subsurface LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE
CAL POLY POMONA 2010: ISSUE THREE
agitations patterns + processes patterns + +processes + +agitations patterns patterns processes agitations patterns + processes + agitations patterns + processes + agitations patterns + processes + agitation processes agitations patterns patterns + processes + agit
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The landscape does not exist in a vacuum. More than pure form, the landscape is process and people, time and space. For this issue of Subsurface, our interest is in people and how they create, transform, and make up our environment in tandem with other natural processes. We are gritty, dirty, ugly at times and that is wonderful, inspiring even. We ask ourselves, as landscape architects, to question and challenge accepted processes in pursuit of new modalities and more captivating futures. Subsurface is not concerned with easy solutions or predictable pleasures; we want more for ourselves and for the profession.
Is motivated by inspirational work; Discusses emerging trends and technologies; Responds to contemporary theories and opinions; Seeks to expand the current definitions of Landscape Architecture; Encourages questions and debate within and outside of the Cal Poly community; Examines multiple ethics, including: design, conservation, social justice, capitalism, and more; and Considers how Landscape Architects communicate meaning through the construction of our built environments. In the future, we hope Subsurface takes root as a challenging platform for the student voice of landscape architecture at Cal Poly Pomona. At its best, this publication will serve as a quarterly collection of rigorous work regarding the landscape from students throughout the College of Environmental Design. If you are interested in submitting work or joining the creative team for Subsurface, please send an email to subsurfacezine@gmail.com.
2010 Subsurface Collaborators Coordinator Meagan Yellott Production Timothy Barrett, Clint Kruger, Jana Perser , Meagan Yellott Cover Design Scott Hayes Editors Timothy Barrett, Elizabeth Hurst, Emily McKay, Jana Perser, Ashanti Smalls, Meagan Yellott Advisory Team Timothy Barrett, Suhaim Bawany, Nate Brown, Clarissa Chung, Vrej Haroutounian, Scott Hayes, Elizabeth Hurst, Andrew Kanzler, John Kosta, Clint Kruger, John Musser, Jana Perser, Ashanti Smalls, Johnathan Stalvey, Lauren Walther, Meagan Yellott
Table of Contents Patterns ............................................................page 1 Jana Perser
Why So Few Case Studies?.............................................page 3 Emily McKay
Interview - Robert Perry ............................................page 5 John Kosta
Speakmore 2:00pm ...................................................page 11 Timothy Barrett
Bringing in the Trash ..............................................page 12 Meagan Yellott
Variations on a Theme ..............................................page 17 Emily McKay and Meagan Yellott
Dialogue ...........................................................page 18 Nate Brown and Elizabeth Hurst
Creating False Landscapes ...........................................page 19 Elizabeth Hurst
Speakmore 11:45am ..................................................page 21 Timothy Barrett
Marginal to Mainstream .............................................page 22 Jana Perser
Speakmore 11:55am ..................................................page 27 Timothy Barrett
Landscape Design, 70’s Style .......................................page 28 Clint Kruger Going Deeper at Wind and Sea .......................................page 31 Clint Kruger
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Why So Few Case Studies? Emily McKay
A summer ago I interned at a landscape architecture firm where I worked with the sustainable design manager. One of my duties involved finding case studies of sustainable landscape architecture in southern California. Sounded simple enough. After a good two days of searching, on the job and at home, I had only a small list of projects. Most were connected with LEED buildings, a few were parks. subsurface
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Instead of providing a dull summary of my findings, I’m going to get to the point. Landscape architects need to step it up. Southern California is a rich, complex, thriving, divided and united, conflicted and beautiful place, filled with eccentrics, cynics, optimists and uncategorizable-ists. Southern California is home to a diverse population, dramatic topography, an incredible native plant palette that thrive on minimal water, myriads of landscape architecture and architecture firms, public interest‌ so why the lack of case studies and why the lousy existing examples? At this point in time, most landscape architecture-related sustainable design in southern California deals with water and where it goes. There are a few case study parks that I visited in the Los Angeles region
that incorporated permeable paving, small bioswales, a retention basin here and there, and the occasional buried cistern to collect the annual ten inches of rainwater that dampen the southland. These elements are fantastic, when used in the right situation and proper climate. But bioswales that need to be irrigated regularly are probably not the most sustainable elements to burn the landscape budget on. In fact, I began to notice that a lot of the sustainable design features were more for show than for function. This is a problem on several levels. On the level of functionality, bioswales built for show are not going to perform and will end up either looking lousy or falling into disrepair. On the aesthetic level, aside from not functioning, the impression that people will take away with them will be that sustainable design does not look good, and should therefore be avoided. And honestly that is the last thing that either the sustainability movement or the landscape architecture profession need right now.
