[Lapg] Fwd: green revolution

[Joan Stevens]

Nice when young people are so clear about what makes sense!
  Joan

Tony Moss <tonymoss at verizon.net> wrote:
  Date: Fri, 14 Jul 2006 10:46:37 -0700
From: Tony Moss <tonymoss at verizon.net>
Subject: Fwd: green revolution
To: Joan <joaniebird007 at yahoo.com>

> Hey, maybe you can send this to the guild, Tmoss

>


> Redefining American Beauty, by the Yard
> By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
>
> LAKEWOOD, Calif.
>
> WHEN Cecilia Foti, a seventh grader at the Bancroft Middle School 
> here, was asked to write a “persuasive?essay for her English class in 
> the spring semester, she did not choose a topic deeply in tune with 
> her peers ?the pros and cons of school uniforms, say, or the 
> district’s retro policy on chewing gum and cellphones.
>
> Instead, she addressed the neighborhood’s latest controversy: her 
> family’s front yard. “The American lawn needs to be eradicated from 
> our society and fast!?she wrote, explaining that her family had 
> replaced its own with a fruit and vegetable garden. She argued for the 
> importance of water conservation, the dangers of pesticides and the 
> dietary benefits and visual appeal of an edible yard. “Was the Garden 
> of Eden grass??she reasoned. “No.?lt;br>>
> In this quintessential 1950’s tract community about 25 miles southeast 
> of downtown Los Angeles, the transformation of the Foti family’s front 
> yard from one of grass to one dense with pattypan squash plants, 
> cornstalks, millionaire eggplants, crimson sweet watermelons, dwarf 
> curry trees and about 195 other edible varieties has been startling.
>
> “The empty front lawn requiring mowing, watering and weeding 
> previously on this location has been removed,?reads a placard set 
> amid veggies in oval planting beds fronting the street.
>
> The sign is a not-so-subtle bit of propaganda proclaiming the second 
> and most recent installment of Edible Estates, an experimental project 
> by Fritz Haeg, a 37-year-old Los Angeles architect and ersatz 
> Frederick Law Olmsted. The project, which he inaugurated on the Fourth 
> of July weekend in 2005 in a front yard in Salina, Kan., is part of a 
> nascent “delawning?movement concerned with replacing lawns around the 
> country with native plants, from prairie grasses in suburban Chicago 
> to cactus gardens in Tucson.
>
> It is a kind of high-minded version of “Extreme Makeover: Home 
> Edition.?As Mr. Haeg put it, “It’s about shifting ideas of what’s 
> beautiful.
>
> “It’s about what happens on that square of land between the public 
> street and the private house. It’s about social engagement. I wanted 
> to get away from the idea of home as an obsessive isolating cocoon.?lt;br>>
> The Fotis volunteered for the project after reading about it in early 
> 2006 at treehugger.com, an environmental Web site. Cecilia’s father, 
> Michael Foti, a 36-year-old computer programmer and avid gardener who 
> raises chickens in the backyard, was eager to put his environmental 
> politics into practice.
>
> “I am looking to think differently about this space,?Mr. Foti said of 
> the family’s once-placid front yard. “I want to look outward rather 
> than inward.?lt;br>>
> The delawning was accomplished over Memorial Day weekend by a SWAT 
> team of some 15 recruits who read about the project on Mr. Haeg’s Web 
> site. Mr. Haeg arrived armed with three rented sod cutters , a 
> roto-tiller and a dozen rakes and shovels, and within three days the 
> yard was transformed.
>
> The new garden has caused much rumbling in the neighborhood, a 
> pin-neat community originally built after World War II for returning 
> G.I.’s where colorful windsocks and plastic yard butterflies prevail. 
> Some neighbors fret about a potential decline in property values, 
> while others worry that all those succulent fruits and vegetables will 
> attract drive-by thieves ?as well as opossums and other vermin ?in 
> pursuit of Maui onions and Brandywine tomatoes.
>
> But the biggest concern seems to be the breaching of an unspoken 
> perimeter. “What happens in the backyard is their business,?said a 
> 40-year-old high-voltage lineman who lives down the street and would 
> give only his initials, Z.V. “But this doesn’t seem to me to be a 
> front yard kind of a deal.?lt;br>>
> In spite of its contemporary media-savvy title, Edible Estates is a 
> throwback to the early 20th century, when yards were widely regarded 
> as utilitarian spaces, particularly in working-class neighborhoods. As 
> recently as the 1920’s and 1930’s, decorative lawns ?which in this 
> country date back at least to George Washington’s Mount Vernon and 
> Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello ?were still largely the province of the 
