ markets in produce, commercial corpo- lunch reform, cafeteria horse-drawn plow became table in millions of American well as their danger to numerous communities rations now have a profitable lunches are still prepared in the tractor, the wagon homes. But this cornucopia humans when consumed in across the country. Bringing market capable of absorbing the same way as before. The became the truck, the pitch- was not made up simply of food and drinking water, the farm stand to the city is a the costs of long-distance hope is, however, that fork became the harvester. fresh food. Freezers were helped activists build the good two-way deal: it pro- transportation. A case in schoolchildren whose palates The appearance of the land- another of industry’s gifts to case for environmental con- vides truck farmers within a point: Earthbound Farms in have been exposed to fresh scape as well as the lives the kitchen, and even before trols. But none of this two-hour driving radius of Carmel, California, presents flavors will expand their of farmers altered more dra- mothers went out into the at first had much effect on a city with a consumer base a local-farm-stand face on dietary repertoire and eat matically over a couple workplace, they served changing the easygoing and urban dwellers with a its website, but the triple- healthier food outside school of generations than in all the frozen foods for dinner. dietary habits of the majority means of bonding with their washed, field-fresh container and at home. preceding millennia that Before long, entire frozen of the American public. rural neighbors (not to men- of baby arugula in my New Hidden in the implicit human beings had been meals could be eaten in But then in 1971, not long tion their immediate urban York refrigerator has been question of why school- growing crops. Dams made front of the television. after Julia Child had awak- neighbors) on market days. shipped cross-country, rais- grown food is not served in possible not only hydroelec- Moreover, after large-scale ened the taste buds of Propelled by an environ- ing in my mind the question the school cafeteria is a tricity but also the irrigation agriculture was put in the Americans to the joys of mental movement calling for of how to measure the car- conundrum. It is one of of arid lands. Machine farm- service of the fast-food French cooking, Alice Waters, pesticide-free produce, the bon footprint of the tasty scale. Feeding the American ing meant much larger industry, you no longer even now widely considered the word “organic” entered the salad that is coming to me population of over 310 mil- fields. The interstate high- had to eat at home. Catering mother of the fresh-food food vocabulary. Chemical- on a refrigerated truck tra- lion is dependent on large- to the specifications of movement, opened her free food gained popularity versing a continent. scale agriculture as well as McDonald’s, many potato restaurant Chez Panisse in among a broader spectrum This brings us back to food imports from other growers concentrated solely of food shoppers than those Alice Waters, whose philoso- countries. The conundrum On the Cover: on the most suitable variety who already subscribed to is one of economics, too. Artists’ Garden, South Chicago. for making french fries. farmers’ market ethic. In the Consumers vote with their 2 dollars and their food dens is beginning to dissolve Cities Going Green, The Urban Landscape as Food stamps. The pricing of local- the dichotomy between rural ly grown food has to equate and urban scenery. with the financial sustain- In this issue of Site/Lines ability of small farms, and Jane Roy Brown takes us to Inventing the New Urban Farm: Field Notes From Detroit herein lies the rub. As in the Harvard Yard to see how ew American cities have fallen as far or as hard as case of all handcrafted student gardeners are grow- Detroit. Once the fourth largest city in the country, an objects, individually planted, ing vegetables in the heart iconic example of American ingenuity and produc- handpicked foods cannot of Cambridge; Katherine tivity, over the last half century it became instead an underprice those of industri- Harmon visits school gar- emblem of cronyism, corruption, and despair. The pop- al mass production. dens in Brooklyn; Jane Fulation, once close to two million, now hovers at around half Thus Michelle Obama’s Garmey elevates us to the that. Unemployment is at 14 percent. A Time article in 2009 White House organic veg- rooftops of Manhattan to cited the median home sale price at less than $6,000 – and no etable garden may point the discover hives for honey bees one was buying. Today, roughly a third of the city’s acreage lies way back to the victory gar- and specialty foods for chefs; vacant – about forty square miles. And yet even these statistics dens of World War II, but it Timothy Beatley describes a don’t fully prepare a visitor for the extent of the devastation. is more symbolic than cat- visionary blueprint for turn- Driving around Detroit, one sees large empty spaces that once alytic. Yet the symbolic ing Detroit’s desolate lots contained entire neighborhoods and commercial strips remi- importance of this small, into a large urban-farming niscent of battle-scarred Iraq or Lebanon. Many homes and highly visible piece of the operation; and Benjamin businesses have been deliberately set on fire; others are crum- green revolution shouldn’t Helphand and Laura Lawson bling to the ground. be underestimated. Like speak of the role community These ruins are punctuated by relics of an earlier, more Much of the east side of Detroit is a City Bountiful, describes how Waters’s school gardens it gardens play in the local- vibrant time, when the automobile literally defined Motor mix of abandoned houses and the Pingree program was emu- poses a tangible alternative food movement in Chicago. City. Here, still, are the enormous factories, the Edsel Ford vacant lots. Some 40 square miles lated in other cities, including to the industrial model of In and of themselves none of Expressway, the twelve-ton, eighty-foot tire looming over the of vacant land exists in the city, New York and Philadelphia. food production while these things will alter the highway near the airport. But unfortunately, despite the recent offering new opportunities for food One of the reasons that broadcasting by example the current pattern of national positive economic bulletins from General Motors and Ford, it production as well as the restora- urban agriculture is being First Lady’s message that agriculture, but they may be, is nature rather than industry that appears to be reshaping the tion of natural habitats. viewed as an appealing possi- home-grown means healthi- especially when multiplied city, as lawns grow wild and bushes invade the houses they bility is that, for the time er eating. by thousands of other exam- once ornamented. On the east side of town, where the decline being, the city’s aim is not to repopulate its dwindling neigh- It should not be forgot- ples elsewhere, a powerful has been greatest, pheasants have become a common sight. borhoods but to depopulate them even further. Mayor Dave ten, moreover, that gardens force in changing our cultur- Some, however, see in nature’s regenerative force not the Bing has introduced a bold master plan called Detroit Works, are landscapes, not abstrac- al ethos regarding food pro- destruction of Detroit’s past but the key to its future. Both which will identify existing population clusters in the city and tions, and their growing duction and consumption. It business leaders and government officials are exploring city then densify and reinvest in those areas – essentially giving presence in cities is all of a is important to remember farming on a grand scale as a serious possibility. up on areas that don’t appear to be socially or economically piece with other greening that even in the age of glob- In fact, urban agriculture has come to Detroit’s aid before, viable in the short run. This idea has been controversial, as efforts: turning abandoned alization, we are all locals as today’s farming proponents are quick to point out. When its some residents are afraid that they will be forced to relocate, industrial sites into parks; wherever we are at any given inhabitants were battling hunger and poverty during the but doing nothing to address Detroit’s shrinking population is riverbanks into bikeways and time. Why not then be loca- depression of the 1890s, the city’s progressive mayor, Hazen S. not an option. With a crippled tax base, the city simply can’t promenades; and streets into vores as well? Pingree, instituted the use of vacant lots for gardens. The gar- afford to protect its remaining citizens and supply them with tree-lined thoroughfares. dens became known as “Pingree’s potato patches,” and by all basic services like water and road repair. By one estimate, Call it the new city planning, With good green wishes, accounts they were quite successful, feeding many in desperate each vacant lot costs the city about $2,400 per year in public this loosening of the urban times. At the height of the program some seventeen hundred services and maintenance – an annual bill in the hundreds weave with a reborn land- families farmed half-acre plots, producing food for both sale of millions and a major reason for the city’s operating deficits. scape of parks, promenades, and family consumption. Laura Lawson, in her excellent book As many neighborhoods continue to empty, and as Detroit trees, and community gar- Works speeds this process along, there are remarkable oppor- Elizabeth Barlow Rogers tunities to repurpose the vacant swaths of this city, and President perhaps more than in any other American city today, urban