Sustainable design elements need to function correctly and to be designed with serious intent. Warm-season grass is not something to advertise as revolutionary sustainable design (take note, Orange County Great Park). On the other hand, sustainable design has a somewhat sacred air about it. People seem to get intimidated by the mere suggestion of sustainability, or turned off entirely. Sustainability, along with environmentalism, have in the past been polarizing concepts. You’re either chaining yourself to the tree or you’re chopping it down. But today people are beginning to realize that the issues are not black and white, and that there is a lot of common sense behind sustainability. Sustainability is good design. If a project is still successful 20 years after it was built, that’s a form of sustainable design. If landscape architects would stop using waterloving ornamentals, turf in center medians and maintenance-intensive landscapes they would already be on the path towards sustainable design. The more often sustainability is used and pushed in design, the better the designs will get, and the greater the impact will eventually be. One day the term sustainability will no longer have to be used, instead it will just be called design. 4_
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Interview
Robert Perry
Author of Landscape Plants for California Gardens John C. Kosta
Bob Perry opened the front door of his handsome It is late April. In California most people have Claremont, California home, welcoming me with a had their irrigation systems on for months. Not Bob. His has been turned off all winter and the grand smile and a warm handshake. garden still looks lush. There are flowers blooming “Come in, come in.” he says as he walks across everywhere. Water-wise planting and conservation aged hardwood floors into a bright and airy kitchen. never looked so vibrant. For some reason I felt at “I am brewing a pot of coffee, would you like a peace. cup?” He continues, “I have my son’s ball game to go to in about an hour so our time is a bit limited.” We began. We walk out the back door of his home and through the garden to his office where double-wide french doors and huge windows open to a view that is somehow both wild and domestic at the same time.
So you have a new book, Landscape Plants for California Gardens. Tell me about it.
Yes, yes. It is a culmination of a long history of things that began for me in the late 1960’s as an undergraduate student at Cal Poly Pomona and Stepping into his light-filled office Bob apologizes, then later at UC Berkeley as a graduate student. “We have not yet turned on the irrigation system After that, I began teaching at Cal Poly Pomona. yet so things are getting a bit dry in the garden.” As a student at Cal Poly I had five quarters of subsurface
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plant identification and that created a foundation for knowing plants and understanding how diverse and abundant the planting realm is in California. But it also became clear to me that most plant texts available to us at that time were from east coast publishers, and there was a lack of good references with photographic images of plants for our area. Certainly Sunset Garden Book was available and we used it and other references. But still we had to cobble together information in order to meet the needs of our plant identification courses. That was when I decided to write my first plant book. Now, many years later, my newest text has over 2,100 plant species, over 3,100 color photos, and 26 functional plant palettes each with over 50 site-appropriate plant recommendations. More importantly, it is the only book available today that distinguishes between those plants that have consistent water needs year round and those that do not need so much water in the summer because they have adapted to Mediterranean conditions. My involvement with learning and providing information about plants has been a wonderful journey for me.
Our field needs more competent writers, visionaries and people that challenge us to deepen our knowledge and views and we need to do it in more of a public forum.
Some parts of this text include content that is somewhat technical. How did you come up with these concepts? This new book is a compilation of materials that have been evolving over a period of time. A number of years ago, I think around 1990, I participated in a statewide task force to create a model water conservation ordinance for landscapes that eventually lead to MAWA, the maximum allowable water allowance concept. It basically says conservation of water is best served by using a water budget approach using a reference crop of turf grass. If we observe and measure the water needs of this reference crop throughout the state, we can conceivably come up with a water budget based upon the needs of the reference crop being the cap, or limit, of the amount of water allowed for irrigating landscaped areas. To achieve this standard, the decision was made to gather experts from around the state and estimate 6_
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It is far more effective to include the landscape architect at the inception of the process in order to assist in guiding the decision making process relating to program design.
