All of this sounds potentially vexing and may suggest that your first instinct was correct: just do it and don’t worry about getting tangled up in the bureaucracy. If it’s going to be so bothersome, why bother?
Because the payoff can be worth it. And anyway, it isn’t right to give up on the local government simply because it’s hard to move. Yes, it can be work — but it’s necessary work, and not just for your project. The system is there to serve us. Some of the people running it don’t always understand that, but the more they get to meet dedicated and persistent gardeners who believe public spaces should be good for the public, the more the whole churning apparatus is likely to change for the better. Even if it does take a long time.
Vancouver residents, for one example, used to be civically harassed for planting beyond their lawns in the narrow grass strips between the sidewalk and the street. It was city property,
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City official Alan Duncan
but people did it anyway, and in such numbers that it eventually made sense to not only allow it, but encourage it. Now there’s even a section of the Engineering Department that works to help residents plant boulevards, corner bulges and traffic circles. It’s called Green Streets, and it’s a good model demonstrating how a city can not only tolerate but encourage the public desire to improve the shared environment. I know it works because I’m part of a group that tends the traffic circle on my street. The city was good to us, letting us do our own design and then providing the soil and plants we requested to fill it. They even gave us an official safety vest, but no one uses it. We found that neighbors will go out of their way to thank anyone working in the plot — unless you wear the vest. In that case they think you’re a city employee and can’t wait to rag on you about potholes and taxes.
Q&A
Alan Duncan — Key to the City
Alan Duncan also knows about the Green Streets program from personal experience, although from another side. He's been working for the city of Vancouver for 16 years, serving as an environmental planner and designer for various departments of City Hall and the Parks Board.
He's also a landscape architect who occasionally teaches at UBC, which is where I met him. He was one of the tougher profs but also one of the hardest working himself. I liked his practical and straight-forward approach to design problems, and hoped he might be equally as direct when asked for advice on working with city officials.
Q: Are there any common misconceptions about the bureaucracy? Something we've always gotten wrong?
A: No. They're actually made up of people. Some people are more receptive to ideas than other people are.
Q: What about: You can't fight City Hall. True or false?
A: Interesting word to use. I think if you actually want to do something, fighting is not the way to go. Most people who fight end up putting someone in a defensive position. I think the way to work with City Hall is actually work with them. To act as if you're actually partners in the process. And to approach them as partners, not as taking an aggressive stance. A lot of people come forward and say, Look what they do in Seattle. Why aren't you doing that here? It's like, well, we all do different things for different rea
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sons. I wish people came forward and said, I was in Seattle and I saw this and talked to all my neighbors and we'd like to try it out on my block and we've had fundraisers for the last six weeks so we actually have some money to put into it and we've figured how much it would probably cost and we figured we could put in this much sweat equity. Then you've got city going, Oh, they've actually thought it through, they've researched it and they're willing to contribute, they're not just demanding that we do something for them.
Q: A lot of people think that when they run up against the bureaucracy the default answer is No, we've never done it that way. Is there some way to get past that initial no?
A: When I first started with the city we spent an awful lot of time saying no and sending out letters. We noticed you planted a tree in front of your property, you have to remove it or we will remove it for you, stuff like that.
Q: Which is not what you'd want to be doing with your day.
A: Of course not.
1 am led to reflect how much more delightful to an undebauched mind is the task of making improvements on the earth, than all the vain glory which can be acquired from ravaging it,
— George Washington
TREES RECOMMENDED FOR IMPROVING AIR QUALITY
City air can get dirty (which you already knew). But did you also know it kills? An estimated 60,000 people die each year in the US from health problems brought on by air pollution. Shocking, yes, but there is one thing we can do about it right away: install more filters. In other words, trees.
The following trees are recommended for their air-cleaning properties:
English elm — Ulmusprocera
Linden — Tilia europa
Western hemlock — Tsuga heterophylla
Paper birch — Betula papyrifera
European ash — Fraxinus excelsior
European larch — Larix deciduas
Tu I ip tree — Liriodendron tulipifera
Dawn redwood — Metasequoioa glyptostroboides
American beech — Fagus grandifolia
American elm — Ulmus americana
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DESIGN TIP
Simplify, simplify, simplify. Was it Thoreau who said that? And wouldn't it have been less complicated to just say it twice? Or even once?
