Ground 52 – Winter 2020 – Myth

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Landscape Architect Quarterly

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Round Table Myth Features The Dream Homestead

Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

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Flora Mythologia

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Grounding Moose Moratorium

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Winter 2020 Issue 52

Masthead

OALA

OALA

­About­

About the OALA

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects and provides an open forum for the exchange of ideas and information related to the profession of landscape architecture. Letters to the editor, article proposals, and feedback are encouraged. For submission guidelines, contact Ground at magazine@oala.ca.

Ground reserves the right to edit all submissions.

The views expressed in the magazine are those of the writers and not necessarily the views of the OALA and its Governing Council.

The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects works to promote and advance the profession of landscape architecture and maintain standards of professional practice consistent with the public interest. The OALA promotes public understanding of the profession and the advancement of the practice of landscape architecture. In support of the improvement and/or conservation of the natural, cultural, social and built environments, the OALA undertakes activities including promotion to governments, professionals and developers of the standards and benefits of landscape architecture.

Councillors Cynthia Graham Cameron Smith Justin Whalen

Upcoming Issues of Ground Ground 53 (Spring) Normal?

Associate Councillor—Senior Leah Lanteigne

Deadline for advertising space reservations: January 13, 2021

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Editor Glyn Bowerman

2020–2021 OALA Governing Council

Photo Editor Jasper Flores

President Jane Welsh

OALA Editorial Board Kanwal Aftab Shannon Baker Trish Clarke Eric Gordon Mark Hillmer Eric Klaver Sarah Manteuffel Alexandra Ntoukas Nadja Pausch (Chair) Kaari Kitawi Dalia Todary-Michael

Vice President Kendall Flower

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Ground 54 (Summer) Rising

Appointed Councillor Liat Margolis

Deadline for editorial proposals: February 15, 2021

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Appointed Educator University of Toronto TBC

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Ontario Association of Landscape Architects 3 Church Street, Suite 506 Toronto, Ontario M5E 1M2 416.231.4181 www.oala.ca oala@oala.ca

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Copyright © 2020 by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

Contributors retain copyright of their work. All rights reserved.

ISSN: 0847-3080 Canada Post Sales Product Agreement No. 40026106

OALA Staff

Cover The “Jeffersonian” grid, Illinois farmland, aerial view. By Elen Deming, page 12.

Ground: Landscape Architect Quarterly is published four times a year by the Ontario Association of Landscape Architects.

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Advisory Panel

Andrew B. Anderson, OALA – Inactive Member, BLA, MSc. World Heritage Management Landscape & Heritage Expert, Oman Botanic Garden John Danahy, OALA, Associate Professor, University of Toronto George Dark, OALA, FCSLA, ASLA, Principal, Urban Strategies Inc., Toronto Real Eguchi, OALA – Retired Member, Toronto Donna Hinde, OALA, FCSLA, Partner, The Planning Partnership, Toronto Ryan James, OALA, Senior Landscape Architect, Novatech, Ottawa Alissa North, OALA, Associate Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Peter North, OALA, Assistant Professor, University of Toronto, Principal of North Design Office, Toronto Nathan Perkins, MLA, PhD, ASLA, Associate Professor, University of Guelph Victoria Taylor, OALA, Principal, Victoria Taylor Landscape Architect, Toronto Jim Vafiades, OALA, FCSLA, Senior Landscape Architect, Stantec, Toronto

Contents

Up Front Information on the ground

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Myth The Dream Homestead

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Round Table Myth MODERATED BY TRISH CLARKE, OALA Michael Hough: Man On A Mission TEXT BY KAARI KITAWI, OALA 18/

Flora Mythologia: The legendary history of plants and fungi TEXT BY SHANNON BAKER, OALA

28/ Grounding Moose Moratorium: Protecting our territory TEXT BY MILLIE KNAPP 24/

Notes A miscellany of news and events

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Artifact The myth of the suburban lawn

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Editorial Board Message

Myth can be something mysterious, inspiring, even terrifying.

Myths are our collective cultural stories that explain the world and remind us of our values—from Zeus to Skywoman. And, as Robin Wall Kimmerer notes in her book Braiding Sweetgrass: “When the green earth lies resting beneath a blanket of snow, this is the time for storytelling.”

The concept of Myth is relatively amorphous, its edges are difficult to firmly define. Myths are intangibles, almost by definition, and yet they are fundamental to our understanding of the world around us.

Nature-Based Solutions Landscape architects understand the importance of nature-based solutions.

This is reflected in our upcoming 2021 Congress theme Nature-Based Solutions: The Green Recovery that Ensures a Great Recovery.

These solutions are increasingly relevant in addressing the biggest issues of this moment, like the need to reduce greenhouse gasses, and to help provide a connection to nature during the pandemic.

More information on Congress 2021 can be found here: www.oala.ca/news/2021-csla-oala-congress/ OALA Taking a Stand with Provincial Leaders Transportation Minister Caroline Mulroney held a meeting with OALA’s Municipal Outreach Committee on Oct. 28 to discuss landscape architects’ concerns with the government’s plan to install electronic billboards on 400 series highways and rail lands. Committee Co-Chairs Cynthia Graham and Robert Norman identified the need for criteria and standards to evaluate billboard proposals and locations, and the Minister requested a follow-up meeting.

TEXT BY NADJA PAUSCH, OALA

In December, the OALA submitted a letter to the Premier expressing concerns that changes to the Planning and Conservation Authorities Acts identified in Bill 229 would undermine the independent voice of conservation authorities.

The OALA also submitted comments to the NDP on their Green New Deal, in response to their request. There needs to be bold action to meet the climate crisis in Ontario and the OALA suggested a number of ways Ontario can best invest in green infrastructure and build resiliency.

Taking a stand with provincial leaders to advocate for landscape architecture is the work of many dedicated volunteers. If you would like to contribute to raising this awareness, please contact me or the OALA office.

Winter 2020 Issue 52

Editorial Board Message

President’s Message

TEXT BY LISA VANDERVLIET, OALA

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President’s Message

Together we can make a difference.

JANE WELSH, OALA, FCSLA OALA PRESIDENT PRESIDENT@OALA.CA

The ways in which we perceive landscape and nature are inherently tied to mythology. The hero’s journey is defined not only by particular events, but also by the landscapes through which the hero travels in their quest for actualization. The landscape serves to strengthen the symbolism and meaning in the mythological narrative.

Which landscapes we perceive as dangerous, safe, or beautiful are informed, overwhelmingly (and often subconsciously), by the stories in which these landscape typologies appear. Majestic mountaintops, dangerous forests, and gardens of paradise are all archetypal landscapes, reinforced through storytelling, which resonate deeply with our collective psyche.

On the other hand, landscapes are in many ways the physical manifestation of mythology. The American Dream; ideas of colonial success; mythologies of beauty, power, progress, and grandeur; even our ideological perceptions of restoration; all play themselves out through our shaping of the Earth’s surface. Perhaps this is why we, as the Editorial Board, were so drawn to ‘Myth’ as a theme for this issue. As landscape architects, we strive to imbue meaning into the landscapes we design: sometimes through the creation of new narratives, but largely through uncovering and making legible the cultural layers which already exist. The Roundtable explores this idea of cultural myths in the landscape and our role as land-based professionals.

When myths factor into our shared understanding of the world around us, they are a unifying force, facilitating a common ground from which to interact with one another. However, myths can also reinforce harmful or outdated attitudes about our spaces, to the detriment of the people who experience them. Particularly in today’s society, where there is increasing division, we ought to both design and protect landscapes which strengthen our communal ties and reinforce our shared humanity.

NADJA PAUSCH, OALA CHAIR, EDITORIAL BOARD MAGAZINE@OALA.CA

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Up Front

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PANDEMIC

pop-up patios Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, we have seen many rapid and pragmatic changes to how we safely use the public realm. The City of Toronto’s CaféTO program throws a lifeline to restaurants and bars by allowing for much needed outdoor dining and physical distance in the public realm. The program required collaboration between the City of Toronto, Business Improvement Areas (BIAs), restaurants, and design firm IBI Groups’s placemaking team. Central to the team’s landscape architecture efforts are Astrid Greaves and Trevor McIntyre.

Astrid and Trevor played a key role in navigating the challenges between unique streetscapes, transportation modes, the dining experience, and the overall sense of design. “It was a design strategy solution

Up Front: Information on the Ground

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The Drake Hotel

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Astrid Greaves

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E.L. Ruddy Co. Cafe

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Astrid Greaves

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The Painted Lady

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Astrid Greaves

Up Front

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to this economic public health issue,” says Astrid. “All of a sudden, the City had to source thousands of bollards and planters.”

“It went from 0-100 literally overnight,” says Trevor in reference to the program’s rapid start and continued output.

CaféTO partnered with 51 BIAs, over 1,000 restaurants, produced over 300 drawings, and animated spaces along approximately 450 road closures throughout Toronto.

Prior to the start of the program, it is estimated a third of restaurants in Toronto had permanently shut down, and many more would follow if outdoor dining in the public realm wasn’t made possible. It is in this context that CaféTO’s bold vision and pragmatic implementation arose to allow for expansion of dining into the sidewalks and streets of Toronto. The idea of expanding patios in the public right of way was not necessarily a new idea, as restaurants have advocated for this several years prior.

However, Trevor says, “The pandemic causes you to rethink risk.” In practice, this meant “resilience, setting aside differences and being responsive.” Trevor emphasized the dedicated efforts of the team behind CaféTO. From talking with Trevor, there is a strong sense of stability in coming together to solve complex issues from the CaféTO team that will remain after COVID.