the water needs of other landscape plants compared to the reference crop, turf grass. So for instance, the team would say “how much water does a Rock Rose actually need when compared to grass? Is it 70% or 60% or 50%?” While it may seem somewhat cavalier it really was a consensus approach based on the collective knowledge and experience of numerous experts. Unfortunately it provided fertile ground for detractors who disagreed with what we were trying to do. They claimed we needed to immediately stop our methodology and instead arrive at water usages by growing all these different plant species in each part of the state in every conceivable soil combination and precisely measure exactly how much water was required over the course of fifty years. This would in essence put a complete stop to our efforts to develop standards for conservation. Our efforts were further complicated by resistance from other trades, such as the nursery industry, whose business model is to sell what consumers demand. In many cases this meant selling products that do not fit California. And these voices in essence said they absolutely did not embrace what we were doing. So your goal to provide conservation tools that could help reduce the consumption of water turned into a political hot potato? Absolutely. Our efforts were largely the result of a mandate by the state of California to come up with water conservation standards. This mandate happened after a period of seven years of drought. Unfortunately, the new standard had the consequence of seeming to favor those parts of the state that had greater evapotranspiration rates. By using a new standard based on turf grass needs, those areas of the state with the greatest amount of evapotranspiration received far greater water allocations than those areas of the state with lower evapotranspiration and with greater rainfall. It seemed as though we were creating a system that said in essence, “Hey Northern California, you need to send all your water to Southern California so they can grow turf grass and azaleas wherever they wanted.”
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But that was not your intent at all. What did of our designs. For instance, the nursery industry and their financial well-being depends on you do to counter those beliefs? springtime sales of flowering plants. They know Well we could not ignore it. We tried to make it clear the bigger the flower and the more pumped up that these new methods, and the accompanying those flowers are the more they are able to sell. calculations, could help us come up with designs This is counterproductive to conservation. and plant choices that could greatly reduce water consumption to levels that otherwise we might not Landscape contractors disguise their resistance be able to achieve. Conservation is not a limit; it to conservation cleverly by saying they advocate really is an opportunity. And these are just tools to conservation efforts but then when the client says help us be more precise and focused in terms of they want their landscape to be green and beautiful they often say the only way to achieve this is by the choices we make. using lots of water. Who we are trying to help are those who are intimidated by plants and go back to the same set of plants over and over again, wanting a certain color and foliage character, without being precise about it, just hoping everything’s going to be okay. What I am saying is that our profession has to evolve.
Then there are those few landscape architects who actually advocate water conserving landscapes that include less grass, perhaps a drier look and some decomposed granite. There is a small percentage of designers and contractors who are willing to provide these kinds of designs and some in this small sector find good business there. But the majority of the profession is not yet sustained by this mindset.
What do you see as today’s largest challenges facing those of us in Landscape Architecture? Another challenge facing our industry is that of being multidisciplinary and integrating our skills Sometimes as a trade we specify plants because and input with larger teams and groups working we like them and we get focused on artistic on complex processes. It is interesting to think arrangements and there is no awareness of what that often some agency will decide they need we are doing to soil life and how we are dealing parks and so they map out what they think a park with the issue of the limited resource of water. We needs to include and then they hire a landscape often avoid the important details and implications architect and other experts to design the park after
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most important program-related decisions have been made. It is far more effective to include the landscape architect at the inception of the process in order to assist in guiding the decision making process relating to program design. There are a lot of people involved in this process including the community, potential users, planners and landscape architects. Often the dialogue that takes place relating to decisions about a project takes place in disconnected pieces, while it would be far more effective if these people were working together. We have something to offer in this process by coordinating and integrating these various inputs and views together. How do you think we ought to address these issues? By trying to be a more constructive part of society. That is the Cal Poly view also, to learn things, become a team player and provide solutions to problems. I like that. I feel that we are challenged to become more visible and advocate certain values and principles so we are more than just being a worker bee in a complex society. Our field needs more competent writers, visionaries and people