3 agriculture is poised to be a catalyst for renewal and reuse. At hardwood trees (an especially good option if the same time, there is considerable angst about how Detroit’s significant soil contamination is discovered), food-growing potential should be exploited, and competing apple trees and other fruit trees, and even models and perspectives have emerged. At one end of the con- pick-your-own Christmas trees, along with tinuum is a proposal by local millionaire John Hantz to trans- field crops like lettuce and heirloom toma- form large areas of the city into intensive and commercially toes. A second phase would include more viable farms. This proposal has captured the imagination of intensive indoor production, including the many outside of Detroit and received considerable national notion of an innovation center demonstrat- press coverage. Hantz, with a net worth of some $100 million, ing many different indoor production sys- has made a personal commitment to invest $30 million in tems. Score maintains that just about every commercial urban farming in Detroit over the next ten years – new farming idea will be on display and test- a pledge that has given him immediate credibility. He is seen ed – aquaculture, aquaponics, aeroponics – as a native son whose ideas should be taken seriously. and that many of these technologies will Hantz has described his depressing daily commute from probably be designed in vertical shapes to his home in Indian Village to his Southfield office in numer- take up less space. Education and tourism ous interviews. “I’d look out the window,” he told a staff editor would be added to the mix, targeting stu- at The Atlantic, “and I’d tell myself, something has to happen. dents of all ages, senior citizens, and com- Something has to change. One day I was sitting at a traffic munity organizations. light, thinking this through from an economics point of view, The third phase, which would be the and I thought, ‘What’s our problem? Why doesn’t it get better?’ most ambitious, would invest in renewable- Well, we have multiple problems, but one comes down to real energy technologies to power all of this pro- estate. We don’t have scarcity.” There is too much available Mike Score is president of Hantz On a cold day last Novem- duction sustainably. Although Hantz Farms is a commercial land in Detroit, so nobody wants it. “We need to create scarci- Farms LLC, and is spearheading ber, I flew to Detroit and met enterprise, its founder believes that it can also serve to educate ty,” Hantz reasoned, “because until we get a stabilized market, efforts to bring large-scale commer- with Score to discuss the others and draw tourists to Detroit. Indeed, at several points in there’s no reason for entrepreneurs or other people to start cial farming to Detroit. Here, farm’s progress. After meeting our conversation, Score mentioned the possibility that people buying. I thought, ‘What could do that in a positive way? he and the author visit the site of at the Hantz Farm offices on from around the world might one day come there not to cele- What’s a development that people would want to be associated the “proof of concept” farm, on Mt. Elliott Street, he drove me brate the city’s automotive past but to learn about leading with?’” And that’s when he came up with the idea of farming: a the east side of the city. around the hundred-acre urban-farming ideas and technologies. “We believe we can be a business enterprise that takes up a great deal of space. “People site where he has been working global center for research and innovation in urban agriculture often think you have to have a big solution to a big problem – to cobble together lots – most now owned by the city as a and we can give birth to a new industry,” he explained. Score why not keep it simple and start with a simple solution?” And result of foreclosure – that Hantz Farms is negotiating to buy. and Hantz would like to see a time in the near future when, in so he founded Hantz Farms, LLC, and hired Mike Score as its Nevertheless, assembling a viable farm in an area that would one trip, a visitor could learn about soil remediation, compare president. still include hundreds of individual lot owners remains a chal- and contrast different growing systems, and observe the socio- Score was a good choice. He grew up in Detroit and attend- lenge. Although we drove by large, empty parcels of land, the logical impact of integrating agriculture into an urban setting. ed Michigan State University (MSU), where he obtained a checkerboard pattern of Score’s site map indicated that a con- In this scenario, Score says, “many of the lessons that will be of degree in crop and soil sciences; it turned out that for many siderable number of local residents are expected to stay put. In interest to urban planners and urban leaders could be years he, too, had harbored a dream of converting some of the fact, the Hantz Farm staff began its efforts by going door to addressed by traveling to Detroit.” city’s vacant acreage into farmland. After a stint working on door in the neighborhood to explain what they were envision- We have no model in the United States for what such an agricultural development in Zaire and another teaching in ing, and that no one would be forcibly evicted. Score claims immensely ambitious agricultural project might look like. Kentucky, where he received his master’s degree, he returned that local support has been high, with some 95 percent of the “Don’t think a farm with tractors,” Hantz has said. “That’s old.” to MSU to work at its extension service as an innovation coun- residents signing a petition that will eventually be presented When Fortune magazine did a story on the project in 2009, selor. It was there, while helping fledgling entrepreneurs to City Council, asking them to approve the sale of the city- the editors asked if they could commission an illustrator to develop business plans for new food businesses and products, owned parcels. Score believes that over time similar “pods” of imagine such a landscape. The result was whimsical and con- that he met Hantz. After he helped the entrepreneur come up large-scale agriculture could be established around the city, ceptual – multiple elevated growing beds, geodesic-dome with a financial plan, Hantz offered him a job. eventually resulting in perhaps five thousand to ten thousand greenhouses, and wind turbines – but not that far from Score’s acres in commercial production. own conception of the future. What kinds of commercial farming are imagined? Score talks in terms of stages, beginning with somewhat easier and more familiar strategies. The first would probably include 4 There have been frustrations, Score admits, and many hur- For Pothukuchi, this is just a beginning; she and the owner tiatives, which teach kids about food and agricultural issues. dles remain. The city has shifted the projected site of the farm discussed plans already under way to establish a garden on an The farm is a highly grassroots, neighborhood- and communi- several times. And there remains uncertainty about the legal adjacent empty lot, which could then provide the store with ty-embedded venture, and it exists to combat poverty, social status of commercial farming in the city (there is currently no extremely fresh produce during the growing season. Pothuku- equity, and food insecurity. These are goals and objectives not agricultural zone or category under the city’s zoning ordi- chi also mentioned the possibility of organizing a special often mentioned when the Hantz Farms proposal is described, nance). Discussions about the necessity of extending the state’s event to counsel nearby residents suffering from diabetes, and and therein lies part of the schism that has emerged in the right-to-farm law within the city’s boundaries are ongoing. the store owner seemed interested in participating. Lots of Detroit urban-farming community. But resources and capital to get started, which are so often the small-scale efforts such as these are in progress throughout In some ways, this seems a predictable clash of values. major stumbling blocks, do not appear to be issues in this the city, and increasingly they identify themselves as part of a Hantz is a businessman. He has a diversified portfolio that case. larger movement. Many of the gardens are connected by the includes ownership of a corporate airline, a bowling alley, a Some city residents are leery of the Hantz proposal, fearing Detroit Garden Resource Collaborative, a joint effort of The bank, and a lot of real estate. This latest venture has been from that it is motivated by profit and opportunism, and referring Greening of Detroit, Detroit Agriculture Network, Earthworks the beginning a commercial one – Hantz’s civic concerns to Hantz’s efforts to buy the city’s foreclosed properties as a Urban Farm, and Michigan State University. These organiza- about the health of his native city notwithstanding. This is one land grab. Ironically, Hantz Farms may be most vocally resist- tions provide technical support, training, and planting materi- of the reasons that Score objects strongly to criticisms that ed by those who are already involved in producing food als to representatives of the hundreds of individual gardens Hantz did not reach out sufficiently to the city’s urban-garden- within the city limits. By one estimate, there are more than scattered around Detroit. In so doing, they also nourish a net- ing community. “John’s perspective is a business perspective,” one thousand small gardens now operating in Detroit, and work of community activists who are, in their own ways, build- Score said. “When Apple wanted to build their desktop com- their supporters represent a dramatically different philosophy ing a different kind of city. puters they didn’t go to IBM and say, ‘You were here first – and practice of urban agriculture. One of them is Dr. Kami One impressive example of urban farming of a different would it be all right with you if we put this in the market- Pothukuchi, who teaches in the urban studies and planning sort can be seen at Earthworks Urban Farm, which was place? They took millions of dollars and put it at risk, and if program at Wayne State University. In Pothukuchi’s view, the started by a Franciscan brother in 1997 to provide food for the the market doesn’t like the idea the business will fail. For Hantz proposal has suffered from the beginning from a failure Capuchin Soup Kitchen. A member of the collaborative, John, he never felt compelled to sit down with other groups in to connect with the city’s robust and growing urban agricul- Earthworks Farm has blossomed into a hub of urban garden- the city and find out whether they liked his idea. He was just ture movement. ing activity. Its greenhouse willing to put his money at risk and see how Pothukuchi would like to see many more small gardens now produces some one the market responded.” Score believes that scattered throughout the city rather than the development of hundred thousand vegetable the commercial marketplace must be the one big, privately owned enterprise. During our meeting, seedlings, many of which are primary catalytic force that moves the city she emphasized the many benefits of community gardens, and donated to other community forward. the profound ways in which they help to strengthen neigh- gardening efforts around the Part of the resistance to the Hantz pro- borhoods. Hantz, she argued, sees his project merely as a “con- city. On the day I visited, posal is certainly due to the immense venient use of land,” whereas “people who are in urban Patrick Crouch, program amount of national publicity Hantz has agriculture talk about the possibility of abundance, about shar- manager for the farm, was received when smaller-scale urban agricul- ing, about all the multiple community benefits that can busy laying out a passive turalists have been working in the trenches be obtained from agriculture – involving young people and solar hoop house that will for decade or longer with little recognition. inspiring neighborhoods.” expand the production and But it also stems from the scope of the pro- There is no question that Detroit suffers from a disintegrat- training space even further. ject, and the difficulty of anticipating its ing and dysfunctional community food system; there are many Earthworks maintains more negative consequences before it will be too places on Detroit’s east side where residents have no easy than thirty beehives and pro- late to prevent them. In fairness to Hantz’s access to a grocery store. The commercial establishments that duces honey and beeswax detractors, corporations rarely feel beholden remain in these neighborhoods are often liquor stores or tiny hand balm in addition to to the communities in which they do busi- convenience shops. Pothukuchi has developed a program jam and canned foods. It also ness, whereas for Pothukuchi and others in called Detroit FRESH to help the owners of these stores stock runs two youth-farming ini- Detroit’s urban gardening movement, it is at least some fresh fruits and vegetables for their customers. the neighborhood and the community Pothukuchi took me to one such store – a little market on Kami Pothukuchi is a professor at that must be the primary point of focus. As Mack Avenue, where the owners are proud that they have Wayne State University and believes Patrick Crouch told one reporter, smaller resisted the alienating trend of installing bulletproof glass to the future lies in smaller, neighbor- farms “fit within the fabric of a neighbor- shield themselves from their customers. This store already hood-based urban agriculture. Here, offers more foodstuffs than most, but front and center, I she and the author visit one of noticed, were bananas and apples and pears. the greenhouses run by Earthworks Urban Farm. 5 hood,” whereas a large operation like Hantz Farm becomes “a ing poultry and bees in the city – activities which are currently Perhaps most exciting is the possibility for Detroit that substitute for community redevelopment instead of being a illegal. A food policy council has also been formed. Perhaps John Gallagher suggests in his book – that his hometown catalyst for community redevelopment.” And as John Gallagher, these new urban food initiatives will create opportunities for might emerge as an example of how other American cities can a longtime reporter for the Detroit Free Press, points out in the various constituencies to speak and work together. With an adapt themselves to a postindustrial (postcarbon) identity in his recent book, Reimagining Detroit, there are many reasons extension of good will from both sides, it might also be possi- the twenty-first century. There is room to restore nature, to urban farmers might feel suspicious of corporate power ble to craft synergies to advance neighborhood cohesion and explore new economic models, and, ironically, to create the and influence – “because the banks and big business redlined community food security as well as larger-scale economic food conditions for a less car-dependent society. Especially intrigu- Detroit and other cities, or because of the horror stories production, but whether that good will is forthcoming remains ing are current arguments for an ambitious greening agenda: they hear about the way corporate farmers treat livestock, or to be seen. more trees and forests – something the local group the because of the intensive use of pesticides and other chemicals Hazen Pingree’s statue now sits in Grand Circus Park, and Greening of Detroit has already been working on for years; corporate farmers use to make huge single-crop farms although most residents probably could not identify this more stream restoration and native hydrology; and a celebra- profitable.” figure, who later served two terms as governor of Michigan, he tion of the returning wildlife, such as the beavers that have How irreconcilable are these competing visions of a green- is an important historical reference point for Detroit’s sup- apparently moved back into town after many decades. To er Detroit? Score believes that there is plenty of room in porters of urban agriculture. It is interesting to ponder what embrace these possibilities, however, Americans must begin by Detroit for both of them. Certainly, the city bureaucracy has Pingree would have thought about the rift between the neigh- realizing that smaller need not mean lesser but instead can been galvanized to develop an institutional framework sup- borhood gardeners and the proponents of larger-scale, com- signal a sustainable, innovative city with a higher quality of portive of urban agriculture. A committee appointed by the mercial farms in the city. The potato-patch gardens were life. As Gallagher reminds us, “a city can shrink and grow at city planning commission is rather small, to be sure, and born out of concerns about justice the same time.” – Timothy Beatley One of the garden sites at drafting a new urban agricul- and poverty and health. As Melvin G. Hollis, in his compre- Earthworks Urban Farm. This farm ture policy and looking care- hensive book about the reformer notes, a main goal of the pro- The Culture of Food and Chicago’s Community Gardens serves as an important hub for fully at the code and zoning gram was to “eliminate the stigma of pauperism attached to merica is in the midst of a food crisis. The number small-scale neighborhood gardening changes that are needed, [public] relief.” Give the poor the skills, material, and land, and of obese children in this country has tripled in the and food production in Detriot. including provisions for keep- they, even in cities, will feed themselves. But then again, Pin- last thirty years. Hundreds of thousands live in so- gree was himself a Republi- called food deserts, neighborhoods with limited can, albeit a progressive access to supermarkets or other sources of healthy one, and the owner of a shoe food.A Food pantries are faced with higher demand and declin- factory, so one could imagine ing donations. Fresh produce is prohibitively expensive for that he might approve many and often loaded with pesticides. And our current food of the capitalist sensibilities system is inextricably linked to our dependence upon fossil behind Hantz’s vision. My fuels: the average meal travels fifteen hundred miles to our guess is that Pingree would plate. certainly approve of a gov- Partly in response to this crisis, interest in community gar- ernment agricultural policy dens has blossomed in cities across the country. Longtime that accommodated a spec- organizations that support gardens, from the Boston Natural trum of philosophies and Areas Network and Denver Urban Gardens to Seattle’s P-Patch approaches: both small-scale and New York City’s GreenThumb, have noted an increased and large-scale, local and demand for garden space. And newer organizations have taken corporate. The one thing root in places like the Twin Cities, Pittsburgh, and Salt Lake that all sides agree upon is City, breathing new life into unused properties. City parks and that Detroit needs a diver- recreation departments are setting aside corners of parkland sified and resilient mix of for gardening, and churches, hospitals and schools are reimag- food producers and produc- ining institutional land as a place for vegetable plots. tion systems. Though some garden projects are purely ornamental or focused on restoring animal habitat, most are conceived as a response to some aspect of the food crisis. Community gar- dens are established with the promise of saving money, feeding the hungry, and relieving food deserts. What’s more, the locally grown food they provide needs only travel down the block, not across the country. 6 Our habit of turning to Roosevelt, Daniel, and Quincy, studies that have found that community gar- community gardening in times youths from the South Chicago Art dens in Philadelphia, Camden, and Trenton of crisis is not new. As a soci- Center, harvest from the Artists’ have produced millions of dollars’ worth of ety, America has embraced the Garden hoop house. summer vegetables. Limiting one’s view to idea of community gardens the market value, however, would be to miss ever since it became an industrialized, urban nation – especial- the garden for the carrots, so to speak. The ly during times of war, depression, or urban decline. When life same harvest reports reveal that much of gets crazy, we go to the garden. Economic relief is usually a the power of these gardens stems not from major goal, but community gardens are often intended to their yield but from the culture they nour- address other large, societal concerns as well: nutrition, health, ish; the personal relationships that under- education, job training, and beautification. gird the distribution systems where people Until quite recently, these efforts were organized from the have staked out direct control of their food top down. During the 1893 to 1897 depression, municipalities supply. And certainly the grower of the in Detroit, Chicago, New York, and other cities worked with $5 tomato is less likely to be motivated by local charities to found vacant-lot cultivation associations so the bottom line than by a yearning to grow that unemployed laborers could grow and sell food. At the something he can eat – and to eat something same time, educational organizations and women’s clubs were he has grown. establishing school gardens and civic gardening campaigns to educate citizenry and beautify neighborhoods. During the Every Saturday morning in the Uptown Great Depression, churches, charities, and eventually govern- neighborhood of Chicago’s North Side, a mental agencies established subsistence and work-relief gar- handful of volunteers gather freshly harvest- dens to occupy the unemployed and improve nutrition, and ed vegetables, fruits, herbs, and flowers similar efforts were undertaken during both world wars. tional support for – urban gardening. By squarely facing the and load them onto a bicycle trailer for the several-mile-long Only in the 1970s did community gardens acquire the benefits and limits of today’s community gardens in address- journey to Vital Bridges’ GroceryLand, a food pantry for low- grassroots aura that they hold for many today. Confronted ing our food needs, perhaps we can better guarantee their sur- income people living with HIV/AIDS. The volunteers usually with urban decay and inspired by an era of civil-rights vival over time. include a mix of seasoned gardeners, curious newcomers, and activism, city dwellers began appropriating abandoned lots Community gardens can’t feed us. They can’t even feed a group from a local university. Each year Ginkgo Organic and growing produce and flowers in them. The notion that a those who garden them, never mind the surrounding commu- Garden, which is named for the large tree near its entrance, community could organize and take control of its surround- nity. In order for a community to actually live off of a garden it donates about fifteen hundred pounds of produce to the food ings became increasingly popular. As with the earlier plots, would need a lot of space and a considerable investment in pantry, providing high-quality, organic food to a population however, these gardens were founded not with an eye to the specialized equipment and training – to say nothing of a great on a limited income for whom a nutritious diet is essential. long term but as a temporary response to dying neighbor- deal of backbreaking labor. Community gardens generally While recognizing the contribution of this donated pro- hoods. don’t have enough of any of these things – and most wouldn’t duce, it is important to keep it in perspective. A garden leader During each incarnation, organizers proclaimed great out- want them. Instead, community gardeners are content to from Ginkgo once recounted being teased about the yield by comes – immigrants who gained new skills, children who ate toil on their four-by-eight or fifteen-by-fifteen-foot plot, get a farmer, because for him it seemed so tiny. But the leader was the food they grew, stronger communities, reclaimed land. their hands dirty on weekends and summer evenings, and unfazed because he sees the garden as providing a service Today’s community gardening advocates often explicitly share tools with their fellow gardeners. To be sure, they take for those who grow its produce as well as those who consume invoke this history: a statistic that 40 percent of the food sup- immense pride in their modest harvest, whether they are it. Ginkgo hosts hundreds of volunteers each season, and for ply was provided by urban gardens during World War II is supplementing their kitchens with fresh food in season or many this is their only direct connection to food growing and repeated as a kind of mantra, implying that if Americans could donating some to friends or charities. But that is only part of nature. Each workday ends the same way: a group photo in do it in the past, then we can do it now. What is less discussed the satisfaction these gardeners derive from their efforts. homage to Grant Wood’s famous painting American Gothic, is that almost none of these earlier efforts survived; when the Cynics who question community gardening as food pro- with one lucky volunteer holding the iconic pitchfork in hand. crisis passed, so too did widespread interest in – and institu- duction will cite the “$5 tomato” phenomenon – the novice While some of the harvest certainly finds its way home with gardener who enthusiastically buys all the tools, soil amend- volunteers, this garden is about service to others, not growing ments, and fancy trellises to grow one tomato plant. In terms your own lettuce. (In its early days, in fact, Ginkgo had a of time spent and money invested, they argue, it simply doesn’t balance out. At the other end of the spectrum, champi- ons of community gardening for food can point to recent