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CaféTO’s expanded patios illustrate the key role for placemaking during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many of the patios had relatively humble beginnings as standardissue fluorescent bollards, planters, and catalogue patio furniture. The pop-up and tactical nature of the spaces taking over roadways allowed for low cost of entry to restaurants. Trevor clears up any misconceptions for design critics comparing their local CaféTO installation to a King Street Parklet, crucially: “This is not about design, it’s about people’s jobs and livelihoods.”

Despite these patios’ utilitarian functions, many were creatively upgraded to bring the characters of Toronto’s restaurants into the streets. Trevor says, “Even if they don’t want

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E.L. Ruddy Co. Cafe

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Astrid Greaves

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The Drake Hotel

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Astrid Greaves

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Le Baratin

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Astrid Greaves

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Giovanni’s Pizza

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Astrid Greaves

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Churchill

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Astrid Greaves

Up Front

to sit on the patios, people realize it’s a cool thing, and it’s nice to see a bit of normalcy.”

This is a glimpse of the power of physical distancing, food, people, and placemaking in the new normal.

Many of these patios were forced to close in November, to allow for winter road maintenance. While the City looked for ways to help restaurants winterize their patios, rising COVID cases have forced a new ban on patio dining. Regardless, there is much speculation about what will become of the program, post-pandemic.

Trevor says the City must decide to return to the “old normal,” or if the patios add real value. Either way, the pop-up patios have made a significant impact.

exceptionally long hiatus. While the snow and frost may get in the way of some on-site work, winter is an excellent time for the design portion of, well, designing landscapes. This misconception is also related to...

Number 3: Landscape architects are landscapers

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Astrid says, “We often run into the issue of space for automobiles, which seems like an insurmountable obstacle to more people-oriented initiatives in the city.”

Perhaps, in the post-COVID city, there can be more consideration for the planning, design, and activation of streets. Besides the quick pace of work and highly visible results with this project, for Astrid, “It was refreshing to be prioritizing pedestrians, public realm, and restaurants.” CaféTO’s rapid and pragmatic adaptive use of the public realm shows the resilient potential of landscape architecture when everyone comes to the table.

myths about the profession

In anticipation of this Myth issue of the magazine, we asked Ground readers to share the myths about landscape architecture they wish could be dispelled.

No gripe is too small: this is an opportunity to get it all off your chest. The responses were appropriately passionate, and fairly amusing (with some emotional distance).

What follows is the distillation of some of the standout answers: Number 5: No harm in seeking some free advice While at the backyard barbecue party, it would be considered incredibly bad manners to ask a visiting dermatologist about your skin condition. First of all, that’s sort of private and, second of all, parties aren’t considered billable hours. Yet, strangely it’s not generally considered as taboo to ask a landscape architect their thoughts on where to put the hostas. If you have an LA over, please let them enjoy their hotdog in peace.

Number 4: “What do you do in the winter?”

08 TEXT BY STEVEN SHUTTLE, A MASTER OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE STUDENT AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH.

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The general population might be surprised to learn landscape architects don’t just get the winter off. This is Canada, and that would be an

No. Different job, actually. But this is a misconception that goes all the way to the bank. One Ground reader wrote that they had real trouble getting bank funding for their firm, back in the day, because banks were concerned about the lack of any “tools of the trade” in the business plan. Now, the plan made ample mention of light tables, stools, conference room furniture, etc. But, seeing no mention of lawnmower, shovel, rake, or wheelbarrow, all but one bank passed.

Number 2: Landscape architects are the “plant people” Look, landscape architects love plants.

That’s a given. They understand, respect, and are generally pretty excited about plants. But they’re not horticulturalists (also a different job), and they can’t necessarily “fix” your grass and make it greener. As a result of this narrow idea, coupled with the general tendency to think of landscape as an afterthought, one reader expressed frustration with projects where they were left to try to fit plants into predesigned spaces those organisms couldn’t possibly survive in, and/or “pretty up” the landscape.

Number 1: “That we’re well paid” I mean in this economy? Sometimes you do it for the love. There’s always journalism, but I wouldn’t recommend it.

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Cropped detail of “Garden Wheels.”

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Bruce Evans, via Flickr Creative Commons licence

TEXT BY GLYN BOWERMAN, A JOURNALIST, HOST OF THE SPACING RADIO PODCAST, AND EDITOR OF GROUND.

The Dream Homestead

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The Dream Homestead

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The house, gravel pit and freshly weeded vegetable garden beside a crop of white beans. Everything in the foreground of this photo is part of the gravel pit today.

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Courtesy of Lisa VanderVliet

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The farm’s cedar swamp and rehabilitating gravel pit which later became cow pasture and housed the farm junk pile.

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Courtesy of Lisa VanderVliet

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TEXT BY LISA VANDERVLIET, OALA

I always knew I wanted to return to the country to live. I was raised on a farm in Southern Ontario, and from a young age planned to have a plant nursery, make a living growing unique crops, and own a house with lots of plants inside and out. I also wanted to create beautiful landscapes.

I wanted to be near forests like the ones we had on our farm. But, somehow, I found myself approaching middle age living in suburbia—feeling a little stuck. I never pictured myself as a suburban girl, and I wanted my two boys to have the playground I had growing up. Life has a way of teaching us though, and experiencing a world-wide pandemic and living in isolation can change your outlook on life. I went from viewing my suburban plot as an inadequate stopover in my journey through life, to a newly discovered paradise. It is human nature that many of us cannot appreciate what we have until we step away and look back, or experience an event that makes us see things differently.

This longing to “go back” was largely due to the fact my siblings and I had one of the best playgrounds you could ever imagine growing up. Our farm was 200 acres in size, too small to make a living on by today’s standards, and the land was never considered premium “working” land with its hills, proliferation of rocks, and wet springs. But it was ideal for childhood explorations and imaginative play. A quarter of our property was a cedar swamp full of springs. Part of that swamp was a rehabilitating gravel pit, and my Dad’s family pastured cows on it. My two sisters, brother, and I spent hours on end exploring the hills of sumac and white cedar. We had stick forts, tree houses, our own private tent sites, ponds, creeks, rafts made out of old barn doors, hills to toboggan on, and, later, trails to snowmobile and mini-bike through.

Part of our farm was a functioning gravel pit. It was a treasure trove of fossilized rocks, granular hills, and silty, shallow ponds with emergent plant species. Not long after we took the farm over from my grandparents,

The Dream Homestead

my young siblings and I explored this moonlike territory on a hot spring day. We were too young to swim without our parents’ permission, but these are the things you do when playing in unchartered territory on a hot day and happen to come upon an aqua-blue, clear-bottomed pond. Going back to ask for permission would take too long, and we didn’t want to risk a “no” for an answer. So we stripped down to our t-shirts and underwear and joined the 1,000 or so tadpoles in the pond. We splashed about until I looked up into the setting sun and realized my dad was standing over us.

We were all in trouble, but not enough to make us regret one of the greatest days of our childhood. After this great discovery, I remember telling my new classmates at school that we got a pool.

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All along the edge of the cedar swamp was the tractor path that lead to the farthest part of the farm. As an adolescent, this solemn path was my saving grace. I took my evening freedom, when all chores were done, and walked along the worn, grassy path. These walks enabled me to sort through all my newfound confusions, as the world around me became more complicated and emotional.

Contrary to the richness of the farm’s landscape and terrain, I noted when we moved to the farm, the house did not look rich at all. As a kid, I was embarrassed of it. It was wooden, covered in red asphalt siding—sometimes referred to as Insul-bric— which peels away over time and exposes the raw wood panels beneath. A couple of our windows were covered over inside,

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Friends would come from farms all around us to snowmobile and toboggan in winter.

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Courtesy of Lisa VanderVliet

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The Dream Homestead

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“ My grandmother standing proudly in the doorway of her first owned farm home in Canada—which would later become my home.”

Courtesy of Lisa VanderVliet

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but on the outside the window and panes were still in place, exposing pink fiberglass insulation behind the glass. My grandparents put white aluminum siding on one side of the house only, and that’s the way it stayed until my parents sold the farm in the mid ‘90s. My negative assessment of the house, however, is how my love of indoor plants travelled to the exterior. From that early age I began to build gardens everywhere to try and improve our homes’ appearance. Any money I made or was given would go towards flowers and shrubs for gardens I had created. The first shrub I bought was a Bristol ruby red weigelia. I would drag rocks from the fields, cedars from the swamp, and rusty junk from an old junk pile my grandparents left behind. I made a lily pond and utilized an old rusty sewing machine as a piece of garden decor amongst the flowers. Dad told me I couldn’t keep bringing junk up from the old farm refuse pile and placing it around the house. When mom and dad moved to town

later, the old sewing machine moved with them, and it was placed beside their new lily pond. Before dad passed away, he gave the sewing machine back to me and it sits beside my lily pond where I live today— along with many other rusty farm relics, including some old dairy milk cans.

Our current home purchase came much later in life than I ever dreamt. My husband and I were holding out for that rural property until one day I decided that any sized yard would do. The dream rural property would have to wait. That’s when we purchased our ’70’s suburban fixer-upper. I promised myself it would be temporary, a stepping stone. Once we fixed it up, we would sell it for a profit and move to the country where my kids could play. There was no forest or gravel pit at our new home, but it had a large lot and there was a row of mature pines in the backyard for the kids to climb—albeit Austrian. Perhaps worse than the Austrian pines were the

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ground covers of buckthorn, garlic mustard, creeping nightshade, and periwinkle beneath them. I couldn’t help having a flashbacks to my University of Guelph days as one of Victor Chanasyk’s students. We were not allowed to use Austrian pine as a salt tolerant species because “tip blight was here to stay!” And here I was about to purchase 12 of them in poor-to-moderate condition, with three already looking as though they were succumbing to the dreaded blight.