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that challenge us to deepen our knowledge and views and we need to do it in more of a public forum. Given the economic climate how can today’s landscape architecture students best prepare for the future? Students can best prepare by obtaining certain skills. For instance, you will go nowhere without knowing AutoCAD in today’s market. More broadly, you have to be someone who can relate to people, who has a breadth of knowledge and someone who can give and take and adapt and be a good person to work with. You want to look for a firm who will give you an opportunity to grow and expand and will not just pigeonhole you into some role. If you do not already have people skills, either by background or by experience, you need to acquire these skills and learn how to work with others. When we get into an office, there may be a situation where you may not know a particular skill but someone may pay you to learn that skill if they like working with you. Most of the time you will get sized up as a person. Yes you bring skills and credentials and it is important to have a diversity
and breadth of knowledge and skills, but nothing is more important than the whole nature of who you are. Beyond that, one needs to be networked. Often simply having the right credentials and skills are not enough. We need a lot of business sense. Most of us come into this field because we like plants but we may not like the business aspect, or the social advocacy or the political role. But if these dimensions are ignored, one’s practice can become isolated and, when the economy deteriorates, it can become difficult to maintain one’s practice. What is your next project? One option is to create a book with additional native plant species that support restoration. Another option is to refine and simplify the water budget approach with illustrations of how the process works. The state of California mandates that cities and municipalities have local water conservation ordinances that meet or exceed those mandated by the state. WUCOLS (Water Use Classification of Landscape Species) in conjunction with water budgeting is an important component implementing these mandates. I hope to expand, refine, and simplify some of these concepts.
Sometimes we avoid the implications of our designs.
Any closing thoughts? I have been very blessed to find an area of study that has enabled me to grow and develop. For me this opportunity has been through plants. This has been a life journey for me that started with a little foothold and expanded into something where I can contribute and fill a bit of a void within a profession. While I am happy with these accomplishments, I often think, wouldn’t it be great if everyone had similar opportunities for professional fulfillment? I honestly believe that one of the finest places a person can be is in a beautiful garden filled with a diversity of plants and wildlife, with the sounds, fragrances and colors of one’s surroundings enabling the individual to listen to one’s self, know that this self is connected to the universal soul, whatever that is for each of us, and ultimately to an awakening of the spirit within. We in the field of landscape architecture are fortunate to have the opportunity to design places where others might find this same experience. 10 _
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200PM Some kind of garment industry or carpets or sheets or a fabric of some sort. His business is creeping along and it's a Saturday afternoon on a back alley off the fringe of downtown LA's art district. The asphalt and concrete are patched and peeling for a block and more and he looks to be about 50 with arms crossed looking into the open garage door. I'm asking him about the day, about the industry and if it is his, and most importantly about the grate for the stormdrain that I'm standing over. It's directly in front of his docking bay and I know, from scouting the maps, that this is the start of a branched underground network eventually funneling untreated urban discharge directly into the Los Angeles River. He's asking about my pictures, the ones I'm taking, and I can't seem to understand his intentions. Maybe because his English is poor or maybe because he speaks softly but he's smiling and we're laughing now about something we agree on. I think it relates to the flow of trucks up and down the beaten alley and how today doesn't represent the full capacity - it is, after all, a saturday. He's a busy man, I say, working on the weekend. His nod and my assumption. He tells of the flooding that happens due to the blocked grate - the one I'm standing by now, with its obvious trenched path exposed by discolored concrete. When it rains heavy, like last month, the puddle becomes pool and his warehouse gets the short end of the straw. I see soaked fabric rolls in my mind and I can only sympathize. I'm trying to tell him my intentions, you know, of harvesting this oiled urban runoff and gutting an industrial shell further down the system - a new spin on constructed wetlands - but it's only a new thought in my head and the ideas are scattered and I'm not quite sure he's interested or understanding. I'm only a student and his concerns aren't ecologically based and it's a fictitious idea anyway.