7 portion of the garden set aside Artists’ Garden site in 2003, before lished in 2004 by the South Chicago Arts for personal plots, but these it was developed (see front cover Center as part of its mission to provide safe were soon converted to the for Artists’ Garden in 2010). places for children after school. In a com- current communal beds due to munity that has seen sharp racial divides lack of interest.) In addition to producing food, Ginkgo pro- and conflicts, the garden lies directly vides a number of other needs for its community. It is a space between a Section 8 housing facility inhabit- for performances, hosting poetry readings and outdoor the- ed mainly by African Americans and a ater. The front of the garden, with its path and shady sitting block housing mostly first-generation area, doubles as a small neighborhood park. It has even Mexican immigrants. Evidence of the gar- become a laboratory, serving as a research site to study bees den’s weekly summertime art classes is and other plant pollinators. everywhere. Colorful mosaic benches line Having been founded in 1994, Ginkgo is pretty old for a the wide mulch path that leads towards a community garden. It enjoys a permanency and support most small, organic structure hung with sculp- gardens only dream of. Its land is protected by NeighborSpace, tures swaying in the breeze. Around this hut, a nonprofit land trust that also provides liability insurance the garden spreads out in all directions and maintains a dedicated water source. In its seventeen years with large, irregularly shaped beds defined of existence, Ginkgo has built up a strong organization that by wooden planks. can raise money and oversee the steady stream of volunteers. The garden’s harvest follows a few differ- Its supporters have had the time and the resources to fine- ent paths. Some is donated to the nearby tune the garden, installing an arched, wrought-iron gate; a Ada McKinley food pantry to provide fresh shed that is now covered with vines; espaliered fruit trees; and, produce to those who otherwise would not most recently, a flagstone patio in the shade. short Chicago growing season. And some are able to grow have access to it or be able to afford it; this neighborhood is Most gardens are not so fortunate. Just south of Ginkgo is foods particularly meaningful to their culture – foods that oth- considered a food desert. Much of the harvest finds its way one that clings to the side of a commuter rail line. The land is erwise may not be easily available to them. Gardening can home with the youth volunteers, as the art center holds weekly slated for a train stop, so the future of this particular garden is provide immigrants from agrarian societies with a visceral con- cooking demonstrations and then sends students home with very uncertain. It has neither fence nor sign, and the gardeners nection with their home country. A gardener at a nearby gar- fresh ingredients and recipes. Helping teenagers develop a must draw their water from a neighboring public-housing den that hosts a Nepali immigrant community explained, “The taste for healthy dishes and some skill in preparing them complex. The site is an abstract quilt of plots that suggests a land is our humanity – when you can dig into the soil it is is one way to combat the obesity epidemic. Lastly, the garden range of origins and expertise among its cultivators: lettuce in a reassurance. . . the earth is part of our home and is part of does have some individual allotment spaces. One gardener, rows here, squash overgrowing the paths there, Thai basil in a where you come from.” who also raises chickens at his home, showed off the rows of neat triangle bounded by carpet scraps. Bean vines climb up Perhaps equally important, the garden provides hours of tiny peach trees he was growing to sell. electrical lines and an American flag flutters nearby. companionship, purposeful activity, and light exercise for a In a neighborhood with high numbers of families living The site, which has been cultivated for about fifteen years, is group of individuals who might otherwise be alone in their below national poverty levels, the garden provides the commu- locally referred to as the Seniors’ Garden. Most of the plots are apartments. The preciousness of this precarious space is obvi- nity with some organic produce, encourages residents to grow tended by older Asian and Russian immigrants who live close ous in its gardners’ loyalty to it, even though they’ve been told their own crops, and educates youths on the importance by in public housing. The food grown here is not to give away the soil is probably contaminated. That disturbing fact appears of healthy eating. However, “more important than the produce or to sell: it is grown for personal consumption. There are no to be less important than the threat of not being able to gar- itself are the interactions and relationships forged between volunteer groups coming to help, no public events that invite den. Fortunately, a couple of neighborhood activists and sym- neighbors,” writes the art center’s founder. “The garden is the broader community to come to the garden. On a recent pathetic politicians are working quietly to find alternative proving to be a place where neighbors can meet and work visit, one of this piece’s authors was lectured by an elderly gar- gardening locations in advance of the garden’s inevitable dis- together on a common goal.” Growing food is that common dener in a language he didn’t understand, but the mimed placement. goal, but in building a garden these neighbors are also build- message was very clear: “I worked this land, planted the seeds, Most community gardens supply multiple food functions – ing a community. and tended the crops. These are mine and not yours.” food to donate, food for personal consumption, food to sell, While it is unknown exactly how much food is produced at food to eat together, food to learn from. On Chicago’s Far On their own, community gardens can’t solve the food crisis. the Seniors’ Garden, it is clear that none of these gardeners are Southeast Side, what many call simply “the garden” was estab- They cannot single-handedly be expected to solve the obesity subsisting on what’s grown here. They are, however, able to epidemic or eliminate food deserts. These crises are com- significantly supplement their kitchens during the relatively plex problems with tangled roots. The obesity epidemic, for example, has multiple causes: larger portions, fast food, the

8 lure of the computer, the simple fact that many children no reach the picnic table alongside the store-bought chips. the ones not only to determine its capacity but also its direc- longer walk to school. Food deserts have more to do with a When the recession passes and unemployment goes down, tion, for if their needs are not being met, they will drift away lack of grocery stores and prohibitive school vendor contracts what will become of the thousands of community gardens that and the garden will be reclaimed by nature and the city. than with the availability of locally grown produce. have sprouted up in the last few years? Will they survive, or Indeed, surveys show a lack of interest is the main reason gar- At the same time, a community garden’s inadequacy as a will they go the way of vacant-lot gardens, war gardens, victory dens fail. In other words, it is the process by which people comprehensive solution to an array of food-related societal gardens, and many of the 1970s community gardens? If we continually create and re-create community gardens that gives problems doesn’t mean that it can’t be an important partner in view these gardens not as quick fixes to the present crises but them their strength. Ideally, city dwellers will continue to be a broad effort to solve those problems. It can, for example, instead as part of larger efforts to make neighborhoods and drawn to these unique urban landscapes – even if they are connect hundreds of volunteers and children to the process of communities more livable, their chances of survival will be far nourished by them in different ways and see in them different growing food, which research shows leads directly to choosing greater. Thankfully, more and more municipalities are begin- possibilities. As a recent study in Landscape Journal concluded, healthier eating options. ning to recognize and support community gardens for what “The successful community garden is less about a grand A community garden can also model an ideal food environ- they are: places of resiliency that allow for permanent change. design than about facilitating a dialogue whereby the commu- ment, often in stark contrast to the world around it. The fami- “By providing multiple social, economic, and health nity identifies, priorities, and ly dinner has been on the decline for decades. More and more, benefits,” argues Peter Harnik, director of the Center for City Youth gardener Deja clears debris visualizes its garden.” we eat on the go or in front of a screen. But in community Park Excellence, in his recent book, Urban Green: Innovative during a spring work day in the The fact that gardens spring gardens, people reclaim the social life surrounding their food Parks for Resurgent Cities, “community gardens present a new Artists’ Garden. up in the city again and again with communal meals. In one survey done in New York City, model of the ‘neighborhood common’ that should be consid- more than 60 percent of the gardeners who responded said ered a part of the neighborhood infrastructure, similar to the that they host barbecues and picnics in their gardens. All basic necessity of neighborhood parks, playgrounds, commu- around the country, communi- nity centers, schools, and libraries.” View of a decorative arbor and ty gardens are providing a In cities like Chicago and San Francisco, structures are a cement dog sculpture created by place where people can eat being put in place to enable community gardens to persist in local artist Roman Villarreal together, and they are often perpetuity. Many cities are formally recognizing community and teenager interns from the serving carrots that didn’t trav- gardens and urban agriculture in zoning codes. This official South Chicago Art Center. el fifteen hundred miles to recognition represents a new watermark in the history of urban gardening. Histori- cally, lack of land security has been the fundamental problem of community gar- dens; they were considered temporary. Now, in major cities, land trusts are step- ping up to permanently secure land for gardens. suggests that there will always be a need for them. They are a And yet a plot of land or a repository of our urban ideals, hopes, dreams, and possibili- persuasively argued grant ties. They offer responses to seemingly intractable problems, proposal is not all that’s but on a scale that appeals to American traditions of self-suffi- needed to create a successful ciency; the core belief that individuals and communities can garden; a community garden take control of and improve their own lives. It is therefore needs to speak to the varied important to be accurate about what they can and cannot and ever-changing needs of accomplish in moments of crisis. At the same time, we must its community to survive and remember that the larger cultural concerns they address – thrive. The gardeners will be from obesity to global warming – are ongoing, and that com- munity gardens will continue to influence our approaches to these challenges in both profound and nuanced ways. – Ben Helphand and Laura Lawson

9 Rooftop Revolution: Culinary Gardening Aloft in New York City Children’s Gardening Program and also manages to fit in tak- nesses, and individuals. Certainly the size is impressive but, igh above New York, a quiet revolution is taking ing care of a large, private, edible rooftop garden in Battery as Novak points out, bigger is not always better: “larger farms place on urban rooftops. Time was that most roof Park. She travels among her various jobs by bicycle, thinks may not be the answer since they require more labor, and gardens were purely decorative, the privileged nothing of covering more than eighteen miles between bor- that’s the most expensive cost factor in gardening.” enclaves of a few well-heeled city dwellers. Such oughs in a day, and yet she still finds the time and energy to Restaurateurs are beginning to understand what good sense gardens still flourish but today the roof has become pore over seed catalogues and worry about whether a salad it makes to grow fresh vegetables and herbs on top of their Hthe frontier for large-scale edible gardening. There will always green such as mizuna or mâche will fare better in her garden kitchens and, in increasing numbers, they are getting onto the be New Yorkers who lovingly tend small pots of herbs on their than Tokyo Bekana. roof. Last April, the chef, sous chef, and manager of Maialino, window sills and take pride in cultivating a single tomato Novak, who sees herself not as an entrepreneur but as an Danny Meyer’s restaurant in the Gramercy Park Hotel, set up a vine perched on the rung of a fire escape, but now there is also “urban agriculturist,” is the founder and director of a non- garden on the roof of the hotel, using old wine buckets and a new generation of imaginative, ambitious gardeners using profit enterprise, Growing Chefs, which organizes classes and sauce bowls as planters for their seedlings and constructing roofs – usually on top of large commercial buildings – to grow workshops on such topics as composting, beekeeping, seeds, raised beds out of old floorboards, which they lined with old vegetables and fruit, make compost, breed chickens, and even and soil. Funds are raised through local events at the rooftop tablecloths from the restaurant. They also devised an irrigation keep bees. Most of the food produced in these ventures ends farm. There is no “donate here” button on her website, she system that channels water from the building’s downspout up for sale somewhere – on the plate at a high-end restaurant, pointed out, but she is delighted to have received her first into a fifty-five-gallon drum. By the end of the summer, say, or in the display case of a gourmet food store. But that foundation grant recently. At the same time, Novak is adamant rhubarb was growing in a former duck roasting pan, tomato does not mean that these burgeoning rooftop enterprises are that even if her rooftop farm could entirely support her, she plants were sprouting out of reused paint buckets, and necessarily cost-effective. Designing and maintaining a sophis- would never give up her other gardening ventures: she thrives cucamelon (Mexican sour cucumber) vines were climbing up ticated vegetable garden is not so very different from design- on the variety. scrap metal from an old file cabinet. There is now a rooftop ing and maintaining a perennial garden – to do so requires Ben Flanner, an engineer who formerly worked on Wall restaurant opening onto the garden. passion, time, and a serious outlay of cash. Street, was the co-founder of John Mooney is a restaurateur who planned and got his Annie Novak, the co-founder and head farmer of Eagle Eagle Street. He has gone on Vegetables and herbs growing in the own rooftop garden up and running in advance of opening his Street Rooftop Farm, is one such urban garden pioneer, and to run an even larger and rainwater-irrigated garden atop restaurant, Bell Book & Candle, in Greenwich Village at the her six-thousand-foot, organic vegetable farm – perched on top more ambitious farm in Long Gramercy Park Hotel all find their way end of last year. He sees it as an integral part of his kitchen of a soundstage warehouse in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with glo- Island City, Queens, which is onto the menu of Maialino. and is growing over seventy kinds of fruits, vegetables, and rious views in every direction – is stunning. The farm, which somewhat confusingly called required sophisticated engineering, was designed by Goode Brooklyn Grange. (Flanner Greene in 2008 for Gina Argentino, the owner of the building; had originally planned to she in turn allows Novak to run it. Some two hundred thou- open a farm in Brooklyn and sand pounds of growing soil (a combination of compost, rock kept the name when the particulates, and shale) was lifted by crane onto a two-inch plans fell through.) Brooklyn layer of polyethylene drainage matting tough enough to sup- Grange is forty thousand port one and one-half inches of rainwater. Irrigation is provid- square feet (that’s almost an ed by plastic drip lines. (Novak is not a fan of conventional acre), and after some prob- watering, believing that it can be harmful to plants exposed to lems with the Department of intense sun.) During the summer months, Novak and a team Buildings over plans and of between six to twelve regular apprentices and volunteers permits, it opened in June of tend to more than thirty kinds of vegetables and fruits and do last year, becoming the first all their own composting. She both supplies local restaurants CSA (Community Supported and sells her produce at a weekly market, held on-site. Agriculture) farm in Queens; In addition to her commercial growing venture – which is other CSA farm produce is self-supporting, although her landlord does not charge her available in the borough, but any rent and many of her helpers are volunteers – Novak is the it is trucked in. Flanner part-time coordinator of the New York Botanical Garden’s wants to demonstrate that urban farming can be a viable enterprise, and Brooklyn Grange sells its produce to restaurants, busi-