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The new backyard, with relics from the old farm’s “junk pile.”

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Courtesy of Lisa VanderVliet

Fast forward to March of 2020, when we were 12 and a half years living in this same suburbia. In that time, my husband, children, and I had many wonderful gatherings and family moments in our home, creating and growing as creative designers on a blank canvas. But I was continuously judgemental and my thoughts always veered to that future rural property.

I would never let my home be quite good enough and I never stopped thinking of it as a mere stopover. My viewpoint changed when we were all forced into self isolation as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, and took a pause to ponder our present and future. That’s when my house and lot, without changing at all, became my true refuge and sacred space. I discovered this property could make me as happy as the tractor path did as an adolescent.

Throughout that April, we worked the vegetable garden between snowfalls. We cleaned out our lily pond (my new cedar swamp), and, despite many mornings of ice layers, got our little waterfall running. We finally got around to trimming those (still) dying Austrian pines. One weekend, we were particularly stressed and worried about the pandemic. We chopped and burned dead wood, debris and branches all day—some of which were still remaining from the ice storm five years previous. The whole process kept us busy and focused on something other than a scary, uncertain future. We built an outdoor fire that smelled good and reminded us all of happy childhood memories. I discovered there is a greater joy in having a backyard fire when you worked all day to clear, gather, and chop wood like it was all that mattered. While I was clearing amongst the pines, I noticed

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for the first time the young native plants and trees we planted near the back of the property—hemlock, cedar, white pine, redbud, dogwood, and black and white spruce—were much higher than me now.

With a bit of imagination, you could pretend it was a forest, and judging from the trails amongst the trees, I could see that was where my children and their friends spent hours playing games, in their tree house, swinging on the tree ropes, and jumping on boulders we randomly placed amongst the conifers. I have no doubt this little green oasis we created allowed them to grow and play and gave them a place to solve some of their problems too.

I also grew vegetable seedlings indoors for the first time in years. It wasn’t just a hobby to prove to myself what I could do, it felt more like a looming necessity.

I needed to prove to myself I could really grow a substantial amount of food. When laying out my vegetable garden, I discovered ways I could fit more vegetables into a defined space. This was in lieu of my former designer method, where the low-textured and colourful vegetable plants went at the front to contrast the larger sculptural ones at the back. Previously, the vegetable garden layout had been at least partially aesthetic.

So, I had done a 180. Most moments during that time, I felt like the luckiest person in the world on a suburban property in Canada.

As a young kid on the farm, I had always pretended the farm was comprised of many magical, faraway places. Now I was pretending my suburban lot was my rural farm and oasis. Our creativity had enabled my family and I to have fun with our imaginations. When I am out in public spaces, I take pride in the fact that the work we landscape architects do does this for other people too.

There is no doubt my “ugly” childhood house, and all the gifts the rural land provided, shaped and motivated me into becoming a landscape architect and creating great spaces for communities. Having said that, the pandemic made me realize I had to stop trying to fix everything with landscape architecture, and instead positively direct

The Dream Homestead

environments that are affected by people in a manner that is beneficial to all life. I have heard it said, when you feel the need to “fix” things, you see things as broken, wrong, or incomplete. Hindsight is 20/20. There was never anything wrong with the farm house at all. For many social reasons, I had developed this perception it was broken.

Similarly, there is nothing wrong with my suburban lot either, just my perception of what I thought “should be.” It’s okay to want to improve things and want to find innovative new methods, I just need to remind myself to keep the material and “ownership” notions of improvement in check.

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The new back yard, vegetable garden, and another farm relic.

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Courtesy of Lisa VanderVliet

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During isolation, I took my family to our old farm for the first time. Much of the land is no longer a farm, and what was once a long tree-lined laneway, house, shed and barns is now entirely a gravel pit. The cedar swamp and the hardwood forest are still there, along with about 70 acres of arable farmland. My family and I walked through the old gate at the road and across the gravel and sand expanse. My boys were in awe that I had such a playground as a kid. I walked to the spot where I was pretty sure our house used to be and looked up at the transformed void.

Later, when I talked to my mom about our amazing visit, she asked if the transformation from farm into gravel pit made me sad. For whatever reason, it didn’t. Seeing the forests and swamp intact and growing was all I needed to see.

As with any business, farming continues to evolve. Modern farm equipment can now do much more than a single family could do with 100-200 acres 50 years ago, let alone 150-200 years ago when many of Southern Ontario’s farmsteads were first established. Over the years, my Dad found three flint arrowheads on three separate occasions, while cultivating the fields. It made me realize this piece of land has probably been swampy, attracting wildlife suitable for hunting, for a long time before it ever became farmland. The transformative changes on this land likely made people sad long before it was stripped of forest, compartmentalized, and sold off to people new to the continent— a new group of people who obtained food from the land in a completely different manner than

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the Indigenous people before European settlement. It gave me a sense of peace that some remnants of wildlife could still thrive within that remaining 50 acres of swampy wilderness, despite the land’s transformations. The springs saved it from losing all its original identity.

One of my favourite Indigenous artists, Alex Janvier, spoke of his home in Cold Lake Alberta: “We are the Land and the Land is us.” I don’t profess to understand the depth of these words the way his people did, but I’m pretty sure I have an inkling. My siblings and my spirit still reside in that swamp and forest, along with many other lives. And my spirit now dwells in the organized structure of a suburban community, with my family, closer neighbours, and the plants and trees we placed there, growing in the stillvaluable southern Ontario soil. We live with the backyard critters who inhabit these spaces too: creatures unaware of human boundaries. We all thrive the best way we know how and make the best of what we have. I want to keep appreciating and seeing the value of all the things in front of me now.

That’s what world-wide events like this pandemic make you realize: that we need to serve the environment that supports our homes with knowledge, creativity, and intelligence. We never know what transformative changes are around the corner—that is life. To be human is to learn and long for things and, as landscape architects, this is part of our craft: to want to change things for the better. Right now, my homestead is my oasis, nurturing my family and I, giving us strength for future transformations.

BIO/

LISA VANDERVLIET, OALA, CSLA, IS A PROJECT MANAGER FOR THE TOWN OF MILTON WHO HELPS CREATE DIVERSE AND ENGAGING OUTDOOR SPACES WITHIN THE COMMUNITY. SHE OBTAINED HER BLA AND ASSOCIATE DIPLOMA IN AGRICULTURE FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH AND IS AN I.S.A. CERTIFIED ARBORIST. WALKING AMONGST WELL BUILT AND NATURAL LANDSCAPES, PLANTS, WATER AND ROCK INSPIRE HER TO ALWAYS KEEP TRYING TO BE BETTER AT THE CREATIVE CRAFT OF BEING A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT, ARTIST, AND PERSON.

Round Table

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Round Table

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MODERATED BY TRISH CLARKE, OALA

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M. ELEN DEMING, FASLA, HAS TAUGHT DESIGN STUDIOS, DESIGN RESEARCH FOR PROFESSIONAL AND POSTPROFESSIONAL STUDENTS, AND DESIGN HISTORY AND THEORY TOPICS FOR THE PAST 25 YEARS. AT NORTH CAROLINA STATE UNIVERSITY (NCSU), SHE DIRECTS THE DOCTOR OF DESIGN PROGRAM—A TRANSDISCIPLINARY DISTANCE-EDUCATION PLATFORM THAT FACILITATES NEW PARTNERSHIPS AMONG DESIGNERS WORKING IN ACADEMIC, PROFESSIONAL, AND HYBRID PRACTICES. FORMER EDITOR OF LANDSCAPE JOURNAL (2002-2009), DEMING CO-AUTHORED LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE RESEARCH (WITH SIMON SWAFFIELD, 2011), AND EDITED VALUES IN LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE AND ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN (LSU PRESS 2015) AND LANDSCAPE OBSERVATORY: THE WORK OF TERENCE HARKNESS (ORO/AR+D 2017). CURRENTLY, SHE IS WORKING ON A BOOK ABOUT CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS AND HOW DESIGNERS ARE CONFRONTING SYMBOLIC HATE SPEECH BY USING INCLUSIVE DESIGN. RONALD F. WILLIAMSON IS FOUNDER OF ARCHAEOLOGICAL SERVICES INC., A CULTURAL RESOURCE MANAGEMENT FIRM BASED IN TORONTO. HE HOLDS AN HONOURS BA FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN ONTARIO AND MA AND PHD FROM MCGILL UNIVERSITY, ALL IN ANTHROPOLOGY. HE IS AN ASSOCIATE MEMBER OF THE GRADUATE FACULTY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO (ANTHROPOLOGY) AND AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY (ANTHROPOLOGY) IN LONDON AND CHAIR, BOARD OF DIRECTORS AT THE MUSEUM OF ONTARIO ARCHAEOLOGY AT WESTERN UNIVERSITY, LONDON. HE IS ALSO VICE-CHAIR OF THE SHARED PATH CONSULTATION INITIATIVE, A CHARITABLE ORGANIZATION DEDICATED TO PROMOTING RECONCILIATION IN LAND-USE PLANNING. RON HAS PUBLISHED EXTENSIVELY ON BOTH INDIGENOUS AND EARLY COLONIAL GREAT LAKES HISTORY. IN 2016, HE WAS CONFERRED THE SMITH-WINTEMBERG AWARD, THE CANADIAN ARCHAEOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION’S MOST PRESTIGIOUS AWARD FOR OUTSTANDING CONTRIBUTIONS TO CANADIAN ARCHAEOLOGY, AND IN 2019, HE WAS GIVEN HERITAGE TORONTO’S LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD. MARTIN HOLLAND, OPH.D., IS CURRENTLY AN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR IN THE SCHOOL OF ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN AND RURAL DEVELOPMENT (SEDRD) AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GUELPH, WHERE HE TEACHES CORE COURSES IN LANDSCAPE DESIGN, THEORY, AND HISTORY. HE HAS ALSO TAUGHT STUDIO COURSES AT CLEMSON UNIVERSITY, THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA – CHAMPAIGN, THE ILLINOIS INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY (I.I.T.), AND MONMOUTH COLLEGE (ALSO IN ILLINOIS). HIS DOCTORATE IS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS AT URBANA – CHAMPAIGN, AND HIS M.L.A. IS FROM THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA. HE COMPLETED HIS BACHELOR’S DEGREE AT DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY IN HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA, WHERE HE MAJORED IN PHILOSOPHY. TRISH CLARKE, OALA, IS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AT BROOK MCILROY AND A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

