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