> elite, according to Ted Steinberg, a historian at Case Western Reserve 
> and the author of the new book “American Green: The Obsessive Quest 
> for the Perfect Lawn?(W. W. Norton). The yard was for putting food on 
> the table, Dr. Steinberg said, in the form of vegetables, goats, 
> rabbits and small livestock.
>
> It was not until the postwar period that the notion of the lawn as the 
> “national landscape?developed as a vehicle for upward mobility, with 
> zoning setbacks designed to encourage clover- and dandelion-free 
> perfection ?“the living version of broadloom carpeting,?Dr. 
> Steinberg said.
>
> While backyards remained private, the front yard evolved into “a 
> ceremonial space that appears effortlessly and without labor,?said 
> Margaret Crawford, a professor of urban design and planning theory at 
> the Harvard Graduate School of Design. “In middle-class 
> neighborhoods,?she said, “the idea of actually using the front yard 
> is extremely unusual.?lt;br>>
> Mr. Haeg, who was raised in suburban Minneapolis, now lives in a 
> geodesic dome in East Los Angeles with a subterranean sprayed-concrete 
> cave worthy of Dr. No. Covered in mouse-brown asphalt shingles, it 
> dates to 1984; he found it on the Internet in 2000. Soon after he 
> moved in, he began cultivating edible plants like kale and pineapple 
> guava in his terraced garden, and he surrounded the dome with 
> trellises for grapevines.
>
> Mr. Haeg is perhaps best known in Los Angeles for his Sundown Salons, 
> which transform his three-level, shag-carpeted home into an 
> alternative cultural space that attracts artists, other architects, 
> recent M.F.A. graduates and assorted gadflies. The theme and tenor of 
> the once-a-month gatherings, which began shortly after he moved in, 
> have varied; they’ve included traditional literary gatherings as well 
> as gay and lesbian performance art and all-night knitting and “make 
> your own pasta animal?sessions.
>
> Mr. Haeg has taught at several colleges, including the Art Center 
> College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., where he oversaw his students?
> design and construction of Gardenlab, a campus community garden, 
> beginning in 2001. He is now designing a house for a film executive in 
> the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles and a rooftop garden for an 
> apartment complex in downtown Los Angeles.
>
> Mr. Haeg selected Salina as his first Edible Estates site for its 
> heartland symbolism ?it is close to the geographic center of the 
> country ?and found his first subjects, Stan and Priti Cox, through 
> the Land Institute, a Salina-based organization dedicated to 
> ecologically sustainable agriculture, where Mr. Cox worked as a plant 
> geneticist.
>
> “I didn’t feel any emotion,?Ms. Cox, 38, said of her defunct sod 
> expanse. “It was monotonous. Now my senses are stimulated.?lt;br>>
> Mr. Haeg is planning seven more Edible Estates sites. (Coming soon: 
> Baltimore and Minneapolis.) Though he lacks training in landscape 
> architecture or horticulture, he has been shrewd in his recruitment of 
> plant-literate people with sunny, treeless front yards.
>
> So far each “estate?has been planted to reflect its region: the Cox 
> garden in Kansas is heavy with okra and corn, with a smattering of 
> bitter gourd, pimento and curry trees in deference to Ms. Cox’s Indian 
> roots. The Fotis?yard in California is resplendent with pomelos, 
> oranges, mandarins and other citrus fruit.
>
> Mr. Haeg regards the Edible Estates project as something of a 
> manifesto. He fantasizes about setting off a “chain reaction?among 
> gardeners that would challenge Americans to rethink their lawns ?
> which he insists on calling “pre-edible?landscapes ?though he knows 
> the chances are slim. Still, he wants to make a point.
>
> “Diversity is healthy,?he said. “The pioneers were 
> ecologically-minded out of sheer necessity, because they had to eat 
> what they grew. But we’ve lost touch with the garden as a food 
> source.?lt;br>>
> What is theoretical for Mr. Haeg, of course, has become everyday 
> reality for Michael Foti, who must live with his edible estate and 
> arrive home from a long day at the office to prune and weed and smite 
> caterpillars into the wee hours ?without pesticide, he is quick to 
> note.
>
> Mr. Foti is taking the garden one day at a time, A.A. style, a bit 
> uneasy at the thought of waning daylight. The biggest pest, he noted, 
> is “inertia.?lt;br>>
> “We sometimes joke that it’s the garden that ate our marriage,?he 
> said, then added wearily: “I do feel a certain pressure not to fail. 
> The whole neighborhood is watching.?lt;br>>
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