10 herbs six floors above his Eli Zabar in one of his rooftop travel to their place of work by foot, bicycle, or public trans- diners. Since the building is a greenhouses above the Vinegar portation, and many do not own cars or consume gasoline. walk-up, he uses a pulley Factory on 91st Street and York. Lack of open space has always made it difficult for New system to lower the produce Yorkers to grow their own food, but this drawback has down to street level. This farm is hydroponic and plants are become the impetus for a range of wonderfully inventive grown on cylindrical towers, five to seven feet high, which sup- developments in the art of skyline gardening. port plastic trellises. Mooney has sixty of these towers, and While offering many advantages such as reducing build- they are heated with recycled water that is pumped through a ing heat and lowering water run-off, the challenges of system of reservoir bases. This allows planting to begin as rooftop farming should not be underestimated. First, a early as March. “Absolutely, my garden saves me money,” structural engineer must confirm the roof ’s ability to bear Mooney maintains. “I have no transportation costs because I the weight, and then there is the challenge of hauling the am not moving my crops or storing my produce. I’m serving it soil up to the roof (with or without a crane), working out right away, and what I have is not only fresher and better than suitable drainage, and successfully managing plants subject what I could buy, it is also far more cost-effective.” to direct sunlight and high-wind conditions. Hydroponic Brewers and bakers are also taking to their roofs. At Six farming, which John Mooney strongly advocates, is another Point Brewery in Red Hook, Brooklyn, chickens cluck and exciting possibility for the future. But, like all small-farming peck in an outdoor pen set in a rooftop garden that is the pre- our stores and three restaurants.” Of course, the fact that the ventures, rooftop farms are not a quick way to get rich, and ferred summer lunchtime spot for the brewery staff. This gar- space is free and the heating costs relatively low should be profit margins depend on such variables as availability and den is the brainchild of Shane Welch, who founded the considered as part of the equation. cost of labor, access to consumers, and even good weather. brewery in 2004 and wanted to find a use for his old, broken Beekeeping is another rooftop pursuit now in vogue. Sever- At the same time, these new projects in New York City point kegs. (Six Points doesn’t use bottles but distributes its beer in al years ago, the idea of keeping bees on a city rooftop came to the way to the future and are vital stepping stones if we want kegs to bars and restaurants in and around New York City.) David Graves, a farmer who lives in Becket, Massachusetts, to get serious about exploring the possibilities of large-scale, “The roof was a graveyard for broken kegs, but cut off their and sells his produce at the Union Square Greenmarket. At the urban roof agriculture. – Jane Garmey tops and they make great planters,” says Cathy Erway, director time, he was having trouble with bears on his farm, and he of communications for the brewery, who works with Welch on realized he would not have this problem were his hives in the They Built a Fahm in Hahvud Yahd: the garden. “Now we grow peas, beans, cauliflowers and leafy city. First, he got permission to keep a hive on the roof of A Tiny Garden Strives for Global Impact greens, and use the produce to make lunch for the staff, who the Greenmarket office building on East Sixteenth Street, and n April 2010 a crew of students and workers from Harvard are also invited to pick and take food home.” Corn didn’t grow now he has hives on top of several houses in Greenwich University’s landscape services built a vegetable garden on well and has been discontinued but Welch is now growing Village and on a hotel, whose name he will not divulge. Graves the lawn in front of Lowell House, an undergraduate four different varieties of hops, which he hopes to use for is not entirely happy that beekeeping in the city was legalized dorm notable for its elaborate, blue-domed cupola. It has experimental brews and maybe even one day develop into “a in 1996. “Too many people are now doing it and there’s not housed, at various times, Robert Lowell, Harry Blackmun, botanical beer.” enough nectar to go round,” he says. His biggest problems, IJohn Updike, David Souter, Nicholas Kristof, and Matt Eli Zabar owns and farms two rooftops in Manhattan. One however, are the recent proliferation of cell towers (they emit Damon. Fronting Mt. Auburn Street, one of the main thor- is on top of the Vinegar Factory, his food market at York electromagnetic waves that cause bees to lose their way back to oughfares of Harvard Square, the garden plot is flanked by Avenue and Ninetieth Street; the other is on top of a bakery he their hives) and a Parks Department that is trying to stamp out two final clubs (exclusive private social clubs for Harvard operates in a commercial building immediately opposite. Japanese knotweed. A cause of celebration for those who detest undergraduates), the Phoenix and the Fly. A more presti- Together they occupy eleven thousand square feet and include this invasive plant but not for Graves: “They’re a favorite gious patch of ground – and a more public place to plant four greenhouses. The heat from the bread ovens provides source of nectar for my bees.” food crops – would be hard to find in Massachusetts and, most of the heat for the greenhouses. Zabar’s bookkeeper, Edible rooftop projects are gaining a lot of attention and arguably, the world. Monica Dandridge, has become his gardener-in-chief. “It all there is even a website (www.seglet.com) intended to connect The size of the Harvard Community Garden (HCG) is began with Eli wanting to get good tomatoes for the store ten owners wishing to rent out rooftops and urban gardeners modest: 560 square feet of growing surface, roughly one- years ago,” she says. “I’m not a gardener by trade but Eli has looking to farm them. In Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, third of an acre. Twenty-four raised beds of different sizes made me one.” Today, the garden produces sixteen different Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability and heights cluster together on a flat, stone-dust surface; heirloom varieties of tomatoes, all of them sold in the store. (2009) David Owen argues that despite the lack of good soil roughly a third of them are wheelchair-accessible. The non- “Yes, it’s cost-effective,” she says, “we sell everything we grow in and the pollution caused by trucks and traffic, New York is far linear arrangement of these tablelike platforms creates greener than its surrounding suburbs and is getting greener every day. He sees Manhattanites, in particular, as models of environmental responsibility. Eighty-two percent of them

11 intriguing volumes of space, making it hard to assess the pre- Harvard students and community cise size of the whole. On a brilliant day in early October, members plant the first seeds in the about six weeks before the end of the garden’s first growing Harvard Community Garden. season, the last crops added a sensory dimension to the spatial geometry: ruffle-edged lettuces, dark-veined beet greens, pale Environmental Action onion shoots, candy-colored stalks of rainbow chard. Bees Committee (EAC) polled worked the spires of basil flowers. Squashes ripened under undergraduates and found leaves the size of dinner plates, and near the split-rail fence that 60 percent of them were that separates the garden from the sidewalk, the vines of in favor of starting a garden a “Sungold” cherry tomato drooped under the weight of ripe or a farm. fruit. In early 2007 the universi- Like many community gardens, this one is staffed largely by ty unveiled a plan to expand volunteers (here, mostly students), and the food it produces is into Allston, an ethnically consumed locally (primarily in the Faculty Club, about a quar- diverse, largely blue-collar ter mile away). And yet its ambitions far exceed its acreage and Boston neighborhood across its yield. the Charles River, where The HCG is a project of Harvard Medical School’s Center Harvard owns 359 acres (149 for Health and the Global Environment (CHGE), which is acres more than in Cam- directed by Eric Chivian, M.D. An assistant clinical professor bridge) and is widely viewed of psychiatry at the medical school, Chivian founded CHGE in with suspicion and dislike. 1996. He was convinced that “at the heart of the present envi- Again independently of one ronmental crisis is a fundamental disconnect between human another, both EAC and beings and the environment,” he said in a recent telephone the parties discussing a farm interview. “If people don’t see themselves as part of the natural with Chivian supported world, it becomes OK to degrade soils and alter the atmos- locating it in Allston to phere and overfish the oceans, because there’s a sense that it benefit and positively engage won’t affect us. Teaching students to recognize environmental Given the potentially unlimited size of the community, that residents. The farm concept also dovetailed with the budding threats to their physical well-being is a good way to correct goal is ambitious. Penetrating even the Harvard community sustainability movement on campus. In 2008 the university that misapprehension.” will require breaching the myriad “silos” or domains within a announced the goal of reducing greenhouse gas emissions Chivian and others – notably Alice Waters, who helped Yale large, compartmentalized institution. And influencing the 30 percent below 2006 levels by 2016 and established the Office University establish a one-acre campus farm almost a decade neighborhoods surrounding the university will require bridg- for Sustainability to make it happen. ago – recognize that food is, for many of us, our most tangible ing a moat of longstanding distrust based on vast differences These various interests and advocacy groups converged in and intimate connection to that threatened world. CHGE of class, wealth, and power. Should the garden and its pro- 2009. In the spring EAC circulated a position paper advocating operates a Healthy and Sustainable Food program focused on grams accomplish this, as Yale’s farm administrators claim to for a “multipurpose, multidisciplinary” garden in front of the fact that food production is touched by every environmen- have done to a remarkable extent over the past several years, a Lowell House, which could also provide space to demonstrate tal scourge, from climate change to ozone depletion, and con- more permeable environment and a fluid exchange of knowl- renewable-energy technology, display public art, host perfor- tributes to several others, such as loss of habitat and water edge might be the most meaningful outcome of HCG and of mances, and serve as an outdoor classroom and research scarcity. On an individual level, the challenges and rewards of the broader campus farm movement – an outcome that might, station. In July, Chivian wrote to President Drew Gilpin Faust growing things bring these problems into sharp relief. In in turn, affect meaningful change. proposing to include a farm in the Allston expansion plan, addition, as Chivian points out, many other disciplines con- arguing that a farm would promote “passionate student verge in the garden: “Whether students are studying insect Inspired by the experience of running a small fruit orchard at involvement,” interdisciplinary educational opportunities, and zoology, biology, landscape design, or the economics of food his home in central Massachusetts, Chivian has dreamed of a site for student and faculty research. A university farm would security around the world, they can find no more direct way to starting a farm at Harvard since at least April 2006, when he also offer Allston “a resource for community engagement at understand these issues than by growing food.” presented the idea at a Harvard symposium. Independently Harvard.” (Unlike the EAC proposal, Chivian’s did not encom- CHGE’s stated vision for the garden is to “bring together and as yet unaware of Chivian’s discussions, the student-led pass the arts.) He also mentioned that he had already recruited members of the community to raise awareness about the criti- Prince Charles, an organic farmer with whom Chivian was col- cal role that food plays in our environment and our health.” laborating on several environmental and human-health pro- jects, to the project’s advisory board.