speakmore
Bringing in the Trash Perceptions and Projects for a Slow Waste Movement Meagan Yellott Like with industrial food production and suburban transportation, modern waste management in the United States has created its own set of problems. Namely that the rate of solid waste production far exceeds the rate at which we manage it, leading to gross pollution of natural resources and impacted public health. American consumers rarely confront the solid waste they send to landfills on a daily basis and U.S. corporations, with an “out of sight, out of mind” mentality, are hardly kept accountable. But because of those similarities between the waste management crisis and how industrial food production has degraded the environment, there are parallels to be drawn between the Slow Food movement and a potential submovement: Slow Waste. While potentially, at the outset, less popular than the Slow Food Movement, Slow Waste has the potential to transform the landscape as we know it. As the old axiom goes: you are what you eat. Now, some thinkers, artists and landscape architects have started to extend that concept to waste, where
the idea might be: you are what you excrete. This extends from artists working in collaboration with Sanitation Departments to landscape architects re-envisioning closed landfill sites. Contemporary projects, though they establish a trend of rehabilitating waste landscapes, do not always address the issue of waste management at the source. However, the analysis and insight contained in these examples point the direction toward an important shift in our perceptions of where and how “the cycle ends”. Modern Waste Management in the United States: Methods and Problems Waste is an ever present dynamic in our daily lives. The simple fact of our existence involves waste. As human beings, our bodies produce waste in the forms of sweat, urine, and feces. The process of preparing food produces waste, as do the processes of cleaning ourselves and our homes. Additionally, as participants in the larger structure of consumer culture, nearly everything we do produces some 12 _
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kind of waste. The amount of waste produced by each individual in the United States nearly doubled in the years from 1960 to 2008, from 2.7 to 4.5 pounds per day, totaling about 250 million tons for the year.1 As current waste management practices dictate, most of that waste, household and industrial, is trucked (after being transported from the points of original distribution, sale, and consumption) from it’s point of origin to a transfer station where it is unloaded and loaded onto larger long-distance transport vehicles and then, typically, ends up in a landfill or combustion site after being sifted for recyclables. Even under best management practices, landfills harbor inherent drawbacks. For example, the potential for litter and ash to be scattered in the wind must be mitigated by covering each day’s deposit of waste. Biodegradable materials added to a landfill only partially decompose, due to the anaerobic conditions, and can produce carbon dioxide, methane, ammonia, water, and other chemicals2 which end up in the atmosphere if not properly captured. Additionally, the liquids leeched during decomposition may end up depositing pollutants in the soil or groundwater unless adequate lining of the landfill is laid during construction. Moreover, landfills contain solid waste and materials that will never biodegrade including plastics, glass and metals. Combustion sites offer a similar range of issues.
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Currently, nearly four-fifths of U.S. municipal solid waste incinerators are not equipped to remove recyclable materials before incineration. These facilities, employed to reduce the amount of solid waste interred in landfills, introduce all materials “as is” into combustion chambers.3 The dioxins released during the burning process have been associated with increased cancer risks for persons living in proximity to the sites.4 It is also important to mention that much solid waste does not make it to municipal facilities and, instead, enters our waterways and travels out to the oceans. Garbage not collected on land makes its way through storm drains and channels and out to the sea where high pressure weather patterns move solid wastes in a circular motion. Waste deposited off of the coast of California will return in a matter of six months. Around 80 percent of the garbage in the North Pacific Gyre comes from land, and about 65 percent of that is consumer plastics.5 The standards and scale of current waste management methodologies do not clearly protect the long-term health of people or the environment. Indeed, “there is widespread consensus that innovative approaches and measures must be taken to counter the impacts of waste on humanity and the larger matrix of nature.”6 The standard, clichéd perception we have of our waste cycle is prohibiting progress and change.