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Aerial view over Illinois farmland, the “Jeffersonian” grid.

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Elen Deming

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Round Table

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Trish Clarke: As landscape architects, and someone in the field of history and culture, we’re uniquely positioned to shape public space and leave an impact on surrounding communities. Sometimes these design narratives are successful, but sometimes they fail or misrepresent people. From your perspective, how do you feel cultural myths and stories from our landscape could help shape or hurt the communities they’re meant to serve?

Martin Holland: One of the first questions you ask someone is “where are you from?”

As if we can decode this meaning. If you say you’re from Halifax, that supposedly has embedded meaning. It might be

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“According to 17th century ethno historic records, the soul’s journey to the land of the dead included passage through a mixture of identifiable landscape features and mythological figures. The journey was dangerous. It involved passage by a 16 metre tall standing rock called Ekarenniondi, located near present-day Collingwood, Ontario.” — Ron Williamson Charles Williams Present-day photo of Ekarenniondi.

“This is a clear example of how a people’s landscape is inextricably linked to their world view and their most important ceremonies.”

— Ron Williamson Courtesy of William A. Fox

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different than if you’re from Moncton or Calgary. As people, we shortcut and rely on stereotypes to build a mental framework.

One of the difficulties is that we do this so easily it’s completely unconscious.

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So, we have to start to reframe some of the basic ways we address the right to the public sphere, and what we mean by “the public.”

We’re finally thinking about more diversity and understanding there are different ways of interpreting place and understanding our spatial environments. As a white male walking through downtown areas, I recognize I have a different experience than I would if I was a woman, or Indigenous. The first thing is understanding there’s no monoculture.

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Battle Park, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

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Elen Deming

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Confederate Monument at Raleigh State House, North Carolina.

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Elen Deming

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Round Table

Elen Deming: I, too, was thinking about the myth of origin. This is a very difficult question. Geographic origin, I feel, explains nothing about character. And yet, in the 19th and even the early 20th century, when the empirical world was busy trying to sort people into categories like race and ethnicity and other divisions amongst us, they would point to origins as a place where national character was formed, against the backdrop of the Alps, or the genial breezes of the shore, or the wind-swept desert.

When, in fact, it isn’t the geography quite so much as our adaptations to it, and to the way in which our cultural behaviors and values get reinforced. Our access to education seems to be a big influence. But another side of me says, “Yes, but language itself, which is so regional, actually does shape and limit what is possible for us to think and express.”

So I’ve come around full circle. I don’t want to believe it, but there’s part of me that argues against my own reasoning.

Ron Williamson: Origins is a concept central to my work. I’ve been working with the Huron-Wendat, and involved in a research project looking at autosomal DNA and material culture research, trying to navigate the very sensitive world of the origin of First Nations communities. The Huron-Wendat— who are now located north of Quebec City—very much believe that, when they returned from Ontario in 1650, they returned to a homeland. And they have origin myths recorded by anthropologists in the 19th and even 18th centuries that talk about their former location, sometimes beside the sea, but most often about emerging from a cave north of Quebec City.

The standard, non-Indigenous story of the origin of the Wendat is they developed out of pre-contact populations along the north shore of Lake Ontario, locally through interactions with other Indigenous groups, and eventually congregated in the area of Simcoe County, which became known as Huronia. That became their homeland.

Many people left there, in a number of directions, but a substantial portion ended up moving with Jesuits back to the Quebec City area. Now, all of this is very tied into their everyday concerns with their political

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identity in Quebec, and they have an entire division of council that deals with their record in Ontario, and they’re trying to put those two things together. With them, I’m involved in genetic research which asks what we, as archeologists, can contribute to the conversation about their origin? How many communities encountered by Jacques Cartier in the 1530s could we call “Huron,” who could therefore contribute to the political discussion about their homeland, locally in Quebec.

It’s a very complex record. We’re looking at genetics, material culture, and origin myths, all together, to try to sort this out.

And so I’d turn the question around: how does the people’s association with their landscape shape their myths and identities?

In my work, I would frame it that way.

MH: To the question of how do our cultural narratives help or hinder the communities that we’re working for: understanding Canada as a mosaic, rather than a melting pot is really fundamental. There’s no real unifier, other than a respect for those differences. That diversity needs to be celebrated. But the danger is we don’t often spend the time to understand those narratives or myths, and there’s like this cultural wall.

When I was in high school, we might have spent a week on Indigenous history, if we were lucky. That’s changing, thankfully, but those are the stories that— when you think about First Nations and Indigenous people, the wrongs that have happened over centuries—we really do need to work on, not only as a province, but as a nation, to understand those injustices.

RW: I used to sit on Heritage Toronto board with an Iroquoian man named Bill Woodworth. And the annual Doors Open festival was a big deal for Heritage Toronto.

Bill and I were assigned, a couple of years in a row, to go to the 21st floor of the TD Centre tower to show people around. We would talk about the view of the moraine, and how you could see the rivers flowing down into the Lake Ontario basin.

And Bill would talk to the visitors to that floor—often Asians living in Toronto who

were out to discover the city—about the link between people and the land. It might have been the first time these visitors got to see a real perspective of the land they’re living on.

He would help these people living in the city see how they were linked to the land and through his Indigenous storytelling about these buildings in the downtown context, linking it to the natural landscape.

And I saw, repeatedly, there would be tears flowing down people’s faces as he described it: the first real opportunity to link to the land of that diverse population in the city. I was really moved by it because what I thought of as a mundane experience (come on up, see the buildings in the area, look at this) turned into a really profound opportunity to connect people to the land. How many of us wander around the city without any sense of the landscape we’re actually on?

TC: That makes me wonder about the stories have we’ve been telling versus the stories we want, or should be telling. Is it our role as designers to tell them, or do we bring others into that process?

ED: We occupy land by building on it and manipulating its functions. We occupy it in defense. We hold and protect it. But for me, the most important way of occupying a place or a landscape is through work.

I was thinking about the industry of preservation, for example. And for me, the most interesting sites are not battlefields or the homes of famous men, but working landscapes—true, regional landscapes.

There are myths about gardening, farming, working the land. It gives you a secret right to hold it, almost in perpetuity. But when you look at the landscapes of the great breadbasket of North America, they’re constantly changing. They’re worked by machines, by robots. Square miles of drainage and chemical fertilizers are flooding into other regions and destroying their economies, which are equally land-based. And there’s nothing particularly virtuous about it.

But there are all these complex layers and networks of economic and political value that are cloaked in myth and narratives about virtue.

Round Table

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MH: One of the things that we, as a profession, have to really come to terms with the role we play in gentrification and the alteration of the land. We have to reflect on those values. It’s a conversation I have with my graduate students in their history and theory course: you have to find your own equilibrium and value set, because you’re going to be working for companies whose primary interests are development. So, is your adage to do no harm? Are you going to be the Albert Schweitzer of landscape architecture? And, if so, can you still have a profession and get professional work?

Students struggle with that. And rightfully so, it’s something I struggle with too.

RW: Elen’s point about virtue is one that you run into all the time, talking about a family that’s owned a landscape or a farm for generations. I was involved in a land claims case recently where there were, fortunately, a number of archeological sites used from roughly 2,500 years ago to the 19th century. And the ceremonies that were being undertaken on those sites were similar to burials, of humans and animals, in very distinctive forms that show a continuity of use of that place for an astounding period of time. People’s origin stories are linked to landscapes like I’m describing. It’s expressed in the material culture in most places. It’s a fascinating story of thousands of years of continuity, and when one encounters somebody talking about two generations of colonial use of a land, you chuckle a bit: as if that’s anything compared to what was there before they came.

There are layers of history on the landscape. Thousands of years of Indigenous use, followed by the colonial period of early agriculture for several generations. When you do aboveground heritage studies, the latter becomes the focus, and the previous thousands of years get left behind in the process. We’re actively trying to find ways to bring all that together. Because it’s really important: how do you tell stories about all of those layers, not just one of them?