12 Chivian’s proposal invoked “Harvard’s rich history in the garden volunteer. “Electrical workers were learning about the the lab doesn’t do as well.” A mycologist, Anne Pringle, studies agricultural sciences,” which began with the establishment of goals of the food project and administrators and staff who fungal relationships in the garden. the Bussey Institution, an undergraduate school of agriculture generally don’t work with students were working with stu- Ideally, the garden will soon be as integrated into the acade- and horticulture, in Jamaica Plain in 1870. The institute, part dents. The grounds crew guys worked alongside students to mic curriculum as its larger counterpart is at Yale, where pro- of which later became the Arnold Arboretum, offered a multi- install the beds.” fessors teaching several dozen courses across disciplines – disciplinary program until 1908. At different times, its faculty Frith continues to provide administrative oversight. including African studies, psychology, gender studies, environ- included Charles Sprague Sargent and Charles Eliot. The “Everyone loves this project,” she told me during my tour of mental biology, geology, and economics – have incorporated school raised vegetables for the Harvard College food services. the garden in October. “There has been such generous giving the garden into the curriculum. “It’s fine to have this cute little Faust signed off on the project. A few months later, howev- of resources and time. It’s not just that faculty are coming thing that newspapers cover,” Chivian said, “but most impor- er, the economy spiraled out of control and the university together in the garden that’s exciting – it’s that faculty and tant is that it serves as hands-on educational experience for postponed the expansion. With Chivian’s blessing, Kathleen staff and students and community members are coming students and faculty, so that they can learn that fundamental Frith, assistant director of CHGE, kept the momentum going together.” The enthusiasm that the garden’s proponents have fact: that we’re connected to the natural world.” Although the by downsizing the farm concept to a garden plot in Cambridge, repeatedly voiced about its power to unite such a wide spec- present garden is too small to support many research projects, as EAC had proposed. The garden’s objectives, aside from trum of people illuminates how sparse such connections gen- he still hopes to build a larger one when Harvard expands engaging Allston residents, remained much the same as those erally are in university life. “As with lots of large institutions into Allston. for the farm. By now EAC and the CHGE group had become with many different disciplines and functions and depart- aware of their parallel efforts and started working toward their ments, it’s easy for folks to stay within their close community,” Were Harvard’s novice gardeners disappointed by the size of common goal with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the Office Frith admits. “Chances for multidisciplinary collaboration – their plot? On the contrary, although the founding year’s yield for Sustainability, and Dining Services, as well as the presi- which is one of President Faust’s big goals – are rare.” was unrecorded, many students expressed amazement at their dent’s office. Chivian believes that the human tendency to separate and garden’s abundance. Throughout the growing season, they sold Frith said that her team had considered other locations contain specialized knowledge is a huge obstacle to addressing about 90 percent of the garden’s produce to their dining ser- before settling on Lowell House, factoring in not only public world problems. The garden’s potential to topple the silos vices partner, the Harvard Faculty Club, where its vegetables visibility but also the availability of water, sun, and other therefore has exciting ramifications – both at Harvard and were spotlighted on the menus. The rest were consumed in practical needs. As it turned out, the sunny spot near the side- beyond. “To really solve global environmental issues, you have community events at the garden and donated to local food walk in front of Lowell House was just close enough to an to bring together many people with different expertise and banks. “This is only our first year, but we produced a ton,” said outdoor spigot in the dorm that gardeners could run a hose experience,” he pointed out. “You can’t talk about biodiversity Louisa Denison, one of the garden’s student co-managers, who between them. unless you talk about oceans, or climate change without had spent a previous summer working on a farm. Rebecca Like many urban landscape projects, this one posed chal- atmospheric chemistry, so the more interfaculty, interschool, Cohen, the other co-manager, who confessed in an e-mail that lenges of overlapping jurisdictions, underground utility lines, interdisciplinary efforts you have at a university, the better she had come to the project with “zero experience,” also historical commission review, and proximity to an electric- the chances are of bringing that cooperation to a larger arena.” expressed delight at the unanticipated bounty from such a power substation. Resolving these issues brought multiple There is also something to be said for rendering the small space. parties together from the abstract tangible. Donald However fresh they are to growing food, the co-managers start, which is common in Pfister, Asa Gray Professor of have no illusions about feeding the entire campus, even on a landscape architecture. For Systematic Botany, leads his much larger plot. Like the faculty and administrators I spoke most of those involved in undergraduates through the with, they frame the garden’s success in terms of what they are developing this garden, how- raised beds for his course learning and the responses it has sparked in others. “In our ever, it was a new experience. Plants and Human Affairs. “I first season we mostly had undergraduates working in the gar- “We kept hearing about how do a tour in the garden and den, but from the management/administrative standpoint crazy it was that all these dif- introduce plant structure,” we have had an amazing amount of collaboration,” Cohen said, ferent departments and he says. “We might stop and listing not only volunteers from the Graduate School of agencies were involved,” said look at broccoli and cabbage, Design but also undergraduates and faculty from the School Zachary C. M. Arnold, and I ask students why these of Public Health, the Medical School, and the Law School. Harvard 2010, who was an might be classified together. “Knowing how isolated the schools can be from one another, it active member of EAC and a They smell and taste the has been a great experience to work with faculty and students plants, look at the flowers, from across all the schools.” Meanwhile, in January, Frith and start seeing similarities. and the students were making plans to double the size of the It brings an immediacy that The Garden is maintained over the taking the same plants into summer by community volunteers and two student interns. 13 marketplace will remain deliberately constrained; Frith stress- learned that staff and faculty and students at the Harvard es that however much food the garden – or an eventual farm Law School, about a mile away in Cambridge, and the Medical in Allston – yields, CHGE’s goal is not to compete with local School, in Boston, have been inspired to start their own farmers. “Just the opposite,” she said. “We want to raise aware- gardens. ness of fresh, local food sources.” And how about the students leaving Harvard for the wider Chivian chafes at any suggestion that the garden’s size world? Arnold, who now works developing green-technology reduces it to a token gesture. “It’s very significant that this gar- jobs in a low-income Boston neighborhood, was an environ- den produces real food,” he said, emphasizing that it is the mentalist long before the raised beds arrived in the Yard last actual experience of growing something that engages people – spring – in fact, long before he himself arrived at Harvard. But whether they approach it as an engineer challenged to design a he, too, learned an important lesson from HCG – about com- hoop house for growing vegetables in winter or as a foodie munity organizing. The garden attracted a new constituency of thrilled to be able to produce six kinds of basil. “It’s not fair to students he’d never identified before – people who shared an say it’s just a symbol, because what it has done is energize an environmental mindset but who hadn’t been involved in tradi- entire student movement,” he said. “It allows us, as the center tional environmental activities on campus. “Maybe they aren’t that’s running it, to host various conferences about growing comfortable with activism or policy,” he mused. “But they felt sustainable food at a university and to bring in people from it was meaningful to contribute through a garden.” other universities to talk about everything from food pantries – Jane Roy Brown Harvard undergrad Zoe Tucker garden in spring 2011. “We’re to composting.” shows off a salad harvested from also working with design Since 2003, when Yale broke ground for its farm, several Lessons in the Dirt: School Gardens Grow in Brooklyn the garden. students again to add seating other Ivies – Brown, Harvard, Columbia, Princeton – plus rowing up in Oklahoma, I spent hours of my early and some kind of a vertical Duke, Stanford, Wesleyan, and several state universities – have childhood helping my mother in our backyard growing space on the wall of the Phoenix,” she said. Devising a either started college gardens or farms or set aside funds for garden, where only a few strands of slack barbed water catchment system is also high on the list, and she is them. Chivian and Frith have turned mainly to Yale for advice wire separated our little plot from the adjoining reaching out to engineering students for help with that. on matters both practical and philosophical. Yet, in spite of wheat fields. The tangy-sweet smell of an onion In addition, the garden’s organizers are planning activities the Yale farm’s long head start, direct involvement with Alice Gflower, the slimy caress of an earthworm wriggling across my to extend their influence beyond Harvard Yard. In October, Waters, and acclaimed success, in terms of potential influence palm, the juicy gems of button-sized strawberries half-hidden their Harvest Festival drew hundreds of Cambridge residents Harvard’s garden has the advantage of being at Harvard. in the leafy ground cover – these now-indelible recollections to the garden for live music, cider pressing, food demonstra- As Arnold put it, “The elephant in the room in any educa- were part and parcel of life growing up as a semirural young- tions, and informational tours. “We were able to get people tive enterprise at Harvard is, ‘It’s Harvard.’ We are always aware ster. At the time I was simply picking snap peas and pulling into the garden, have them enjoy themselves, and get them that what we do has more of a chance of being covered in the weeds; only later did I recognize the simple lessons reaped thinking about the garden’s function and importance all at the New York Times or otherwise carried out into the world. The along those rows. Plan well. Know your soil. Work hard. Learn same time,” Denison said. She also stressed the success of the sense of Harvard exceptionalism touches everything here. That from your failures. Remember that, with patience, bounty can regular events hosted in the garden: cooking demonstrations, includes what we do internally to influence the student body; spring forth from humble seeds. work days, compost discussions. As anticipated, the garden’s there is an understanding that these students will go off and Traditionally these lessons have been hard to come by for intentionally visible location hasn’t hurt. “People walk by and become captains of industry and finance and politics, so we children reared in big cities, but that is beginning to change. they comment on the size of the kale or the height of the want to capture them and inform their values.” Perhaps even Backyard gardens might often be beyond the space and time peas,” she added. Maybe they will start thinking about where as they stroll past the garden to grab dinner at Lowell House, constraints of many urban families, but new opportunities are their own produce is coming from, whether it is available or to party at the Fly. cropping up for children to discover some of these precepts locally, and how far it has had to travel to reach their table. Although the garden has been around for less than a year, in the soil. Even in Brooklyn, New York City’s most populous The 2011 growing season, which begins in April, will bring Frith gave me some examples of changes that have already borough, gardens are sprouting in public schools from Bay new challenges for the student gardeners. They will need to taken place. In an accidental object lesson, she discovered this Ridge to Crown Heights. meet the modest goal of balancing the cost of seeds and soil fall that students, staff, and faculty at Harvard Divinity School, Some gardens are not much more than a few containers with income from the sale of produce. They will also need to about a mile from the undergraduate campus, had been culti- clustered in a rare, sunny corner. Others are cultivated lots, meet the demands of the marketplace: at the end of the 2010 vating a small vegetable plot for two years. Neither group was complete with paths and ornamental plantings. Some have season, chefs from the Faculty Club met with gardeners to aware of the other. Excited by their discovery, the gardeners been conceived and supported by larger organizations, such as request more unusual crops to feature on their menus. But the made plans to share event schedules and other information. She has also worked with the Office for Sustainability to spread the garden idea to other Harvard schools, and recently

14 Alice Waters’s Chez Panisse Foundation, but most are home- More than half of the school’s fifty-five classes spent some divide. “All the kids love the soil,” said Michele Israel, a parent grown efforts that are scraping by on piecemeal grants, admin- time in the garden last year, said Margaret Sheri, the school’s at P.S. 107 John W. Kimball in Park Slope and a co-founder istrative goodwill, and the hard work of a few dedicated parent coordinator. And even though these five-to-ten-year- of the school garden there. Jonathan Blumberg, another parent parents. olds can be pretty rowdy on the playground (which sits on and co-founder who grew up with a backyard garden in the blacktop just behind the garden), when they’re in the garden Midwest, liked the idea of “giving every kid a chance to see On a bright, cold Friday morning in November, half-a-dozen space, Sheri said, “they’re really respectful.” Parent volunteers where things come from.”Israel and Blumberg began planning parents are gathered in the lot-sized yard next to P.S. 102 The spend hours in the garden most weeks, taking care of the big the garden in the spring of 2008, when they both had students Bayview, in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. Far down the R subway line, projects: building tables, mixing cement, turning compost. in the first grade. this historically Italian and Norwegian neighborhood is now The gardening is mostly left to the students. “The point is for P.S. 107 did not have an ideal place for a garden, or even any home to a broader mix of families, including those of Asian the kids to do it,” Sheri said. “They’re definitely taking a sense soil to work with. What it did have was a north-facing, concrete and Middle Eastern descent. of ownership.” She also observed that integrating the garden side yard, bordered on three sides by the school building. “You The fenced-in space spent decades as a blighted and semia- into the curricula can help children retain lessons associated have to be creative,” Bloomberg said. The parents discovered bandoned lot, collecting trash and beer bottles from the bar with their experiences: “Anything like that really sticks in your that lack of arable land was not an insurmountable setback. In traffic on the busy avenue nearby. More recently it has been head because it’s different.” fact, even schools in the borough with tillable spaces often used to grow pumpkins for P.S. 102 students each fall. Now P.S. 102 is unusual in that it has three classes of visually find that they cannot plant crops in them because of high lev- every Friday parents arrive at the garden to work on the space impaired students. This gave parent volunteer Tom Mazzone els of lead and other contaminants; instead, clean dirt has to and help teachers with the classes cycling through. On the the idea of planting a fragrant, edible herb garden – what he be imported and placed in raised beds or containers. Friday I visited, some parents were mixing concrete in wood called the “scratch-and-sniff garden.” Students, regardless of Fortunately a planter box is all you need to convince kids to frames for tiles that the students would later decorate for the their visual acuity, can walk around the large square plucking get their hands dirty. Using container planters that get only garden; others were constructing a table out of reclaimed leaves of lemon balm, yarrow, and fennel, crushing them partial sunlight, the gardeners at P.S. 107 have still produced wood. The chain-link fence was adorned with bright paintings between their fingers and getting to know their names, tex- plenty of harvestable crops – as well as the accompanying on wood panels. tures, and smells. worms, slugs, and bugs that so fascinate most children. Not all Now in its second school year, the garden space looks well Sheri noted that the garden’s herbs have also connected of the plants have made it, of course, and when maintenance cared for. A path skirts the many of the students to their cultural backgrounds by smell had to be done on the school’s exterior, the necessary scaffold- Fourth graders at P.S. 102 in Bay perimeter of the lot; a com- alone. Children from Italian families recognized the oregano ing ate up even more of the limited space and sunlight. But Ridge, Brooklyn, plant an azalea in posting barrel stands tucked as the smell of their grandmother’s pasta sauce, and those the heartier plants’ persistence was in itself a lesson. “You can the school’s garden as part of a away in a corner; and a small from some of the Middle Eastern families got excited because grow things with a short growing season,” Israel pointed out. school-wide celebration of Arbor tree is surrounded by a mod- the sage reminded them of their parents’ aromatic tea. In “You can grow things in the shade. You can have a garden Day. Photograph by Rana Abu-Sbaih. est, year-round cactus garden. addition to the fragrant plants, Mazzone said, “the smell of soil where there’s no green space.” calms your whole spirit.” It has already pro- Much of the recent momentum behind school gardens vided some young students with a reflective comes from the burgeoning movement to improve children’s attitude. Working with a second grade class, eating habits – and thereby combat the rise of childhood obe- Mazzone asked them, “What does gardening sity and related health problems – by acquainting kids with mean to you?’” One girl responded, “It their fruits and veggies. Michelle Obama’s large vegetable gar- means patience.” den at the White House, which produced more than a thou- P.S. 102’s side lot was not always a sand pounds of produce its first year, is planted and harvested neglected space. During World War II, it was with the help of local schoolchildren. used for victory gardens, which were tended The trend has also been fed by the expansion of farmers’ by the students. Some of those mid-twenti- markets and community gardens, and a growing interest in, eth-century gardeners still live close by – one and support for, local food. New York City’s urban gardening woman right next door to the garden lot. program, GreenThumb, which is run through the Department She told Mazzone that her plot of beans at of Parks & Recreation, has donated clean soil to school gar- the school’s victory garden was one of the dens throughout the city. And in Gravesend, Brooklyn, Alice things that has kept her gardening in the Waters’s Chez Panisse Foundation is supporting a version neighborhood ever since. “There’s definitely of its California-based Edible Schoolyard project, a children’s an effect that’s lifelong,” Mazzone said. gardening program whose mission is to “encourage awareness For young children, the draw of dirt does not appear to recognize any urban-rural

15 and appreciation of the transformative values of nourishment, who uses a garden-centered curriculum. By providing an Place Keeper community, and stewardship of the land.” opening for curiosity as well as a palette for experimentation, Despite not having enough space to grow crops to con- Botta continued, gardens “help kids develop ownership of tribute to the school’s cafeteria, those behind the garden at P.S. their environment.” And that sense of ownership can be espe- 107 were determined to forge a connection between their cially valuable for children growing up with little freedom of Twin Maples, Litchfield County, Connecticut gleanings and the students’ diet. So organizers held a taste test movement or control over their surroundings. of various dishes made from the same herbs and vegetables On a practical level, in public schools across Brooklyn and How does the Meadow-flower its bloom unfold? the kids had been growing and let them vote on their favorite; the U.S., many gardens get used as do most school resources Because the lovely little flower is free the winner’s ingredients were then sourced from local growers these days: in as many ways as possible. Aside from valuing the Down to its root, and, in that freedom, bold; and incorporated into the school’s rotating menu. hands-in-the-dirt and food- and environmental-awareness And so the grandeur of the Forest-tree For some students, even a modest school garden is a rare aspects of the gardens, teachers are using them to engage stu- Comes not by casting in a formal mould, place of bounty. At P.S. 12 in Crown Heights, where 83 percent dents in writing, math, science, and art. While at the garden, But from its own divine vitality. of the students qualify for free lunches, local parent Karen “they do math, they write,” Bucknor said of students she works Bucknor has been showing the school’s 340-plus students the with. “We collect seeds, then they count the seeds before they – William Wordsworth, gardening techniques she learned as a child from her grand- plant.” “A Poet! – He hath put his heart to school” mother. Tara Troxler, a first-grade teacher at P.S. 107, has been using Bucknor told me with a laugh that she has been gardening the garden and indoor planters as a way to integrate scientific n this sonnet, Wordsworth “basically since I was born.” She had been working at a nearby thinking into her curriculum. The students keep journals and contrasts the freedom and community garden when the principal at her children’s school figure out what questions they want to answer. “They’re like strength of meadowland suggested she start a garden on the school’s grounds. Although little scientists,” she said. The hands-on aspect of the garden and forest with the formal- the principal had envisioned a flower garden, Bucknor helped engage the kids and inspired diligence as they tended ity of aesthetic rules that thought a food garden would be even better for the students. to their individual tasks, she noted. Ihe believes weaken artistic “I asked them where the food comes from, and they said ‘the The garden learning has extended beyond the school day. creativity. I recalled this supermarket,’” she recalled. So she got to work, putting in a Participants in after-school and summer-school programs poem on a recent visit to raised-bed vegetable garden behind the school, which sits on a have been working in many of the gardens. And some children Twin Maples, an estate in the residential block in a neighborhood dotted with public hous- come back – often bringing parents and other family mem- northwest corner of Con- ing developments and storefront Baptist churches. bers – even when programs are not in session, to water, weed necticut, as I meandered Bucknor planned the crops, which included, among other or just wonder at the plants’ progress. along paths through forty offerings, eggplant, okra, onions, beans, basil, cabbage, and col- Community members who don’t have children at these acres of wildflower meadows lard greens. But then she put the students to work. “I demon- schools have been drawn in by the garden projects as well. In with grasses and seed heads strate first,” she explained, but then the kids “do everything”: Bay Ridge, neighbors have offered tomatoes, flowers, and towering over me. I have dig, plant, water, and harvest. moral support to the school gardeners. And Bucknor reported long admired naturally seed- Some argue that sending students out to tend tomatoes is a that once her school garden in Crown Heights was up and ed roadside meadows along waste of valuable school time, especially for inner-city children running, “people from the neighborhood, they came by to help the Maine coast in late sum- Douglas Thomas. Photograph who may already face educational disadvantages. Writing in out.” mer for their preponderance courtesy of John Gruen. early 2010 in The Atlantic, author Caitlin Flanagan critiqued Given the undeniable popularity of school gardens through- of Queen Anne’s lace, golden- the “vacuous if well-meaning ideology that is responsible for out the borough, Bucknor is frustrated that there is still an rod, and fireweed. But here I was fascinated by an immense robbing an increasing number of American schoolchildren of unmet need. “Every school needs to have a school garden,” she tract of meadow that had been very deliberately planted to hours they might other wise [sic] have spent reading important declared. Far from constituting a burden, working in the become a major element in a vast garden scheme surrounded books or learning higher math.” Indeed, reformers spent garden seems to be a joy for most children. In fact, making by forest. In this case, though, the rules governing the mead- decades in the nineteenth century lobbying to get kids out of enough time in the garden available to all those who want ow’s seeding had released rather than hindered the natural fields and factories and into the classroom. But even well- to visit is much more of a problem than finding willing hands. growth of the native perennials mixed among its annuals, appointed classrooms lack some of the educational opportuni- “When I’m out there,” she said, “everybody wants to come at biennials, and grasses. ties that are native to a garden, proponents argue. Aside from the same time.” – Katherine Harmon For the early settler, such meadows and pastures were lessons about food, nutrition, and ecology, students in a gar- valuable for their uses in husbandry and agriculture. The den can start “getting a sense of what the environment is like orderliness of fields and plantations and even orchards gave around them,” said Katy Botta, a Connecticut-based educator rise to horticulture in its more ornamental presentations. This particular expanse of more than four hundred acres was