The Slow Movement: Principles and Parallels The Slow Movement, which now includes factions like Slow Money, Slow Travel, Slow Parenting, and Slow Art, is rooted in the foundations of Slow Food. Carlo Petrini founded Slow Food in 1986 as a protest against the opening of a McDonald’s restaurant near the Spanish Steps in Piazza di Spagna, Rome. Slow Food is a direct response to, and campaign against, Fast Food and promotes several important principles within its mission, including: • preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation • organizing small-scale processing (including facilities for slaughtering and short run products) • promoting “taste education” • educating consumers about the risks of fast food • educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms • teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners • lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy • encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces In an effort to define a potential Slow Waste movement, principles might include: • preserving and promoting local and traditional goods and services, along with their lore and preparation • organizing small-scale processing (including local Combined Heat and Power plants (CHPs), grey water and experimental sewage treatment schemes, and facilities for direct recycling and composting) • promoting “waste education” • educating consumers about the health risks of current waste management practices • educating citizens about the environmental drawbacks of institutional waste management • teaching gardening, reuse and recycling skills to students and prisoners • lobbying for the inclusion of corporate responsibility within waste management policy • encouraging ethical disposal of packaging and waste materials in local marketplaces A key facet of the Slow movement is the shift from the large scale down to the local scale. Small-scale waste management processing can make cities more efficient and healthier for people and the environment. The two principles highlighted above have been demonstrated to have positive effects as practiced in the United States and in other countries. For example, CHPs produce electricity and heat at a single facility and on a local scale, 14 _
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compared to the traditional system which requires separate sites of production. CHPs can use municipal waste as a fuel source and reduce current pollution rates from energy production by nearly 70%.7 The German government has passed successful laws which shift responsibility for household waste off of the end user and onto the industrial producers, requiring the corporations to plan for the ethical disposal of their own products.8 This type of regulation effectively closes the loop between production and consumption and spurs innovation and conservation in packaging design. Slow Waste Projects: Perception and Practice Given the systems in place, waste manages to remain at the periphery of public perception and discussion. Unfortunately, our abilities to ignore and disguise the realities of waste diminish our motivation to seek innovative solutions to its inherent problems and hazards. “Until recently, waste institutions were the sole realm of sanitary engineers, commonly removed from public view and consciousness, devoid of any design consideration.”9 The following projects are examples of work that aim to create a shift in our perception and relationship to waste. Mierle Laderman Ukeles, who shares a similar foundation to the Slow Food Movement, in her 1969 work Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!, named the practice of Maintenance Art as a reaction to then current avant-garde art practices: I felt when I was watching Richard Serra do these very simple things like throwing the lead, or Judd building things -- the language of Process Art and Minimalism, which I felt very in tune with -- I felt like “what are they doing?” They are lifting industrial processes and forgetting about the whole culture that they come out of. So Serra was this steel worker without the work, without the workers. And Judd was this carpenter without workers. They didn’t have workers, they didn’t have people, they had objects -- or they had results. And I felt that they were falling into the same trap as the rest of this damn culture, which subsurface
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couldn’t see the whole structures or cultures of workers that made the kind of work that invented these processes and refined them.10 Ukeles’ animated response to modernist practices reveals the need for a change in perspective. In the published Manifesto document, she focuses more specifically on waste and waste management: Part Three: Earth Maintenance Everyday, containers of the following kinds of refuse will be delivered to the Museum: -the contents of one sanitation truck; - a container of polluted air; - a container of polluted Hudson River; - a container of ravaged land. Once at the exhibition, each container will be serviced: Purified, de-polluted, rehabilitated, recycled, and conserved by various technical (and/or pseudo-technical) procedures either by myself or scientists. These servicing procedures are repeated throughout the duration of the exhibition.11 Ukeles became the artist in residence at New York City’s Department of Sanitation in 1977, a position she still occupies. There, Ukeles has dedicated her career to daylighting the physical infrastructures, social conceptions, and environmental ramifications of waste management. In her work The Social Mirror, Ukeles took municipal garbage collection trucks and resurfaced the exteriors with reflective glass. As the trucks circulated through the city on their routes, citizens were confronted by their own reflections in a new context. The effect Ukeles achieves is to actively call the average citizen to consider their relationship with garbage collection and the workers who carry out the public service. Flow City is an installation and visitor center at the 59th Street Marine Transfer Station which functions as a point of public access to the infrastructure of waste. Viewers are made first-hand witnesses to garbage being loaded onto barges prior to being transported to and dumped in a landfill.
The confrontation with the sheer scale and magnitude of the process is a revelatory experience for many viewers. Ukeles further continues the discussion by juxtaposing the reality of solid waste infrastructure with sweeping views of the New York City skyline and a series of video monitors displaying contributions from other artists, ecologists, and scientists aimed to educate visitors about urban ecologies. These three perspectives provide an opportunity for the viewer to situate him or herself in a larger context as a consumer and contributor to the waste cycle. Conclusion: Theoretical Solution Work is underway to influence the social perceptions of waste management. The principles of the Slow Movement outline potential strategies for understanding and developing more sustainable relationships with our behaviors and material realities. Applying a Slow lens to waste management, and using art to further expand the dialogue, has the potential to affect the ways we live and do business and change our landscape so they better protect public health and the natural environment.