The point is, don't try to cram too many things into too small a space. New gardeners often get lost in the parts. They think of all the wonderful flowers or fruit or vegetables they might get, rather than considering first the nature of the site and what it really ought to be. Try to see things spatially and you'll be more apt to create a harmonious site which not only pleases the eye but also has an internal logic that makes filling in the various spaces a joy. You can still have all the variety of things you like, but when they fit into a design they'll help shape the overall beauty of the site.
Q: But you have to because that's the law and if people don't follow the law, my gosh, what would we have?
A: So there was an attitude shift saying, People want to do it, why don't we find a way to accommodate it, what's the big problem? The problem is people plant inappropriate species or they overplant the boulevard so you can't get out of your car. Okay, let's just make some guidelines we can live with. So that's what we did. Now when someone phones up and says, I want to plant my boulevard, we say, Great, go online, we've got guidelines for how to do it. It's all common sense stuff like leave space so someone can get out of their car if they happen to park in front of your garden, have a couple of stepping stones so people can actually cross the boulevard.
Q: Why did that work here and not other places?
A: I don't know, maybe lack of imagination. One thing they figured out here fairly early on is it was way cheaper to have the public plant and maintain a traffic circle than .it was for them to pay a crew to go out and plant it. When they first started out they used to provide money for people to go out and buy plants. Then they figured they didn't even need to do that. Let's say it costs $400 to plant a traffic circle with junipers, something really mundane. If someone is going to do it for free, and look after it, what would you figure? If you have to a run a program which maybe takes a third of one person's time, it's a huge savings over time. Plus it makes the streets more beautiful. I think it makes the traffic circles and corner bulges more unique, and it does slow traffic down. People are actually looking at it not as something in the way but as something to look at. It's a matter of a win-win here. I think for Engineering it was doing the simple math and realizing they would save a fortune.
Q: What about getting something that does cost money? Is there a strategy that works when you can't use the budget savings argument?
A: Windsor Castle is an example. It's a lot on Windsor Street. It was acquired originally for road-widening. It became clear we were never going to wider the road, in fact it was to get narrower, so some of the people during this greenway consultation process said they'd like to have a gathering place there. Maybe a kids' play area, whatever. They organized themselves and we met with them. We kind of told them what the situation is: we don't have a lot of money, it's not a park so it won't get park maintenance, so
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4
if we even do anything it's kind of your baby. They said they were OK with that, and it went through a design process and came out with a pretty simple design. The ideas came from them, and they were different from what we would normally do. It was called the Windsor Castle. Of course, that sounds very English, right? How politically incorrect is that? And yet all these ethnic people were going, Hey, that's a great idea, it's so obvious. So we said we can provide some basic stuff. OK, put in a gravel walkway and a sandbox. We said, You don't want a sandbox because that's where needles go and cats poo in them and they said, Well we don't have drugs in our neighborhood and there's no reason a cat would go out of their way to use this sandbox instead of a garden anywhere else and anyway we'll look after it. And they have, every year, and it's been 10 or 12 years now.
Q: Does it pay to get to know city staff? It could take a lot of energy.
A: Yeah.
Q: Suck up?
A: Buy them. I'll take real estate.
Keep a garden journal. It can provide you later with valuable inside information you would probably have forgotten otherwise. Or at the least it can give you an entertaining way to review successes and failures long after the fact.
Among the things you might record are: plant purchases, harvest results, pest control experiments, unusual weather events, soil amendment techniques, tree pruning strategies, tips learned from neighbors, seed collecting projects, hopes and dreams for the future, and anything else that goes through your mind at the time you pick up the pen.
I took the easy route in buying an already formatted 10year gardener's journal, and it's great, but you could make your own over an ambitious weekend. The point is to get something attractive and durable enough that you make it a regular habit, even if only to record the temperature and weather before jotting down one observation or fact or garden note of interest each day. Thomas Jefferson did it, and he was kind of busy too, so you can forget that excuse.
Pegged with dew, dappled with dew
Are the groins of the braes that the brook treads through,
Wiry heathpacks, flitches of fern,
And the beadbonny ash that sits over the burn .
What would the world be, once bereft
Of wet and of wildness? Let them be left,
O let them be left, wildness and wet;
Long live the weeds and wilderness yet.