MH: Right. And there’s bias about how preservation works: ‘you had someone of historical importance spend the night

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at this location, therefore it needs to be preserved.’ Versus the working class, or people that wouldn’t normally register as anyone of great importance, but yet have fundamentally changed an ecosystem or a landscape. Who gets to qualify for that?

It’s a fantastic question.

TC: In terms of design and placemaking, if there isn’t a story, do people still connect with a space? How can we share stories so people have an understanding of the narrative involved in a design?

RW: I think the word control is central to all this. If you can see something’s being controlled by some force, that’s okay. It’s when it’s not.

ED: And it’s humanized somehow.

MH: It’s removing the spread of wilderness.

ED: But the thing that I find fascinating about that control, is the level of care that a certain class of people in certain neighborhoods or towns put into manicuring their lawn—to remove the crab grass, make sure everything is whacked, mowed, trimmed, pruned, and soldierly at its edges—which is very much about announcing a level of citizenship for the neighborhood, to declare social contract, a bond of common cause. But this is a trillion-dollar industry, and it’s not good for the critters, bees and the pollinators, the drains and landfills, we do it, nevertheless.

MH: Sometimes I wonder, as designers and landscape architects, how we communicate our work and the value of it. How can you be an advocate for those systems in a way that allows people to understand the frames? And sometimes those frames, if they’re explicit, are something people can interpret. But if you’re thinking about micro-scales of people’s individual property, you really need to start to think: if we started to do this as a neighbourhood, or as a community commitment, what will the byproducts of that be? So, it’s about scale and understanding how those small little interventions can start to have a much larger impact.

And I think it’s made invisible because of other subsidies that we pay for. There’s a cost involved, but we just don’t associate with those particular costs—transportation and sewer systems are incredibly expensive. And yet, if we actually thought about redesigning landscapes, and about the small-scale implementation of those landscape systems, how do you have a much larger impact within your neighbourhood, and then within your city? That’s one more burden that landscape architecture has to take on: trying to explain this. I just wish there were more clients who were savvy and aware enough to turn off the home gardening shows, and start to think about other influences that can help to recognize that value.

Round Table

Because, I had this complaint to my master’s students: I understand the value and how fascinating the glimpse is to look at those “better home and garden” shows, but I also just really wish they didn’t exist, because they’re a reinforcement of the worst aspects of capitalism, of flipping houses, etc.

TC: How do you feel, going forward? What is your role as a landscape architect or an archeologist, and what do you see as the next step?

MH: It’s a wild time. What I see because of COVID—which I describe as an accelerant, where systems that were failing or didn’t quite work are now failing faster, where it’s revealed so much about inequities and who has power and privilege—and with the overlay of Black Lives Matter happening culturally—seeing the Confederate statuary come down, and having conversations about the role of Sir John A. Macdonald and those statuary in regards to the treatment of Indigenous Canadians—in many ways it’s a renewed attention to what was previously invisible to some people, as part of the built environment.

So, if there is a prolonged conversation about difference, and who has the right for the public square, whose stories do we elevate and why, and how do we understand those stories that never get told because they’re transmitted verbally (personal stories), if we pay more attention, it’s through that struggle I think we actually get to grow as profession. I’m incredibly optimistic, in spite all of the challenges the profession is about to face in terms of global climate change and social inequities, and I really do see us playing a role in helping to navigate some of these difficulties, and expose some of those realities that in the past have gone unnoticed or unremarked upon.

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students: they’re much more savvy and sophisticated than I was when I was a student. And that’s remarkable.

ED: Because I don’t practice as a landscape architect anymore, I’m always working vicariously through my students, through my publications, and, to a certain degree, my conversations with others. I have two different structures. Through my teaching, I’m trying very hard to teach landscape literacy, so that students understand how to look through what they see on the surface.

I’m trying to help the students understand the social, economic, and political structures below the surface of the landscape.

But the other thing that I’ve learned fairly recently, which I feel is a gift to me, is the idea of “framing.” The core activity that designers can do for their clients, for the world, and society at large (the client beyond the client) is to reframe the problem.

If we think about how to reframe narratives or offer competing, layered, or adjacent narratives, it helps people understand that a story, while powerful, is just a story, and that they still have agency of their own. Both of those approaches are meant to empower my students and my readers.

RD: From the archeological perspective, to speak about Indigenous archeology for the moment, I think what’s coming is, Indigenous archeology done by Indigenous communities and companies. We’ve been heading that way for the past 30 years, in terms of a growing awareness

of the colonial and destructive nature of archeology. We’ve entered a relationship with the Huron-Wendat to do exactly that, to have them do their own archeology in Southern Ontario on the thousands of sites that are here.

That’s very empowering, in terms of the ultimate goal of archeology. And our role will change to one of support, rather than directing. And it’s very interesting how that development is occurring at the same time as people are really embracing this thing that we’re calling storytelling. I’m sitting in one panel at our fall session of the Ontario Archeological Society on storytelling in archeology. And there was a book published, the drive for which was by the journalist John Lorinc, about “The Ward” in downtown Toronto—an early immigrant neighbourhood. He and a bunch of collaborators wrote a history of The Ward, and then, because the idea was derived from an archeological investigation of the city block, he wanted to publish another book, and the archeologists who did the work did a series of three-page stories on artifacts or events reflected in the archeology of this city block. So I ended up writing about a projectile point that was 3,000 years old, but found in a privy—the challenge was to write about how it ended up in there. This book was well received, and it’s a way of relating what we do, on a daily basis, to the public in interesting ways. But it also gets us away from those larger, complex, higher-end stories, to ones about lived lives on the ground.

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An estimate of the 16th century cornfields that surrounded the Huron- Wendat Mantle site—it encompasses almost the entire area of Stouffville.

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Courtesy of Ron Williamson

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The Memorial Belltower, North Carolina State University.

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Elen Deming

I think the nature of practice will change as well, where landscape architects are involved in community hearings and have a voice at the table to raise these issues.

In many ways, all of those challenges are also opportunities. We feel this calling into the profession because of those inequities and those changes. I’m seeing it with the

THANKS TO TRISH CLARKE FOR COORDINATING THIS ROUND TABLE.

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Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

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Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

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Michael Hough (left) and colleague.

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Courtesy of University of Toronto

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University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

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Courtesy of University of Toronto

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“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”

—Bernard Shaw

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TEXT BY KAARI KITAWI, OALA

We know of Michael Hough’s famous works, like Ontario Place and University of Toronto Scarborough Campus, and of his passion for ecology, but who was he as a person?

What was he like to work with? How did his practice and vision impact our profession and the City of Toronto? I sat down with a few of his partners from the former firm ENVision—The Hough Group, and his contemporaries Walter Kehm and Ken Greenberg to uncover more.

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Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

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It Takes a Team—His Partners In the early 1960s, as Michael and Jim Stansbury were forging their partnership, they agreed that their practice be a blend of Michael’s “city in nature” and Jim’s “focus on erasing the snooty but silly boundaries that obstructed teams and collaboration.”1 Later, when Michael Michalski joined the firm, they broadened their focus: linking ecological science to site planning and design solutions.2

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Comrade in Arms—Walter Kehm Walter and Michael met in 1962 at Project Planning Associates. The two shared deep values of making a better society, by creating places where people of low means could have access to nature. Their relationship was further fostered when, as neighbours at Summerhill, they began challenging the City’s school design, street widening, and plans to channelize a local stream.

Playground Design Their children attended the Deer Park School at Yonge Street and St. Clair Avenue.

The school bordered the ravine but was fenced off “to keep the children safe,” while the children’s playground was covered in asphalt. Michael and Walter independently expressed their concerns to the school’s principal who dismissed them. Undeterred, the two combined efforts and built a model of the school to demonstrate how the ravine could be integrated into the school yard and made a presentation to the school board. As result of their passionate presentation, the Toronto District School Board worked with each of them, separately, on various school greening initiatives.

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“Hough’s Glade” in Trillium Park, on Toronto’s waterfront, is a tribute to the landscape architect and his contributions.

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Courtesy of Walter Kehm

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ENVision - The Hough Group (Hough, Woodland, Naylor, Dance, and Leinster) on the cover of Award Magazine.

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Courtesy of Carolyn Woodland

Standing up to City Officials They marshalled their efforts again when Ray Bremner, the then-Commissioner of Public Works for the City made plans to bury the Yellow Creek at the Vale of Avoca, in Summerhill. The plan was for Public Works to bury the polluted stream and for the Forestry team to replant over it. Michael and Walter “fought tooth and nail” against burying the stream, arguing, instead, to treat it at the source, removing pollutants so it could be enjoyed by the residents downstream.

Pushing the Profession Forward Michael and Walter were part of the team involved in the formative aspects of the OALA. They also worked on the Royal Commission for the future of the Toronto Waterfront. Over the years, their efforts have influenced the shift in thinking from landscape-as-ornament, to landscape as part of a natural system that contributes to health and wellbeing.

The firm’s partnership structure evolved as they attracted talented staff such as Carolyn Woodland, Eha Naylor, Ian Dance, and David Leinster. It started as Michael Hough and Associates, and finally as ENVision – The Hough Group. The talented staff enabled the firm to act as prime consultants, directing interdisciplinary teams of professionals on waterfront redevelopments, policy-oriented work as well as consulting to other professionals.3 Eha describes Michael and Jim’s partnership as being complimentary: Jim ran the business side while Michael did the creative exploration. Their temperaments were also polar opposites: Jim was calm even-keeled, while Michael could be crusty if someone was not up to par. She adds that “Carolyn was the glue that held them together,” balancing the partners while still delivering “excellent, creative, innovative, and beautiful work and doing it at a level that was always pushing boundaries.”