ENDNOTES 1 These figures include residential, business and industry waste. United States Environmental Protection Agency. www.epa.gov/osw/conserve/rrr/ reduce.htm 2 National Pollution Prevention Center for Higher Education. www.umich.edu/~nppcpub/resources/compendia/CORPpdfs/CORPtrash.pdf 3 United States Environmental Protection Agency.www.epa.gov/osw/nonhaz/municipal/combustion.htm 4 United States Environmental Protection Agency. 5 Agalita Marine Research Foundation 6 Mira Engler. Waste Landscapes: Permissible Metaphors in Landscape Architecture. Landscape Journal. Volume 14, Number 1, Spring 1995. 11-25 7 Richard Rogers. Cities for a small planet. Westview Press. Boulder, CO. 1998. 50-51 8 Rogers. 159-160 9 Engler. 11 10 Ukeles, from Bartholomew Ryan, Manifesto for Maintenance: A Conversation With Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Art in America, March 20, 2009. At artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2009-03-20/draft-mierle-interview/ 11 From Manifesto for Maintenance Art, 1969!
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On Tuesday, as I took the E Dash up 7th Street to City West, a man sat down directly across from me. He was large in a zip-up sleeveless camo hoodie, weightlifting gloves, rainbow reflective wraparound Oakley sunglasses, and a haircut like a shorn and disheveled baby. It took a minute but I slowly understood that the man was intermittently and quite audibly grunting. I grinned to myself out the window thinking about the oft slightly-off liveliness of strangers and downtown LA until it became clear that he was grunting AT ME. I glanced over and, yep, it was a full on lean-in-grunting-stare-down from this big-strange-flashy-man-baby. A bit disturbed, I made eye contact through his single lens, smoothed my left brow with a prominent middle finger and he stopped. Moved a couple seats down even. And then came back. Resumed leaning. No grunting this time though. Until I stood up to get off at my stop and he let out a long, nasty grunt that made everyone on the bus, including the driver, turn in our direction. All I could say was “What the fuck?” and then “Thank you” to the driver before I stepped onto the sidewalk.
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Dialogue How Well Should You Know Your Site? Elizabeth Hurst and Nate Brown Today we live in a fast-paced blur of a world, where information is readily accessible and flows in from all directions. However, the quality of said information is more questionable, which requires even more time to sift through and we have less time to dedicate to that pursuit. Add increasingly short attention spans and the implications are frightening. This influx of information has definitely impacted students of landscape architecture. Students are asked to create a highly efficient information filter, which precipitates massive amounts of data down into small usable droplets. Those droplets are used to evaluate sites and create land-use decisions within a condensed timeframe, without leaving room to develop an intimate knowledge of the site. Indeed, this seems to be the case throughout the profession: firms may work on job sites on the other end of the country, or the opposite side of the globe, without physically visiting the site. While this may not be the preferred practice, it happens and works with apparent success. Therefore, this approach raises an interesting question: how much information is necessary for intelligent design decisions to be made, and how do we, as students, gain these skills? Cal Poly MLA students discuss two sides of this issue. Nate: It is hard to believe that significant design decisions are made without a true understanding of the site. Even worse, some design decisions are made without even visiting the site. This is a very arrogant and rushed form of landscape architecture and has no place in the profession. There are countless aspects of a site that are missed without a thorough examination. For example, how can design proceed without viewing the site after a heavy rain or snow? Or how can a successful wildlife corridor be planned without observing the migration patterns of local wildlife? I am reminded of a principle of permaculture that stresses mindful observation of the site prior to arriving
at any design conclusions or recommendations: “we do not just see and hear, smell and taste, but we sense heat and cold, pressure and stress from efforts of hill-climbing or prickly plants, and find compatible or incompatible sites in the landscape. In fact, we use (consciously) all our many senses and become aware of our bodies and responses” (Mollison and Slay, 1979). Visceral data collection is not utilized enough in education as there is less emphasis being placed on the feelings evoked by a site, which removes the personality of the site and results in generic design. Liz: Knowledge of a site is important. And visceral knowledge certainly plays a role in it, as does knowledge of seasonal changes, estimations of microclimates, as well as the history of and emotional attachments to the site. However, there is a difference between experiencing and understanding a site. This is part of why our profession exists: people who may be intimately connected to the ins and outs of the site don’t necessarily know how to design with all of that information. Sometimes, being able to maintain a larger picture and tease out the potential of a site can be difficult when you are bogged down in a microcosm of details. In these cases, having an outsider’s view of the site is a huge asset. While visiting a site certainly contributes to an understanding of it, I disagree that the designer needs to experience each season, onsite, and in person. It would be wonderful to design that way, but is unrealistic in a world where time equals money. Furthermore, conducting numerous site visits may present ethical conflicts for a profession concerned with the health of the environment. Instead, as designers, we should strive to utilize the resources at our disposal: our job should be to listen to the experts, both in terms of the physical systems which happen on-site (biologically, ecologically, geologically, hydrologically), and the human experiences linked with the site, and extract that information from them in order to create a design that incorporates their knowledge. 18 _