16 originally a land grant from George III, and Wilmer and mums that keep their bloom into late autumn. Within the covered in the landscape rather than simply imposed upon it. Douglas Thomas, who live there now, are only the third walled enclosure, a traditional herbal knot garden is divided While originally trained in ornamental horticulture at the recorded owners. Since the second owners treated the land as into four segments edged by low wattle fencing; its perennial Pennsylvania College of Technology, in 1984 Weaner attended a a conservancy, the character of the fields was intact when the borders display a palette of blue, peach, white, and silver. At three-day course on meadows at the Harvard University Thomases bought it, crisscrossed only by low stone walls. the foot of the garden stands a dark-green, arched pergola, Graduate School of Design. Given by the environmental land- Having left behind a perfect Georgian house in Palm Beach, modeled after one at Dumbarton Oaks, through which one can scape architects A. E. Bye and Armistead W. Browning, Jr., Florida, the Thomases have reproduced its admirable qualities glimpse a majestic fern-leaved beech – a visual bridge to the it radically changed his approach to design. “I learned to see in Connecticut. The result is a manor house conceived with mysterious woodland beyond. nature as not simply wild but as an interrelated scientific precision and elegance by the architect and interior designer A second walled garden is a potager and cutting garden process of plants, soils and insects – and, furthermore, I saw David Anthony Easton, who never failed to tweak conventional leading directly into a sturdy greenhouse made in Canada. It is how to make good use of these elements,” he recalls. Bye him- detailing to strengthen the house’s connection to the land and the secret behind the eternal freshness of the household self was famous for understanding how England’s eighteenth- the views beyond. Even inside feels like outside: one walks plants; they rest and rejuvenate here between appearances. The century landscape designers became natural practitioners, through the entry hall into an immense reception room cum greenhouse, which has several different climatic zones, con- believing, as Bye wrote, “that the native look of their land was winter garden where all manner of plants thrive in full sun tains a collection of irresistible beauty and rarity. Planting disappearing, and that nature was not a threat to their security throughout the year, from luxuriant baby tears to a hardy and benches and a custom-made galvanized aluminum table pro- as it was in earlier times.” voluptuous collection of specimen begonias. A balcony just vide ample work spaces, but the pleasure is in the individual By the time Weaner arrived to study the land at Twin beyond the Palladian windows overlooks a moon pond that is shapes and scents of the plants – each, like the prize-winning, Maples, he already had to his credit seventy-five acres of mead- as pristine as the one at Studley Royal in Yorkshire. It marries cascading jade, with its own story. ow planting in zones along the New York Thruway. Unlike gar- the formal house to the surrounding wildflower fields. However, all of these gardens are but a prelude to the true den designers, who often approach the ground as a tabula rasa, Douglas Thomas, who was raised at Dockery Farms, the brilliance of the landscape setting: the wildflower meadows. Weaner first observed the land closely over time as an ecologi- nineteenth-century family plantation that has been preserved Larry Weaner, the Pennsylvania landscape designer who created cal habitat to determine what would grow there were it left in the Mississippi Delta, has a strong sense of the heritage of them, believes in places with what he calls “natural character.” undisturbed. Only then did he combine this knowledge with land. She speaks admiringly of Dumbarton Oaks in Washing- His visual concepts derive from the patterns and changes dis- an aesthetic in making his seed selections. “Garden design ton, D.C., where Mr. and Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss worked overlaid on a scientific foun- with the landscape gardener Beatrix Farrand to create a series dation,” he calls it. of formal garden rooms that drift into a wild north vista For the plantings in 2000, at the edges of Georgetown. Like them, she says, she has been a list was drawn up of about inspired “to create a major landscape in today’s world.” one hundred species, includ- Within the precincts of the house, the gardens remain for- ing grasses, perennials, and mal, with a structural simplicity that complements the archi- some annuals or biennials, tecture. In a long rectangular garden outside the west portico, all of which could normally a frame of low box hedges – a tribute to the style of Russell grow on the property. The Page – contains perimeter plantings of Hydrangea paniculata actual seeding took place in ‘Quick Fire.’ The corners are punctuated with yellow-fruited early summer to suppress crab apple trees, and a handsome urn terminates the vista. weeds, which grow more A moon gate encircled with Hydrangea anomala subsp. quickly in spring. Weaner petiolaris north of this garden frames a view of a rocky outcrop says dry infertile soil is best, on the wooded hillside behind the house. To prevent erosion, and no compost. He uses the the horticulturalist, Deborah Munson, has imaginatively Truax seed drill (invented by planted the rockery with combinations of lowbush blueberry, Jim Truax in the early 1970s bearberry, cotoneaster, sweet fern, native potentilla, asters, to plant native prairie grass- Dutchman’s pipe, Solomon’s seal, American ginger, and helle- es in Minnesota), which is bores – the latter being the first to bloom after Christmas. specially designed to accom- Along a garden wall east of the house, espaliered with pears modate the widely varying and apples, a long bed contains pink Sheffield chrysanthe- sizes and textures of native flower and grass seeds. The A late fall view of the wildflower seeds are stored according to meadow looking south, with birch grove and white pine in the background. 17 size in three separate boxes and fed directly to the drills. The Books tain, and an array of small ing pedestrian or motorist the role of civic ritual, machine cuts furrows with eight separate tills; then the drills signs that stated the menu. on the busy commercial amusement parks, and archi- located behind the tills drop the seeds into the furrows and a There were many reasons, street. As they grow scarcer, tectural follies in the forma- wheel presses them into the soil. About twenty-five different not all of them made public, the old signs become collec- tion and reinforcement of flowers and five different grasses can be seeded during one Delirious New Orleans: why “the Doodle” – after tor’s items. They appear in the city’s racial geography – a operation. Manifesto for an three generations and nearly glamorous photography segregated social landscape That’s all there is to it. The first year, the new meadows at Extraordinary American City sixty years of serving patrons books that tantalize with that was brutally exposed in Twin Maples were mowed four times; thereafter, only once a By Stephen Verderber from both sides of the graphic appeal, neon the aftermath of Hurricane year, in April. Additional native species have periodically been Austin: University of Texas town/gown divide – finally emblems of a vanishing Katrina and in the uneven planted in woodland, wetland, and garden areas since. The Press, 2009 called it quits. Suffice it to America. distribution of its impact. results are nothing short of spectacular – and, at times, unex- say that nostalgia does not In Delirious New Orleans: Another analyzes the deploy- pected, which makes the meadow a fascinating friend in daily When the pay the A Manifesto for an Extraor- ment of Federal Emergency life. Yankee rent and a dinary City, the author’s main Management Agency (FEMA) From the beginning the Thomases did some extensive Doodle family theme is commercial vernac- trailers – those toxic white planting of understory trees, which are now mature, eventually closed its business is ular architecture and the boxes that came to represent to replace what Douglas Thomas refers to as the “telephone doors in by nature extraordinary, cumulative the malfeasance of our gov- pole” trees that had remained after the dramatic drive was laid 2008, New idiosyn- meaning that these everyday, ernment’s response to the out by her husband. The meadows appear framed within Haven lost cratic. But if offbeat, buildings, signs, disaster – and emphasizes stands of larches and groves of birch trees, which have been more than even if you and artifacts have in our the instances of their inde- limbed up to reveal the stark whiteness of their trunks. Seen its most never sense of place and belong- pendent appropriation. from the house, the meadows appear like long, crested waves famous tucked into ing. The project began when In the wake of Hurricane of color – yellow Rudbeckia, purple-blue Monarda fistulosa, greasy a “Dandy” architect Stephen Verderber, Katrina, Verderber wrote this deep pink Echinacea – among tall Indian and big bluestem spoon. The (double then teaching at Tulane “manifesto” to guide archi- grasses, to name only a few. Last summer, to everyone’s sur- city also lost hamburger University’s School of tects, city planners, and citi- prise and delight, the annual fringed gentian bloomed, having a fantastic piece of signage with bacon, lettuce, tomato), Architecture, embarked on a zens in the remaking of New taken its time to germinate over the preceding decade. that signaled the small or delighted in a butter-fried self-described “delirious” Orleans and to offer lessons Larry Weaner told me he has another life as an amateur diner’s presence at the inter- donut, you might still miss mission to photograph the to other cities grappling with composer, and that he sees in music a rapport with garden section of Elm and York the presence and patina of city’s rich collection of road- urban change. His title calls design, especially in the creation of meadows. Indeed, his Streets in the Broadway an old place and the vibrant side architecture and arti- out to the Dutch architect meadows are certainly orchestral in composition, incorporat- shopping district. A striking sign that was its calling card. facts that he had come to Rem Koolhaas and his 1978 ing many interrelated elements: on an early summer evening, composition in red, white, Vintage signs delight us appreciate. After Katrina, the book Delirious New York: the hues and whisperings of the perennials, annuals, and and blue, the sign featured a in part because they are displaced author returned to A Retroactive Manifesto for grasses, like the string section, are complicated and comple- jaunty figure wearing a but- anachronistic. Hand-lettered New Orleans and the specific Manhattan. Koolhaas, mented by the swoop of birds, the alighting of butterflies, and toned tunic and folded toque or rendered in a blaze of sites of his original pho- though, was careful to quali- the glimmer of fireflies among the long stems, together build- who, perched above the neon, they are talismans of a tographs to document the fy his use of manifesto “in ing to a visual crescendo. doorway, strode purposefully passing age in retail and wreckage. The first chapter is an age disgusted with them.” In early November, the effect was more muted, the palette a into the space of the side- its tradition of small-scale devoted to this photographic His poetical text – evoking russet brown; seed heads clustered far above my head. The cir- walk with a cup of steaming proprietorship. When local record. In subsequent chap- the city’s grid, Coney Island, cuitous mowed paths led me deep into the midst of this dense coffee on a tray. The figure businesses succumb to ters, he goes on to look in the skyscraper, and Rocke- sea of grasses, and just as I felt enclosed, the path would open framed a carefully lettered well-heeled competition like more detail at both the feller Center – stressed rich up to a clearing with a labyrinth of stones – or, in another text – “Yankee Doodle Coffee chain stores and shopping development of commercial description and vivid analy- direction, into an orchard of apple and peach trees whose and Sandwich Shop” – that centers, so recedes the stock vernacular architecture in sis over prescriptions or gnarled trunks made them seem like ancient leftovers from an beckoned passersby into an of quirky, one-off signage New Orleans and the murals polemics. And, after all, it earlier farm. As I walked back to the house along the drive, I intimate, vest-pocket space designed to attract the pass- and other forms of “folk was a manifesto for an urban suddenly turned around. A brisk wind rustled and bent the tall where a dozen or so stools architecture” that, especially grasses so that they did appear like an undulating sea, and faced the narrow lunch in the city’s African Ameri- beyond, in the distance, rolling in unison, was the borrowed counter; behind it were can neighborhoods, con- landscape of the Litchfield Hills. – Paula Deitz chrome fixtures, a soda foun- tribute so much to the city’s soul. One chapter explores 18 future that was already, if plywood pinup girl, in denim writers like John Brincker- automobile route and the individual, small-scale adap- even less hospitable by imperfectly, built. Verderber, overalls, on an adjustable hoff Jackson, who saw an owners of the house found tations gives shape to our grouping them in enclaves in his nostalgia for the icons monkey wrench. “It has been emerging American folk art themselves in a strategic streets and neighborhoods. without adequate access to and institutions of the the source of some dis- in the “flamboyant entrances location for commercial If Verderber has a gener- basic amenities, especially American roadside, is less traction to motorists for and deliberately bizarre dec- uses. City planners recog- ous appreciation for the ver- food. With the diagramming coy about his belief in the decades,” writes Verderber. orative effects” of highway nized this, too. As traffic nacular, the indigenous, and technique he used to analyze importance of recognizing This type of study is a architecture and signage. By became more intense on the bottom-up, it is matched the “masking” architecture, and preserving them. In his welcome addition to the taking seriously the local arteries such as South by his suspicion and down- Verderber scrutinizes the engaging and amply illus- research tradition that takes interventions of the com- Claiborne, many of them right contempt for initiatives patterns of FEMA trailer trated book, he argues that seriously the formation and mercial vernacular land- were rezoned to allow com- and grandiose schemes that installation “across a deliri- the buildings and signs of meaning of the ordinary scape, Verderber places mercial or light-industrial are imposed on a population ous and devastated land- the strip must be preserved landscape, celebrating its himself in league with uses. The owners could build from the top down, whether scape,” and explores some of because they are central to discord as opposed to insist- Robert Venturi, Denise Scott a commercial extension to by government, philan- the NIMBY (“not in my back the meaningful recovery and ing on its depravity. Histori- Brown, and Steven Izenour, the street – masking the thropists, or real-estate yard”) controversies that remaking of New Orleans. cally, the highway strip was the influential trio whose original facade – and contin- interests. Unfortunately, the erupted around the location Popular images of New the perennial bête noire of 1972 Learning from Las Vegas, ue to live in the house destruction wrought by of these camps. Orleans architecture include urban critics. It represented based on the results of a Yale behind the new store. In the Hurricane Katrina exceeded In the face of the govern- the cast-iron balconies of the the reign of the unplanned School of Architecture study, case of the Coin Laundry, the the damage of even the most ment’s shocking incompe- French Quarter, the above- and undesigned in the analyzed the spatial logic of addition, executed in the late malevolent developer or ill- tence, other forces stepped ground tombs of the city’s American landscape, what the strip and its system of 1920s or early 1930s, was fated urban-renewal scheme. forward to try to respond to cemeteries, and the narrow the architect and critic Peter communication based on essentially a simple wooden In the aftermath, FEMA the need. But in their ways, shotgun houses that have Blake called “God’s Own signage. If critics pointed to box with a stucco-clad fron- shipped tens of thousands of many of them were equally historically housed the city’s Junkyard.” Grady Clay called the strip as a debased exam- tispiece (a kind of mask on trailers to New Orleans to problematic. One such high- poor. But Verderber calls the strip the “dirty old man ple of American hucksterism top of a mask) that, with its serve as temporary, emer- profile effort was spearhead- attention to a feature of New of the urban scene,” and and throwaway culture, the horizontal grooves and cen- gency housing. While plan- ed by actor Brad Pitt, who set Orleans that, even if it is it was at the front line of Venturi, Scott Brown, and tral parapet made of vertical ners and politicians debated out to rebuild houses in the composed of completely what planners Christopher Izenour team found an strips, gave the extension a rebuilding strategies, these Lower Ninth Ward – an area unique elements, is common Tunnard and Boris Push- “architecture of persuasion” bit of art deco styling. trailers became the de facto of the city that many plan- to most American cities – the karev identified as the battle that might even serve as a Verderber produces a series building blocks of an emerg- ners concede might not, and indiscreet charms of the between chaos and control model for new architecture. of analytical drawings in ing, post-Katrina urbanism. even should not, come back highway strip. Among the in the built environment. As One of the most interest- axonometric perspective to As physical homes, the trail- as it was – by commissioning author’s photographs of the early as 1931, in fact, Benton ing aspects of Delirious illustrate how each commer- ers left a lot to be desired. prestigious architects from city’s exuberant signage are MacKaye and Lewis Mum- New Orleans is Verderber’s cial mask is wrapped around, They were cramped, poorly around the globe to generate images of the streamlined ford expressed the hope of analysis of how residential on top, or in front of an designed and constructed, new takes on the shotgun neon of 1940s-era lounges, many reformers with a buildings are adapted to original building, allowing ill-ventilated, and susceptible house. Architect Andrés oversized sculptures of root- proposal for “townless high- commercial functions by new programmatic opportu- to fire, all despite the consid- Duany, a founder of the beer mugs for the regional ways,” a model for limited- adding what he calls “masker nities (restaurant, hardware erable cost of producing and Congress for the New Urban- chain of Frostop drive-in access parkways that would buildings” to the original store, electronics service deploying each unit. Even ism, also came to the Gulf restaurants, starburst aes- eliminate the clutter of pri- structure. The Coin Laundry shop) and reintroducing the more distressing was the Coast to lead a series of thetic and theme motels of vate intrusions on the visual on South Claiborne, for building to the street. The lack of coordination between “charrettes” (meetings of the 1950s, and a variety of and social realms of the example, was originally a drawings help explain a FEMA’s many subcontrac- planners, architects, and the other artistic neon creations highway. cross-gabled, Craftsman-style common building process in tors, leading to long delays public) with community for businesses ranging from Verderber rejects the house, probably built around American cities and show in distributing and installing members in several of the flower shops to bakeries. Or paternalistic view of the strip 1920. The original house was how the accumulation of the trailers and in connect- city’s parishes. The charrettes consider the case of South and takes inspiration from set back from the street to ing them to electricity and Claiborne Hardware. Some- allow for a modest front other basic services. The time in the 1950s, propri- yard. But the street soon trailers were not built for etors mounted an oversized developed as an important long-term habitation. But FEMA made living in them 19 took on a “delirious, surreal which they were placed – while moving, is also some- viable? To be sure, there is shock. But should it have almost surreal effect, like atmosphere all their own,” Verderber recognized the what jarring. Although this is some room in the contem- been preserved in place? A Robert Rauschenberg’s Verderber writes. “How was a seeds of urban rebirth in the a story about a failed preser- porary cultural economy of phantom presence that sig- Angora goat with the tire homeless, shell-shocked tradition of the chaotic high- vation effort, a monumental cities for nostalgia, history, nified local authenticity around its middle. audience to take seriously . . . way strip that he unabashed- and high-design church has and curatorship of the built despite the fact that its In one sense, Novella the romanticized images of ly celebrates. very little to do with the kind environment. There are source was gone? No matter Carpenter is out to change canals, idyllic footbridges, In the poignant essay that of streetwise, ad hoc urban- some neighborhoods where how much we miss the all that. She is a full-fledged and pastoral town squares closes his book, Verderber ism that Verderber has it is a sophisticated sign of Doodle, it is difficult to urban farmer – growing mel- presented to them by Duany veers a bit from his estab- championed over the course distinction and authenticity imagine a satisfying way for ons in the yard, extracting and his team?” Putting aside lished themes to recall the of his book. And yet this per- for a new store to preserve that sign to have been pre- honey in the living room, the glaring question of who plight of the St. Frances sonal remark again brings the vintage signage associat- served. The sign’s value as an and slaughtering ducks in was going to pay for all of Xavier Cabrini Church in the home the fact that the places ed with a previous tenant. object was bound up with the bathtub – and she’d love those idyllic footbridges, the Gentilly district of New in which we live, shop, and But every commercial sign the lives of the people who it if more of us were doing New Urbanist approach – Orleans. The church, erected worship are at the core of cannot become a sentimental ran the enterprise and dis- the same. But what makes tastefully dressed up in the in 1963, was demolished in who we really are. relic. If that were the case we played it. And if people, not this book at once vastly plea- trappings of an idealized 2007 despite having survived Although many readers would live in a city full of splendid signage, make up surable, deeply weird, and neighborhood – was another Katrina in decent shape. will share the author’s affec- empty signifiers and might the soul of a place, then that very, very funny is that so far example of a solution com- Verderber was a parishioner tion for the commercial lose a grip on precisely that spirit may as likely be found she’s one of the few people ing from outside the com- at the church and worked at landscape so lushly docu- sense of place that the signs in a FEMA trailer as in vivid crazy enough to try it – and munity rather than being a length to preserve the struc- mented here, we remain had at one point helped to enamel and neon. she’s learning on the fly. homegrown enterprise. ture, which he saw as crucial uncertain of how to apply produce. – Elihu Rubin In both her book and her In a surprising twist, to the parish’s sense of place. the question of preservation Still, there is no denying apartment, she’s doing Verberber takes the FEMA Despite establishing the his- to commercial structures. that, for many, the local bar Farm City: The Education nothing less than remaking trailers and uses them as an toric significance of the The commercial landscape is or diner can serve a function of an Urban Farmer the urban environment. example of the city’s enter- church (designed by the by nature transient because like that of a church – as a By Novella Carpenter Rauschenberg’s goat would prising spirit. While most of noted, regional-modernist the ways we buy and sell are common space where people New York: Penguin Press, be right at home in her yard. the trailers were grouped in firm of Curtis & Davis), the always changing and cannot come together. I even think 2009 In 2003, when Carpenter monotonous, isolated camps, availability of alternative be frozen in time. In New it’s possible that some New and her boyfriend, Bill, there were instances of plans that would have Orleans, these changes were Haveners came to worship at The title of this abandon Seattle “untethered” trailers that accommodated both the dramatically exacerbated by the church of the Yankee delightful for Oakland, found their way to the com- church and a new school to Hurricane Katrina, but the Doodle, with its syrupy memoir about California, their mercial strip, where propri- be built there, and several truth is that the commercial vanilla cokes pulled from the raising meat new hometown etors set up mom-and-pop efforts to secure a legal strip as celebrated by soda fountain; to witness and potatoes in has the highest food operations. And there injunction, the diocese went Verderber was already dying, Lewis Beckwith, the founder, the Oakland murder rate in were renegade occupants ahead with the demolition replaced by both big-box and then his son Lou, and ghetto is not an the country: a who defied FEMA’s rules for its own reasons. The stores at one end of the finally his grandson Rick, easy one to man is shot against personalizing or author was clearly stung, and spectrum and online shop- smear butter on a thin ham- remember. dead just a few altering the trailer’s exterior. he speaks directly to those ping at the other, just as the burger patty hot off the grid- Certain nouns – blocks away the “In roadside commercial who oversaw the destruction arterial streets themselves dle. Many will miss the “country” and day they move contexts, [they] applied neon of the church: “Shame on all have been largely replaced by sustenance it provided, both “girl,” “oil” and in. On the signs and related advertise- of you who worked to bring interstate highways. We build gustatory and spiritual, for it “slick” – pair upside, there’s a ments to the banal, charac- about the senseless loss of up sentimental and aesthetic represented the spirit of a together nicely, Buddhist tem- terless trailers.” In the messy, Cabrini Church and its bonds to buildings and time and place that is now but “farm” and ple across the individualized appropria- parishioners’ cultural and signage related to old busi- past. Certainly the absence of “city” are not among them. street, a friendly vegetarian tions of the trailer – unteth- spiritual legacy.” This essay, nesses, but who will be its sign near the corner of In fact the two words even named Lana with a pet ered from the often sterile financially responsible for Elm and York Street was a repel each other slightly, so and underserved enclaves in their preservation when they that seeing them yoked are no longer economically together creates a jarring,