Trillium Park When Walter was asked by the OALA to commemorate Michael at Trillium Park, he remembered how their journey started in the 1960s with their families. He wanted to recognize Michael’s constant support, his wife Bridget and their children. The vegetation would be a testament of wild nature, with native trees, wild flowers, and no mowed grass. It would be a place for all people to be in nature.

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Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

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Humber Bay Park, East Trail.

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Kaari Kitawi

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Describing Michael Michael’s partners describe him as being determined, relentless, and focused.

He was passionate and committed to integrating “green technologies” into all his projects—which sometimes did not sit well with some clients. At his memorial, Carolyn Woodland remarked, “His unflinching perseverance, and sometimes lack of diplomacy, earned the office the nickname Huff and Puff.” Eha explains, “Once he dug his heels in or sank his teeth into something he would be relentless and be a vocal champion.” This quality, which exasperated some, won many clients over and, in the ‘80s and ‘90s, gave him influence with professional colleagues and civic leaders.

Studio Environment True to their vision, Michael and Jim built a great studio culture—a creative think tank consisting of interdisciplinary teams of professionals. As this was pre-GIS, site inventory and science maps were manually layered to inform and formulate conceptual thinking. The team engaged in constructive dialogue, across disciplines, to develop creative solutions based in science.

When Michael was in studio, he wanted to be part the design process, and would often tweak a design concept if he felt it could be improved. This was a little frightening for staff, particularly in the final stages of preparing to tender. Eha says that with Michael there was no coasting, “You always had to be on your game.” Though he had strong ideas, David Leinster clarifies, “He was not an ego maniac, but was open to dialogue and expected the people who worked with him to be thinking a lot.”

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Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

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Modern-day University of Toronto Scarborough Campus.

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Courtesy of University of Toronto

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Ecosystem Planning According to David, Michael was interested in landscape as a bigger idea, not on a site-by-site basis. When he approached a client’s project, he thought of it in terms of the bigger plan: how could it contribute to the bigger city initiatives. He was advocating Ecosystem Planning—the idea of integrating ecology, social, and cultural ingredients in city planning. He used this approach to urban planning when he worked with former Mayor David Crombie at the City of Toronto.

Innovative Techniques Michael was a researcher at heart and was committed to exploring creative solutions to site challenges, which were embedded in science. “Now we are so driven by budgets and trying to get things done, but Michael was quite willing to continue the fight to find the better solution,” says Ian Dance. Eha points out that this could be very challenging, because many of the innovations they were testing had no precedents.

Changing Minds Michael was no “yes man.” If he believed that there was better solution than what the client or architect wanted, he would continue to push for it. Ian humorously remembers being a junior architect attending a meeting where Michael was passionately promoting a solution that was different from what the client wanted and wondering to himself, “Are we not listening to the client?”

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Carolyn explains, “It took a lot of successful projects and putting them together with good clients to actually get people to see that there was a different way of doing things.” In describing ENVision’s work, Suzanne Barrett from Waterfront Regeneration Trust said, “They showed us how we could integrate a natural systems approach into design and development processes in a way that connects people to place, and benefits not only environmental health, but also human activities, aesthetic quality, and economic vitality.”4

Michael Hough: Man On A Mission

Things Coming Together—Projects One of the projects that Michael was passionate about was his work with the City of Toronto on the Bring Back the Don Task Force. He and his firm members also worked on the Don River restoration initiatives. The conservation authority was concerned about the constraints of the flooding at the Lower Don. This was limiting redevelopment opportunities that both the City and landowners wanted to realize. Addressing the flooding would provide ecological benefits for wildlife and recreation for residents, while also acting as catalyst in opening up development potential. This resulted in a win-win for everybody. The firms work was foundational in transforming the West Don Lands into a vibrant neighbourhood.

Influence on Your Practice Carolyn Woodland worked with the firm for 25 years and then moved on to the Toronto and Region Conservation Authority (TRCA) for 17 years. She credits the design philosophy of the firm with informing her work at TRCA. The award-winning Living City Policy that she developed with her team at TRCA took those foundational principles to the next level and broke new ground.

Eha Naylor and Ian Dance worked with the firm from 1980 until 2009, when they were acquired by Dillon Consulting. They have continued to apply the holistic contextual approached to site development and design, and integrating natural systems. They also continue to tackle large scale projects, such as Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway in Windsor, Ontario, with the same principles.

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David Leinster joined the firm in 1986 and moved on to The Planning Partnership in 2000. David described how the practice was never a job for Michael: “He was always on.”

David, too, considers his work a “calling,” not a job. He was also inspired to give back to the profession in volunteering his time.

Legacy Michael elevated the role of landscape architects in Canada. The innovations and design thinking that he fiercely advocated are now an integral part of professional practice. The vision he had for the neglected places such as the Don River and the waterfront have become vibrant spaces enjoyed by the city residents. He trained four generations of professionals and influenced their thinking. He also empowered the women in his firm to excel and lead. A large archival record of his writings, sketches and projects are at the Archives of Ontario and available to the public.

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Ken Greenberg, his fellow city builder credits Michael with raising people’s consciousness to the importance of nature in a city and influencing a new generation of landscape architects such as design firm Public Work and others to pick up his torch.

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Ontario Place

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Sharon VanderKaay, Flickr, Courtesy of Creative Commons License

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Ontario Place, aerial view.

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Courtesy of City of Toronto Archives

Conclusion Michael Hough was a pioneer and among the lone voices pushing for the integration of urban ecology in planning. The ideas that he campaigned for then seemed radical, but are now common place. It was Bernard Shaw who said, “The reasonable man adapts himself to the world: the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.” It seems that we have now, as a profession, adapted to Michael’s view

In his tribute to Michael Hough, Robert Wright said, “We owe Michael a debt that can never fully be repaid, except through our own continued commitment to the issues he so dearly believed in and demonstrated through his work.”

Footnotes Jim Stansbury, Remembering and Celebrating My Years with Michael Hough, January 30, 2013 2 Carolyn Woodland, Michael Hough – Memories and Celebration, tribute 2013 3 Etobicoke Historical Society website - www. etobicokehistorical.com/humber-bay.

4 Suzanne Barrett, Waterfront Regeneration Trust, ENVision – The Hough Group. August 13 2003.

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BIO/ KAARI KITAWI, OALA, IS AN URBAN DESIGNER

AT A LOCAL MUNICIPAL OFFICE, AND GROUND

EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER.

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Flora Mythologia

The legendary history of plants and fungi

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Flora Mythologia

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TEXT BY SHANNON BAKER, OALA 01/

Consolida ajacis

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Wikimedia Commons / Alberto Salguero

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Delphinium

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Wikimedia Commons / KENPEI

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Mythmaking seems to be a basic human characteristic. Myth has existed in every human society. Why we make myth, and the nature of those myths, differs across cultures; however, nature itself is a theme common to most mythologies. Certain plants seem to have the power to capture the human imagination. Whether for their delicate scent, striking colour, unusual habit, or medicinal properties, throughout human history, some plants have become the stuff of legend. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was believed that all life, whether floral or faunal, was connected to the heavens. As a result, the mythology of plants from this time is rich, filled with epic stories of tempestuous gods and mere mortals, and their travails in love and loss, intrigue and war.

Hyacinth The plant known to the ancient Greeks and Romans as hyacinth is not the plant we call hyacinth (Hyacinthus spp.) today, rather, it was what we now refer to as larkspur (also a plant of many names, including Consolida ajacis, Consolida ambigua, Delphinium ajacis, Delphinium ambiguum, doubtful knight’s spur, and rocket larkspur).

Loved by the gods Apollon and Zephyros, Hyakinthos was a young Spartan prince caught up in a love triangle. Overcome by jealously while playing a game one day, Zephyros used his breath, which had the strength of a mighty wind, to fling a disc, striking Hyakinthos on the head. As he lay dying, Larkspur began to spring up from the boy’s spilled blood. According to the Roman poet Ovid, it was Apollon who caused the flowers to bloom, and he who also enscripted them with the letters AI, meaning ‘alas’ in Greek. If you look closely at the flower of the larkspur, you can see the upside-down AI in it’s centre. The larkspur has an almost otherworldly shade of blue, prized by many cultures as a dye or ink. In more modern times, the plant has come to symbolize a weak or fickle heart, perhaps a link to the earlier Greek myth.

The plants are considered toxic and are not generally known to have any medicinal properties.

Flora Mythologia

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Linden The linden tree was another broadly canopied shade tree that was prized in the dry, hot landscape of the ancient Greeks. As Annette Giesecke relates in her book Mythology of Plants, the linden tree is touchingly woven into a tale of a poor, elderly couple and their encounter with the Roman gods Jupiter and Mercury. Jupiter, like his Greek counterpart Zeus, had power over the weather, and was the defender of civic order and hospitality. Just as the broad linden extends its branches wide to shade those that may find themselves underneath it, it was important in ancient Greek society to extend the utmost of hospitality to those visiting your home. In the tale of Baucis and Philemon, Jupiter and the god Mercury were travelling amongst mortals in disguise, so their status was concealed. Despite their appearance as unremarkable men, Baucis and Philemon welcomed them into their humble home and offered them all they could. For their generosity, the gods rewarded them by granting them their wish to one day die together at the same time.