— Gerard Manley Hopkins in
“Inversnaid”
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Die when I may, I want it said of me by those who know me best, that I always plucked a thistle and planted a flower where I thought a flower would grow. — Abraham Lincoln
Q: I was actually thinking of smaller gifts of non-value.
A: No.
Q: I mean like flattery. Platitudes.
A: Tell me how young I look. My god you look good. Oh really, you think so? Sometimes if you just phone in it's easy to brush someone off. But if you show up with drawings or pictures, it can help.
Q: With or without an appointment?
A: Either or. If you were showing someone something they might say. You know, that looks like something the landscape architecture technicians handle. They might go, you know what, that's actually a Green Streets program and they'll be able to help you. And the only reason is because you went in and showed them something. If you phone you get a receptionist who gives out numbers but may not actually know what people are doing.
Q: Speaking of the phone, something I've always wanted to know. When we call and you're not there, is our call really important to you?
A: Oh, some people still say that. I think it's so hokey.
Q: E-mail?
A: E-mail's good. It's easy to respond to. And now you can attach anything. Copy it to other people.
Q: What about dealing with the psychopath? There's one on every staff list. The person who, for whatever reason, is very difficult and makes it impossible to get things done.
A: There are psychopaths on both sides of the fence. We have to deal with psychopaths too, and there are some real wackos out there. Sometimes you just have to say, I'm going to hang up now because I don't want to go through the whole story again because nothing has changed and I'm sorry but get a life. A psychopath on the inside is certainly a challenge. I've been on projects where engineers especially change a lot — they want them to have a lot of breadth, while we in planning have a different approach, or maybe there's more commonality. But sometimes you'll be on a project that's going really well and the engineers are really with it because they're young and hip and then you get a deadbeat or malcontent who comes on board and that's it. And all you can say is, I'll let that one sit on the shelf for a while and I'll focus my efforts somewhere else. Sometimes it works going around them,
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but sometimes it doesn't. Sometimes if you're not getting anywhere with someone on staff because they're so obstructionist it's better to just go ahead and do it and then invite the City Council to the opening. Make it look like it was their idea and they were so helpful and staff kind of go, OK, I can't exactly speak out and say I think it's stupid now that Council thinks it's great and the community loves it. There's no one size fits all either. Sometimes you just have to do it in a guerrilla way. Just be smart. Whatever you re doing make sure it's neat and tidy, make sure there's not a liability, make sure there's no danger.
Q: Any last tips? Or advice on what not to do?
A: Be respectful. When you do something think about what impact it'll have on other people. Try to think about the long term. One of the issues when people do stuff is what happens when they lose interest or move away. That was a big one for the Engineering Department with Windsor Castle. A lot of projects depend on one or a few people, and the worry is what'll happen when they're gone. Interestingly, the go-getter on that one has left. The city's part was, we have to have faith and hope for the best. And you know what? It has worked out. I think again it's your approach. And to have a really good project with strong support from neighbors who say, We want to do this.
IF I CAN DO IT...
Tom Wuest — Downtown Farmer
"We thought if we started doing something the owner would show up. Before then this lot was trash and weeds."
Vancouver's Downtown Eastside is home to Canada's largest concentration of poor, jobless, addicted, mentally ill and socially challenged people. It also attracts a lot of folks who aim to help, including the ones who run Jacob's Well, a Christian group. Two years ago they went beyond the level of most do-gooders by getting more involved in the neighborhood, right down to the soil level. They took over an empty lot to grow food.
They now sell the harvest to project supporters on a commissioned basis. This practice, called Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), is gaining popularity all over North America. It's a response to the crisis of the family farm and the growing interest in securing local, organic produce, but this is the first time I'd heard of it being tried from an inner city lot through guerrilla gardening. Tom Wuest took a few minutes from dividing the
Downtown farmer Tom Wuest
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This community-supported farm was a rubbish-filled lot just one year ago.
weekly harvest — a generous supply of beans, blackberries, kale and more — to explain how it happened.
We saw this empty lot and did a land title search but couldn't find the owner. We got the name of a company but couldn't locate it.
So we decided to come in and clean up the lot ourselves, really in an effort to find the owner. We thought if we started doing something the owner would show up. Before then this lot was trash and weeds. It was completely overgrown. Fenced in, locked up, signs saying No Trespassing. We picked up a lot of needles, an old carpet, beer bottles. In this neighborhood you can imagine the stuff we pulled out.