20 guinea pig down the block, author decides to raise her carport. The grocer talks to a lot of things in this book, For Carpenter, a love of to watch and learn the tech- and a big vacant lot just own turkeys for Thanks- her about beekeeping in like winemaking and swarm food leads to a love of farm- nique: behind their apartment. giving dinner and orders a Yemen and the local chil- capturing, passing along ing: it’s good to know where Every once in a while Forsaken houses and ruined combo package of meat dren show her how to shoot helpful hints as she learns your dinner comes from. there is a car chase down businesses are so common birds from the Murray dice. Slowly, too, the street them herself. (Postal workers Conversely, as even the most MLK: squealing tires, in the neighborhood, in fact, McMurray Hatchery website ventures into the garden. are alarmed by packages of rudimentary vegetable gar- police sirens, engines that the local residents call it that she begins to feel like Some people ask for food, bees. A chicken tractor is a dener knows, nothing tastes opening up. If the pur- Ghost Town. To the new the real thing. A few days others steal it. Neighbors worthwhile investment. quite like a tomato you’ve sued car careens around arrivals, though, the empty later, the mail carrier drives drop by to gossip, or with Don’t transport manure in succeeded in growing your- our corner, it soon lot is not a memory but a up with ten chicks, two seeds for her to plant, or to your car.) self – and yes, for Carpenter, encounters a dead end: a vegetable garden waiting to ducklings, two goslings, and complain about the smell of One of the book’s ironic the same holds true for schoolyard circled by a happen. two turkeys – whom Lana’s the pigs. Children come reversals is that just as many bacon. With animals, though, twenty-foot-tall fence. Not Carpenter is no dewy- sister promptly christens around to marvel at the rab- rural farmers have become the equation is obviously having options, the car eyed sentimentalist, and she Harold and Maude. bits. Friends arrive to help dependent on urban centers more complicated, and she thieves usually throw makes that clear from the Certainly, the arrival of her kill her first turkey. to sell their goods, Carpenter doesn’t shy away from those open the car door and start, just so nobody gets the the birds – and then the rab- Carpenter’s tiny but thriving can’t quite break all ties with complications. There is a lot sprint to the fence. I wrong idea. “I have a farm bits, and then the pigs – enterprise becomes not an the country: every once in a of death in this book, as timed them once: five sec- on a dead-end street in the keeps Carpenter hopping at alternative to the street’s while she has to jump in the there is on any farm – some onds to get to the top. ghetto,” she begins. “My her city farm, but of equal ecology but a part of it. Farm car and leave town to go pick intentional, some accidental, The cops got out of their backstairs are dotted with interest are all the other city. grapes or buy a pig. Most some at her hands and some cars, lights flashing, and chicken turds. Bales of straw warm-blooded animals mak- Although readers might entertaining, though, are her at the hands of others – and watched them climb away come undone in the parking ing their homes on this initially be distracted by the attempts to have it all right the author’s musings about to freedom. area next to my apartment.” dead-end street. Lana, we author’s agricultural machis- at home, such as when she the cycles of consuming and She is, however, a romantic, learn, runs a speakeasy every ma, she proves to be as much and Bill decide to feed their being consumed are unfail- But watching is not the and she believes that farm- week in her warehouse. The at home in the library and pigs exclusively from the ingly engaging. same as doing, and, in ing is in her genes; her par- monks cook large vats of rice the kitchen as she is in the spectacularly varied cuisines Finally, however, it is the Maude’s moment of desper- ents were back-to-the-land on the sidewalk and share pigsty. Her narrative is pleas- available in the city’s dump- unexpected as much as the ate need, Carpenter discovers hippies who tried home- their food with the hungry. ingly interspersed with refer- sters, or when she tries to inevitable that makes this that she is a terrible fence steading in Idaho soon after Mr. Nguyen, the Vietnamese ences to Wendell Berry and subsist for the month of July memoir so seductive. In one climber: she and her sister were born. neighbor who lives down- Henry David Thoreau and entirely on the produce of suspenseful scene in Farm I got a startling reality Unfortunately, the smoke- stairs, tends his own small Anthony Bourdain; nine- her farm, food received from City, Maude, one of the her- check into what remark- house burned down and the patch of taro and chrysan- teenth-century market gar- barter, and wild forage. “The itage turkeys, ventures able physical strength it dog had to be shot; her themum. And Bobby, an dens in Paris; the history of 100-yard diet had so height- beyond the safety of her own took to scramble up a father would go off hunting elderly black man who sleeps animal husbandry; sharing ened my senses, I started to yard and flutters over a high chain-link fence. The for days, leaving her mother in an abandoned car nearby, behaviors among primates. see food everywhere. Every fence to meet the neighbors metal cut into my hands; alone with the children and sweeps the glass off the She pores over copies of The shrub, tree, and weed I who live behind the auto my toes were jammed chores. So why not farm in block every evening. Whole Earth Catalogue and encountered quivered with shop: a Rottweiler and a pit painfully into the small town, where there’s always As the author becomes Stalking the Wild Asparagus potential usefulness,” she bull. The tale of a farm fowl openings. Once near the something going on, and you less wary of her new neigh- and Charcuterie and French recalls. “I could also smell dying in the teeth of preda- top, I had to negotiate to can be surrounded by other borhood she ventures Pork Cookery. She even hec- a hot dog a mile away.” tors is a familiar one, of an area without razor people? further afield – by bike, on tors Bill about the sins of Hunger and moral right- course, but it has never been wire. My biceps quivered. In Carpenter’s view, being foot – to look for delectable wastefulness by reading eousness, she discovers, are told quite like this – with a I was a weak Spider- an urban farmer involves weeds for her rabbits, or to aloud passages from M. F. K. not an appealing combina- long aside on the difficulties Woman. I yelled discour- more than tending a few pick wild plums from the Fisher’s How to Cook a Wolf. tion. of climbing a chain-link aging words to the dogs stalks of corn and some rotting roof of an abandoned But finally the learning is fence to rescue your bird. in my best stern voice: tomato vines in the back in the doing, and Carpenter Yes, Carpenter explains, as a “No. Bad dogs! No.” yard. Even chickens don’t is appealingly game in ghetto resident she has had really count. It isn’t until the her attempts to expand her plenty of opportunities expertise. She gets up to 21 Unsurprisingly, Maude is discarded Yummy House her artist’s palette for one by saying: name the most recent – shade-loving species, with a beyond rescue by the time cakes for the pigs. Throw comprised of flats of plants. Miller aims to teach her nod to her reliable favorites: To my eye, the ideal com- Carpenter hits the asphalt. some rotted horse manure Miller’s artist’s eye has readers how to create com- Helleborus, Alchemilla, position is one that looks (“There was only one way on your dreams, don’t fence aided her over the past three positions of plants that pro- Anemone, Geranium, Salvia, almost unplanned – but that scenario – turkey meets out your neighbors, and decades in her creation of vide visual interest during Sedum, Thalictrum, Hosta, and this actually requires care- dogs – could have played something miraculous might several public gardens that the four seasons of the year. Yucca); one to grasses, such ful planning and experi- out.”) And yet the scene itself happen, right on the street adorn parks and campuses To do this, of course, as several varieties of ence with plants. The is still surprising, because where you live. – Alice Truax in New York City and else- requires an approach to gar- Miscanthus sinensis along great English gardener the author defeats our stylis- where. Their painterly array dening as a science in which with oat grass (Helictotrichon and writer Vita Sackville- tic and thematic expecta- Parks, Plants, and People of ornamental plants would the variables of time and sempervirens) and golden West called this kind of tions at every turn: the By Lynden Miller not have thrived under the weather need to be under- Japanese forest grass gardening “a kind of hap- tension of a turkey’s murder New York: Norton, 2009 conditions of heavy use and stood. “If you know your (Hakonechloa macra ‘Aureola’); hazard luxuriance, which is improbably drawn out by environmental stress if her plants well,” she writes, “you one to annuals, including a of course comes neither burning rubber and police Today designs were will have no reason to leave a star performer, Ageratum by hap nor hazard at all.” sirens; the effort of protect- renowned as a not grounded park or garden devoid of houstonianum ‘Blue Horizon’ This type of planting may ing a farm animal inspires designer of in sound hor- plant pleasures in winter. (floss flower); one to bienni- look as if some invisible respect for the athletic public spaces, ticultural Evergreen foliage, interesting als like Digitalis (foxglove); hand had just dropped prowess of a car thief; and Lynden B. knowledge. bark, and colorful berries are one to bulbs, including the plants here and there, the impatient reader realizes Miller’s pro- Parks, Plants, the joys of the season.” Allium, the ornamental but the effect takes con- that there may be moments fessional turf and People is The words “if you know onion plant; one to native siderable organization in life when urban crime is the urban thus both a your plants well” are, of plants, with Hydrangea quer- and definition. suddenly seems less impor- park and city tour of several course, key. As Jekyll cifolia (oakleaf hydrangea) tant than what’s happening square. Her beautified The mixed border – a observed, “Many people being her favorite. to a pea-brained turkey. book Parks, public land- long bed in which bulbs, begin their gardening by Once you have your In the end, we come to Plants, and scapes and a perennials, annuals, shrubs, thinking that the making palette – this means a large think of Carpenter herself as People (2009) primer for and low-growing trees com- and maintaining of a well- catalogue of mental images an amalgam of contradic- is in part the making gar- bine to create a tapestry of filled flower border is quite of plants and an informed tions, a sort of gimlet-eyed story of her present career. It den art, whether public or plants – is Miller’s particular an easy matter. In fact it is sense of their seasonal utopian who believes that we began in 1982 in the Conser- private. specialty. During the 1970s one of the most difficult growth habits – you then are all, in a sense, living on vatory Garden at the Harlem Throughout she refers to when she lived in England problems in the whole range need to master the elements borrowed land, and that we end of Central Park, when Elizabeth von Arnim, she looked with an attentive of horticultural practice.” To of design: foliage contrast, should therefore perhaps she accepted the newly Gertrude Jekyll, Vita Sack- eye at the mixed borders make her borders, Miller repetition, form, line, scale, redefine our notions of com- formed Central Park Conser- ville-West, Louise Beebe contained within a structural thinks of form, texture, and and color. Here Miller shows munity and survival. Take vancy’s challenge to restore – Wilder, and other earlier gar- framework of paths, walls, color, giving one section to how the large, smooth, blue what you need, she suggests, or better, to re-create – the den writers whom she and hedges at Sackville- trees and shrubs, with flow- leaves of a hosta contrast and give back what you can. tripartite, Beaux Arts garden counts as her literary com- West’s Sissinghurst, ering dogwoods, magnolias, with the “thin, yellow-green Surplus tomatoes for the that Commissioner Robert panions and mentors. Christopher Lloyd’s Great and broad-leaved evergreens strappy leaves” of golden Black Panther tutoring pro- Moses had inserted into For instance, in a long chap- Dixter, and Lawrence such as holly (for winter Japanese forest grass; how gram, honey for the Yemeni Frederick Law Olmsted and ter titled “The Art of Garden Johnson’s Hidcote – all color) taking pride of place; softly undulating grasses grocer. Wild plums when Calvert Vaux’s Romantic Design,” Miller starts off places where gardening is one to perennials, which she repeat the flow of falling you’re hungry, fish guts and landscape in 1936. Her suc- demonstrated to be one of calls “the flesh” on the gar- water; how the necessary cess and the widespread the fine arts. Practicing the den’s “bones” (here she rec- “crisp discipline” of an edge acclaim the garden received lessons she learned from ommends a host of sun- and is softened by the way a plant encouraged Miller, who was their creators and other pro- is allowed to spill over it; then a painter, to trade in ponents of this form of gar- how hedges create sight lines den design – Rosemary Verey and at the same time serve to and Penelope Hobhouse, to