When the time came, the couple grew together as entwined trees, Baucis as a linden, and Philemon as an oak. A myth that represents a wonderful tale of selfless giving and reciprocity. The linden blooms midsummer with fragrant flowers that are favourites of bees, and can be made into a light cordial to welcome your guests.

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Oak The ancient Greeks and Romans knew an oak not naturally occurring in North America, Quercus ilex. According to the Theoi project (theoi.com), the oak was so common in the Mediterranean landscape, that the word for oak was the same word used to refer to all trees. Many myths surround the oak. Of the oak, it has been said that they grow for three hundred years, live for three hundred years, and die for the final three hundred. Given its longevity, and slow and steady growth to staggering height, it is no surprise the oak was the tree commonly associated with the

god of sky, Zeus. The tree was thought to be both revered by the god, as well as being the physical manifestation of Zeus. Those who sought aid from Zeus would often put their questions to the trees directly, and the responses were read in the swaying of branches or twitching of leaves. As in many cultures, the oak was also imbued with many other spirits, apart from Zeus. Many believed that the spirits of Nymphs were bound up with the spirit of a tree, as were their lives. When the tree died, so too did the Nymph. This notion of the wise and mighty oak is one that carries through to today.

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Flora Mythologia

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Holm oak (Quercus Ilex) near Pagogan summit. Montes de Vitoria mountain range, Spain

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Wikimedia Commons / Basotxerri

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Acorns and leaves of Holm Oak (Quercus ilex L.)

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Wikimedia Commons / Giancarlo Dessi

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Linden Tree Leaves

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Wikimedia Commons / Chris Light

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Spearmint (Mentha spicata)

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Wikimedia Commons / Assianir

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Water Mint (Mentha aquatica), Chemnitz, Germany

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Wikimedia Commons / LC-de

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Lycoperdon perlatum, commonly known as the common puffball

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Flickr / Charles de Mille-Isles

Mint One member of the mint family found both here in Ontario and in ancient Greece and Rome is Mentha spicate, or spearmint. The ancient Greeks and Romans cultivated many species of mint, including spearmint, along with water mint, field mint, and horsemint. Much like today, they had many uses for the plants, from flavouring foods, to growing them ornamentally, as well as using them for medicinal purposes. The plant is mentioned in the tale of Baucis and Philemon, as the old woman uses mint to prepare her table for the gods in disguise.

The myth of mint is most tightly bound up with Persephone, the goddess of spring.

Again, in a tale of jealousy, it was said that Persephone was troubled by her husband’s love for a Nymph name Minthe.

Driven by her jealousy, she stomped on the Nymph until she was driven into the ground, ever after taking the form of the plant we now know as mint. From that moment on, mint was associated with the worship of Persephone and her mother, the goddess of harvest, Demeter.

Mushroom Strictly speaking, mushrooms are members of the Agaricaceae family, making them fungi and not plants at all. Seeming to spring forth from thin air, rather than from seeds planted in the earth, mushrooms were a thing of wonder in ancient Greece and Rome.

Treated as a delicacy, mushrooms were known to be used in all sorts of dishes— however, they were not without risk. Ancient Mediterraneans knew that mistaking one fungal form for another could cost you your life, and there is more than one tale of purposeful poisoning to satisfy jealousy or revenge. Mushrooms also hold a special seat in Greek and Roman mythology, being part of an origin story for human beings.

Ovid told a tale of the Sorceress Medea, who murdered King Pelia in order to wrest from him the throne that rightfully belonged to her husband Jason. Fleeing the scene of the murder, Medea travelled a great distance, and stopped at Peirene—a spring where humans sprang forth from mushrooms at the beginning of time.

Myths reflect common characteristics of the society that hold them. Study of the plant lore of these classical societies underlines the close relationship they had with the botanical world. Weaving these plants, and their mythology into the garden not only layers it with meaning, but provides a touchstone to the history of the cultivation of plants and our ever-changing relationship with them: how they have been used in the past, and what their role might be in the future.

IF YOU ARE INTERESTED IN EXPLORING THE BOTANICAL LORE OF ANCIENT GREECE AND ROME FURTHER, ANNETTE GIESECKE’S BOOK THE MYTHOLOGY OF PLANTS EXPLORES BOTH MYTH AND THE GARDEN THROUGH OVID’S VOICE.

BIO/ SHANNON BAKER, OALA, IS A LANDSCAPE

ARCHITECT AT WATERFRONT TORONTO AND

A MEMBER OF THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD.

Grounding

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Protecting our territory TEXT BY MILLIE KNAPP

Answering the call by the moose to halt this season’s hunt was heard loud and clear by the people of Kitigan Zibi. Their call to action was a need to bring an end to overharvesting by sport hunters.

Timothy Budge, Beau Tolley, and Wayne Chabot from the Kitigan Zibi reserve, 133 kilometres north of Ottawa on Highway 105, answered the call. They set up a blockade at Black Rollway Road, 27 kilometres from Messines, Que., just outside their reserve. Concerns about the declining moose population led the three to set up camp to block hunters from entering Zec Pontiac for just over three weeks in September and October.

“It’s our livelihood. We can’t let our food run out. We need it for our future generations,” says Timothy Budge, 41, about the moose.

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“As Anishinabe people, we have a right to protect our animals because they are a part of us. They live with us. They’ve been with us forever. That’s been our way of life, our survival, our traditions. It’s our right. I do believe that we should not be hunting also,” says Chabot about moose that live in Anishinabe unceded territory.

Beau Tolley, 40, sees the moratorium as a way for future generations to experience moose as traditional fare. “I look at it just like the buffalo. I’m sure there were people during that time that thought, ‘We see the buffalo going away,’ and wanted to preserve it. They probably thought exactly what I thought. I’d like my grandkids and great-great-great grandkids to know what it tastes like. It’s about survival for the species itself, but it’s also about survival for our own people because some people have only that to rely on for food,” he says.

All three agree that overhunting has led to the moose moratorium.

“The overhunting—the mass killing by white hunters and sport hunters, but not only them, there’s some of our own that are just killing too much,” says Budge.

To address overhunting, Chabot believes hunters—Indigenous and non-Indigenous—should stop hunting for now. “Everyone should do it for a couple years. It’s not like we really need to eat moose meat. There’s some people that have a lot of food in their fridge and they still go out there and hunt moose,” says Chabot.

“Obviously we are protecting the moose from everybody because they’re going to go extinct if we don’t make moves.”

The Quebec government has yet to announce a moose moratorium.

“Without their help, we were forced into doing what we did,” says Tolley. “There’s so many other options we could talk about but at the end of the day it just comes down to don’t sell the tags.”

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Grounding

Deforestation affects the moose population, too, according to Chabot. He links protecting the moose to protecting the land.

“The moose live on the land, and if there is no land for them to live on, then logging is one of the next things we’ve got to work on because that’s where the moose live. If they don’t have a place to live, they’re going to go somewhere else like in our backyard where all the moose from Park Vérendrye came.

They migrate to our area, so that’s why we were protecting our backyard,” says Chabot about the Black Rollway camp.

Budge thinks of the land as Mother Earth and describes what Mother Earth means to him. “Mother Earth is what takes care of us: feeds us, gives us water to drink, gives us our materials to make clothing or housing.

Everything comes from the land, so if you destroy it then we’re left with nothing in order to live,” he says.

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Anishinabe people lived on the land sustainably for millennia. They managed “by hunting only for their families, taking only what they need, and not being greedy,” says Budge about the Anishinabeg respect for the hunt.

Peter Decontie, 79, visited the Black Rollway camp and told stories around the campfire.

“Somebody’s hunting area might be empty because they’re [the moose] migrating.

Like we’ve heard from our uncle (Peter Decontie), other families would offer those families food whose moose migrated off their land,” says Tolley about his greatuncle’s reminiscences.

Chabot noticed that some Anishinabe hunters changed their ways after moose moratorium camps were set up. “They obviously had to stop cause there’s a lot more people watching,” he says.

Standing ground at the blockades was not easy. “Sport hunters were very angry because they spent a lot of money and we were stopping them. They thought we were stopping them just for us. They called us greedy—like we wanted all the moose just for us. Once we told them that we were stopping hunting too, they were surprised. They calmed down and backed off,” says Chabot.

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“I was ready to die. We were unarmed up there,” he says about being 30 kilometres in the bush and facing armed hunters. “I managed to talk to some people (hunters) and some people had to get escorted out with the cops.”

Chabot hopes the blockades affected the hunters and the government. “Maybe next year, they’ll realize not to buy tags and the government might not sell them,” he says.

“That would be a dream come true for the moose and us.”

The dream continues for the Quebec government to order a moose moratorium.

“The more people we got standing up for the moose, the more chance we’ll have that the government will hear us or we take some drastic measures and do something different,” says Chabot about plans for 2021.

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Heated moments occurred at the camps.

“I remember one incident where the guy said he was going to run over the blockade. I said go ahead, but then he was about to do it. I didn’t want him to go through the blockade so I told him, ‘You’re going to have to run me over.’ That’s how much I wanted to save the moose.

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Camp near the blockade site.

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Millie Knapp

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The Moose’s natural habitat.

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Millie Knapp

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Millie Knapp with “Socks” the Moose.

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Courtesy of Millie Knapp

For Chabot, the Black Rollway camp helped preserve more than the moose. “I used to be an urbanized Indian but after doing all this— the road block and saving the moose—it brought me back to my culture and just like that—I feel the love from Mother Earth and I want to give the love back,” he says.

“He was revving his engine and looking at me so I just turned my back. If he was going to run me over, he was going to run me over with my back turned. He ended up turning around. That was scary,” says Chabot.