We started by shaping the growing beds; The soil was pretty poor. There had been a house 14 or 15 years earlier, but it had burnt down. We decided to truck in compost. We got in touch with the landfill for the city of Vancouver. We were a non-profit organization so they gave it to us for free. They didn't ask anything about ownership, and at that point we still didn't know whose land it was. That first truckload, 14 cubic yards, took care of only a small portion of the front. We moved our way back like that, through 10 or 15 truckloads.
We got in contact with a turkey farmer nearby and brought some turkey manure in the fall. Also Home Depot every week donated about a vanload of perennials that people weren't going to buy. On the alley side of the garden we planted roses and lavender as a way of beautifying the area. People walking back and forth can enjoy it now. We wanted this to be a beautiful space.
It's really amazing how well it has worked out. We've gotten a lot of feedback from people on the street. One woman said,
You have no idea what this garden means to us. But it's just to look. It's not open to the public. That's to prevent theft and also out of respect to the owners who don't want to keep it open. We do unlock it when we're working in here, and the other garden we started across the street is open all the time.
What did the owners say when they found out? At first they said they felt violated and excited at the same time, so it was an interesting mix of emotions. Since then they're quite excited. Their main concern was liability. They had it insured as a vacant lot so knowing we were here was a problem for them. But they liked what we were doing. One person in the family has a background in landscape architecture and the other son is in Toronto doing some work with homeless advocacy so it was a great family that
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ended up owning this lot. Now that we insure the liability, they're happy. A lease has been drawn up, and we're just waiting to sign it. Basically it says we're here until they decide to develop it, and we're fine with that.
From the beginning we wanted to use the produce, which we are, in the community kitchen every Tuesday when we have a meal with our friends down here. We're also distributing it to ten or twelve families in the neighborhood. But we realized when we started growing that we had far too much for that alone. We really want this to be eaten. It's organic and local so we had the idea to sell five shares in the program for $200 each.
We did it through word of mouth, just by talking to people, most of whom were connected with Jacob's Well. For eight to ten to twelve weeks — however many weeks we have produce growing — every Wednesday they can come here and pick up their food. We harvest and separate each share.
Does it work out to be a good deal for them? I don't know. Probably not. But we still have to see what happens. We told everyone in the introduction letter, This is an experiment. What you'll get is local organic produce and you're helping us start an experiment on what can be produced in a vacant lot. Everybody's real excited to see what can happen in an abandoned area. We hope it works, enough to do more, maybe expand it to at least one other lot. I'm sure other communities could do it too.
POWER PLANT
Scarlet runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus)
This may not be the plant of "Jack and the Beanstalk" fame, but it is a close cousin with the same genetic vigor. In the Pacific Northwest where the summers never get so hot that the flowers will drop early, we can plant a few of these attractive purple and black beans into the warm soil and then step back to enjoy the show. The speed and enthusiasm with which a runner bean develops is impressive. It's a robust vine with winding stems and heart-shaped emerald green leaves that will power its way up anything close by. Put it next to a building and it quickly shows its disdain for the ground floor in a race for the roof. Put it next to a 10-foot-tall pole and it will scale the pole and then some, waving about in the clouds until gravity finally sends the reluctant tip back down.
Then come the flowers, a generous spray of pea-shaped blooms in a splash of color pretty enough to please anyone. FJummingbirds and bees love them. And as if all this were not enough, there's still a crop to come.
Scarlet runner bean — Phaseolus coccineus
Credit: From Gottlieb Tobias Wilhelm's "Unterhaltungen aus der Naturgeschichte" (Encyclopedia of Natural History), published in Vienna from 1810, illustration by either Paul Martin Wilhelm or J. Schaly.
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Pick the pods when they're young and tender and you can eat them raw or cooked like any other green bean. If you don't get them in time, the pods turn thick and fuzzy, but that's OK too. Just wait a few more weeks to harvest the dry beans inside to cook in soups or stews the way you would garbanzos or lima beans.
Scarlet runner beans are an excellent way to transform an ugly chain link fence or wall into a floral display you can also eat. They also make a good cover for a child-friendly teepee. Start with a base of three bamboo poles stuck into the ground and meeting at a point in the center. Plant three or four seeds about one inch deep around each pole. Later that summer you'll have your own green-themed hideaway.
Did you know: The flowers and the tuberous roots are also edible, and still enjoyed by indigenous people in Central America.