22 contain exuberant plantings; ably ones that are beautiful Contributors how complementary colors during at least three seasons; such as blue and orange or a protecting them with unob- single color in many differ- trusive temporary fencing ent shades can create an while they are getting estab- Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Haltom of One Writer’s Katherine Harmon is an author of City Bountiful: effective design. lished; and preventing inju- Heinz Professor of Sustain- Garden: Eudora Welty’s Home award-winning writer living A Century of Community Like other good garden rious salt and chemicals able Communities in the Place, forthcoming in fall in New York City. Her work Gardening in America writers she cannot omit dis- used to remove snow on Department of Urban and 2011 from the University has appeared in newspapers, (University of California cussing soil: “Ideally it paths from leaching into the Environmental Planning of Press of Mississippi. magazines and literary jour- Press, 2005) and coauthor, should be dark brown and soil are just some of the the School of Architecture of nals. Currently a reporter for with Jeff Hou and Julie M. smell fresh, and it should things that must be added to the University of Virginia, Paula Deitz is editor of the Scientific American, she has Johnson, of Greening Cities, make a ball in your hand regular good maintenance where he has taught for the Hudson Review, a magazine an honors graduate degree Growing Communities: when you squeeze it. If the practices such as watering, last twenty-four years. He of literature and the arts from the Missouri School of Learning from Seattle’s Urban soil is in good condition weeding, pruning, mulching, has written more than published in New York City. Journalism. Growing up Community Gardens (Univer- your hands will hold mil- and so forth. Miller believes fifteen books about sustain- As a cultural critic, she in Oklahoma, she worked in sity of Washington Press, lions of invisible micro- that public gardens are cyno- able cities and place making, writes about art, architecture, gardens big and small. 2009). organisms, more than there sures of the city and symbols including, most recently, and landscape design for are people on the face of of good urbanism. In this Biophilic Cities: Integrating newspapers and magazines Ben Helphand is the execu- Elihu Rubin, Ph.D., is an the planet.” She recommends respect, the word “people” in Nature into Urban Design here and abroad. Of Gardens, tive director of Neighbor- architectural historian, city soil testing by one’s state her title is significant. “Well- (Island Press, 2010). For a collection of her essays, Space, a nonprofit, urban planner, and documentary extension service or a private maintained parks tell people Planning Magazine, Beatley has recently been published land trust dedicated to pre- filmmaker. Since 2007 he has company; soil amendment to that their city cares about writes a regular column, Ever by the University of Penn- serving and sustaining com- served as the Daniel Rose relieve compaction, poor them and give them a com- Green, about environmental sylvania Press. munity-managed open Visiting Assistant Professor drainage, or nutrient defi- pelling reason to remain in and sustainability matters. spaces in Chicago. He is on of Urbanism at the Yale ciencies; and various types of the city,” she concludes, a He also recently collaborated Jane Garmey is a noted gar- the board of the Active School of Architecture. He compost – the gardener’s belief she affirms with an on a documentary film about den writer and a contributor Transportation Alliance and received a doctorate in gold – to meet the demands anecdote: green cities, entitled The to the New York Times. currently serves as president architecture and a master’s of different kinds of plants. Nature of Cities, which has Born in England, she is the of the board of the Friends in city planning from the A visitor once said to me, Public sector gardeners been shown on PBS stations author of Private Gardens of the Bloomingdale Trail, a University of California, after experiencing the must deal with the same around the U.S. of Connecticut (Monacelli community group that advo- Berkeley, and a bachelor of Conservatory Garden for vagaries of weather and infu- Press, 2010), The Writer in the cates for the conversion arts from Yale. His docu- the first time, that she had riating depredations of Jane Roy Brown is an award- Garden (Algonquin Books, of an elevated rail viaduct on mentary films include On intended to leave New garden pests as private gar- winning writer, editor, and 1999), Great British Cooking: A Chicago’s northwest side Broadway: A New Haven York, but if there was a deners. But they have other landscape historian. She is a Well-Kept Secret (William into a multi-use linear park. Streetscape and Rudolph and place like this in the city, challenges to overcome as Landscape Architecture Morrow Cookbooks, 1992), Renewal. she wasn’t leaving. . . . well, as Miller makes clear in Magazine contributing editor and Great New British Laura Lawson is professor With so much to divide a final chapter devoted to the and the director of educa- Cooking (Simon & Schuster, and chair in the Department Alice Truax is a freelance edi- us, one thing seems com- subject. Having on site an tional outreach at the Library 1985). She lives in New York of Landscape Architecture at tor, writer, and writing mon to us all: everyone enthusiastic, trained garden- of American Landscape and in Cornwall, Connecti- Rutgers, The State University instructor at Sarah Lawrence loves to be surrounded by er capable of communicating History, a nonprofit organi- cut. of New Jersey. Her research College. A former editor at something beautiful. with the public; selecting the zation that produces books subjects include historical The New Yorker, she has right kinds of plants, prefer- Her motto is “Make it and exhibitions about and contemporary commu- been the associate editor of gorgeous and they will come; American landscape history. nity open space, with partic- Site/Lines since 2008. keep it that way and they She is coauthor with Susan ular focus on community will help you.” gardens and the changing – Elizabeth Barlow Rogers roles of parks in low-income communities. She is the

23 Volume vi, Number ii Spring 2011

Publisher: Foundation for Landscape Studies Board of Directors: Vincent Buonanno Kenneth I. Helphand Robin Karson Nancy Newcomb Therese O’Malley Laurie D. Olin John A. Pinto Reuben M. Rainey Frederic Rich, Chairman Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Margaret Sullivan

Editor: Elizabeth Barlow Rogers Associate Editor: Alice Truax Assistant Editor: Margaret Sullivan Copy Editor: Margaret Oppenheimer Designer: Skeggs Design Contributors: Timothy Beatley Jane Roy Brown Paula Deitz Jane Garmey Katherine Harmon Ben Helphand Laura Lawson Elihu Rubin Alice Truax Landscape Studies Landscape

For more information about the for Foundation for Landscape Studies, visit www.foundationfor landscapestudies.org., or contact [email protected] 7 Street 81st West New York, NY 10024 Foundation Foundation