BIO/

MILLIE KNAPP, ANISHINABE, WRITES ABOUT ARTS AND CULTURE OR MINO PIMADIZAWIN, THE GOOD LIFE. DISCLAIMER: MILLIE KNAPP IS RELATED TO PETER DECONTIE, BEAU TOLLEY, AND WAYNE CHABOT.

Notes

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Notes: A Miscellany of News and Events

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donkey, Thunder, along for the walk); take in live music and site-specific art, and celebrate the coming of spring with a celebratory bike parade where people will be provided with materials to turn their rides into “fantastical creatures.” All socially-distanced and COVID-safe.

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Walking With Thunder Chapter 2: Upon a Bridge, 11 November 2020, Walking With Thunder by Conrad Beaubien.

art trail

Natalie Stone, for ====\\DeRAIL 2020 Prince Edward County Millennium Trail, site research, Consecon Lake, August 2020.

Bailey Austin-Macmillan, for ====\\DeRAIL Walking With Thunder Chapter 2: Upon a Bridge, 11 November 2020, Walking With Thunder by Conrad Beaubien.

Natalie Stone, for ====\\DeRAIL 2020

Experience nature, storytelling, and public art while you explore Prince Edward County’s Millennium Trail, in Conescon, Ontario, with Walking With Thunder.

There’s an associated GoFundMe effort to “financially assist artists, artisans, field naturalists, and others established in their practices to creatively invent opportunities for small, safe, and welcoming gatherings in studios, work settings, and the out-of-doors.”

For more information, check out derailart.com.

====\\DeRAIL Platform for Art + Architecture (co-founded and co-curated by landscape architect and frequent Ground contributor Victoria Taylor) and artistic company The Department of Illumination (artistic director Krista Dalby) have teamed-up to activate the “dynamic, linear landscape of the PEC Millennium Trail,” from now until May 2021.

Hear storytelling from writer/creator Conrad Beaubien (with his 12-year-old 03

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public realm In 2019, the parking lot of the Wexford Heights strip mall in Toronto’s Scarborough borough was transformed into an activated public space, for six summer weeks. The project was called WexPOPS, a pilot intended to realize the philosophy of plazaPOPS. 05

Ground readers will recall a feature about plazaPOPS in our Spring 2020 “Access” issue, all about the goal of turning private parking into temporary public spaces. A year after the WexPOPS pilot, the minds behind the project have released a beautiful video about it, as well as a summary report. The report shares the discoveries that came from the project, including its role as a social, economic, and environmental driver for the host community.

This summer, in response to the pandemic, we’ve all been forced to reimagine how we allocate space— especially public space—and plazaPOPS and the ideas behind it are an excellent model for addressing the immediate needs of COVID-19, and establishing healthy public space, indefinitely.

You can view the plazaPOPS video and read the summary report at plazapops.ca.

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The crowd at WexPOPS.

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Aerial photo of WexPOPS.

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Kat Rizza

Triple Pointe Media Summary Report Cover.

Courtesy of Brendan Stewart

congress The 2021 CSLA-OALA Congress is going virtual for the first time in the history of the event.

Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this spring, you’ll be able to attend the congress from the comfort of your own home.

The accessible online program will offer education, engagement, and networking opportunities with landscape architects from across the country.

This year’s theme will be Nature-Based Solutions: The Green Recovery that Ensures a Great Recovery, with keynote speakers Martha Schwartz and Maude Barlow.

It all takes place May 27-29, 2021. For more information, go to www.csla-aapc.ca/ events/2021congress

Notes

equity resources In the hopes of promoting diversity, equity, and understanding, Ground will be sharing resources for supporting, encouraging, and celebrating racial justice in the landscape architecture field. Here are a few selections: Black, Disabled and at Risk: The Overlooked Problem of Police Violence Against Americans with Disabilities,

by Abigail Abrams, Time Magazine: time.com/5857438/police-violenceblack-disabled/ “Intersectionality was first coined to emphasize the importance of including voices of Black women in feminism, and emphasizing how Black women are repressed on a different scale under this lens. In a time where we are reckoning for the lives lost due to violence against Black people at the hands of the police, it’s important to view the other aspects at play. People with disabilities are a high percentage of Black lives lost to police violence. This article helps to articulate the challenges faced to this intersection, and suggestions for how these tragedies can be avoided in the future. As designers of public spaces, we must design these spaces through the eyes of people of colour and people with disabilities. We must create spaces and communities that are safe for Black and disabled citizens to exist independently and without harm.”

— SARAH MANTEUFFEL, FORMER OALA COORDINATOR AND GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD MEMBER

National Association of Minority Landscape Architects: www.nationalamla.org/ “In order to design more diverse and inclusive public spaces, it is imperative that we confront existing and longstanding barriers that have disproportionately kept Black, Indigenous, and people of colour from studying and practicing landscape architecture. The National Association of Minority Landscape Architects (NAMLA) is an American based organization that works towards ‘…increasing minority representation at all levels of landscape

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architecture practice and academia.’

They do this by providing academic and career advice, amplifying the voices of existing minority landscape architects, and confronting systemic and structural racism and its impacts on landscape architecture and the designed environment. In December 2020, NAMLA launched a quarterly mini scholarship series open to all landscape architecture students.”

— SAIRA ABDULREHMAN

If you’d like to go deeper, the CSLA is providing a Diversity & Equality Resources page on their website: www.csla-aapc.ca/mission-areas/ diversity-equality-resources

advocacy The Ontario Provincial Government, with Bill 229, is making changes to the Conservation Authorities Act. These changes will allow the Minister of Environment, Conservation and Parks to overrule local conservation authorities, through what’s known as a Minister’s Zoning Order. It’s a move that has caused concern, not only with the conservation authorities themselves, but with many activists, professionals, and organizations that take the stewardship of Ontario’s natural habitats as a primary concern. This includes the OALA, and the Association has written to the Ontario Government to reconsider the move in a December 8th letter: “Landscape architects work closely with conservation authorities in the restoration of forests and wetlands, in planning for human access that is mindful of fragile ecosystems, and in the sensitive design of the land to prevent and mitigate extreme weather hazards. As a profession, we depend on the science-based expertise and legal authority of the conservation authority to issue permits for filling, changing grade, or building within a regulated area based upon the most advanced engineering modeling and geotechnical assessment.

The proposed changes to the Conservation Authorities Act introduced in Bill 229 would allow the Minister to overturn a science-

based conservation authority decision. The proposed changes to the Planning Act would remove the ability of a conservation authority to have party status at an LPAT hearing where a proposed development could result in flooding or erosion or impact the conservation of natural areas.”

The bill in question passed third reading, but the OALA continues to object to Ministerial override of conservation authorities, as well as the removal of those bodies as parties at the Local Planning Appeals Tribunal.

new members The Ontario Association of Landscape Architects is proud to recognize and welcome the following new members to the Association: Nick Assad

Kaila Johnson *

Daniel Beauchesne *

Simon Latam *

Katie Black *

Lindsey McCain

Lee Ann Bobrowski

Aaron Mills

Wm Jeffrey Cock

Edward Moynihan

Katey Crawford *

Shahrzad Nezafati *

Rebecca Embrett

Elnaz Sanati

Misha Franta

Karen Shlemkevich

Isabelle Giasson

Lucie St-Pierre

Mark Hillmer

Marie-France Turgeon

Catherine Jay

Matthew Williams

Asterisk (*) denotes Full Members without the use of professional seal.

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Artifact

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TEXT BY NADJA PAUSCH, OALA

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The lawn, as conceived of in North America, is a myth: it does not occur without meticulous human intervention, and has proliferated for decades as a symbol of economic status and social order.

The lawn is an expression of control and safety in the landscape, an antithesis to the myth of the wild, dangerous frontier propagated by western colonialism.

When alongside its role as an indicator of economic status, the lawn embodies the notion of success as measured by our degree of dominance over nature (read: capitalism).

Originally imported to North America as a cover crop for livestock, turf grass became an experimental addition to wealthy estates, and therefore a status symbol. Only the wealthy could devote so much of their land to a thoroughly unproductive use and afford to maintain it.

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Typical suburban backyard gardens in the Eastern United States Wikimedia Commons Mowing grass in Bridlewood Park, looking south-west to Batterswood Drive, Scarborough City of Toronto Archives, Series 1926, File 21, Item 3 Typical suburban backyard gardens in the Eastern United States Wikimedia Commons

In the suburban housing boom following the Second World War, houses were set back from the street and lawns introduced to make the scenery more pleasing to people driving by. Suddenly the lawn became ubiquitous in the residential landscape—a hallmark of home ownership and the American Dream.

Such rigorous control over the landscape was eventually codified into law in the form of grass and ‘weed’ bylaws, which regulate vegetation height . A front garden which deviates from these strict regulations, either intentionally or through a lapse in maintenance, is viewed as a reflection of the property owner’s character and adherence to our shared social values, however subconsciously. In this manner, lawns (and their level of maintenance) can reinforce harmful social, cultural, and ecological myths.

Colonial control over nature, demonization of the ‘wild’, and the ‘othering’ of those different from ourselves are all ideologies wrapped up in the history of the suburban lawn.

BIO/

NADJA PAUSCH, OALA, CSLA, IS THE GROUND EDITORIAL BOARD CHAIR. SHE WORKS AS A LANDSCAPE ARCHITECT AT A MULTIDISCIPLINARY DESIGN OFFICE IN TORONTO.

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