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Creating False Landscapes Lessons from Hollywood Elizabeth Hurst Images by Sarah Ross-Samko
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As students of landscape architecture, we strive to create spaces that speak to people. In the world of cinema, the art department works to develop something out of nothing‌ oftentimes creating a setting which is distinct enough to become more than a backdrop: it becomes a character in the film itself. It occurs to me that we can learn from the film making process: how do you move from a script to a setting? And how do the set designers create spaces that speak to a universal audience? Sally Park, an Art Director working in the film industry, shares insights on how production designers are taught to create the world and feel of a film. When you are handed a script, how do you begin to translate it into a physical space? Once I have a script, I read it twice: the first time I get the story and begin to get a rough idea of the emotions and scenes to be created. The second time I take notes and develop a list of questions for the director like, what is the goal of this scene—is it supposed to convey timelessness, or be modern and up beat? Is it supposed to be frightening, ridiculous, or dramatic? Once the mood-intent has been defined, I begin to organize all of the important elements into the art breakdown and the design bible, or DB.
So, in an outdoor space, what type of key atmosphere pieces would you include in the art breakdown and design bible? The art breakdown is a highly detailed list of anything and everything in the script that has to do with the art department. This is focused on specifics, like key wardrobe pieces, greenery, picture cars and other vehicles, special effects, make-up and hair, props, set dressing, what role they play in the story, and where they will be placed within the scenery. The art breakdown contains the essential intent: for example, “in scene two, Josh will be standing by a rock”. In film, these elements are important because these are the elements that “read” the most; they are in focus and contribute directly to the story. I suppose that in a real setting these would translate to the minute details that people see up-close and interact directly with. Keep in mind that lighting is one of the most effective mood-makers in the business, and is a whole separate art handled by another design professional. Lighting creates mood, atmosphere, emotions, and in film we use lighting to reveal something about the character or the space—where it is coming from, the color of the light itself, and the shadows it casts are all key aspects which are carefully considered. The key to picking the elements that make up the art breakdown is the design bible. The DB is a notebook, specifically prepared for the project, which contains reference images, sketches, photographs, poetry, songs, etc., which visually explain the mood of the scene. Especially important elements include specific color schemes, textures, and materials that lend character to the site. DBs serve as visual reference for the film, and is the difference between that rock Josh is standing by being a granite monolith or a sandstone pebble. Extensive research is crucial in putting together a good design bible. Once you have the design bible, you have the feel for your film… although depending on what the project is and who you are working for, it may change quite drastically from the initial idea to the finished product. So, for example, in the images you see here, the art department decided to go with a swampy Garden of Eden feel. We began compiling pictures of New Orleans swamps and dripping Spanish moss. The goal was to create a dark, brooding space. We created the scene using a combination of real and false elements. Once the lights were turned on, the desired affect had been achieved: we had built something quite beautiful, ethereal, and woodsy... inside of a warehouse. 20 _
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1145AM His beard is enormous and absolute white and I've lost myself in it well before the conversation gets anywhere. But the dialogue is indeed fascinating and he's quite the story teller. Managing this 4 acre steep terraced community garden and no one would think it is here tucked into an urban mess of concrete river beds and dilapidated arterial corridors. Our connection to this is by loose chance and an overgrown path. He happens to enjoy this situation we are in - emphasizing the space in his heart for my future alma mater. We talk about the opportunities and aspects of community supported land and the property use prior to his involvement. The 16 other gardens across the city. His fingernails are long and soil digs under them. His eyes are faded blue and match, exactly, his hat. A newly implemented program here teams local restaurants with plots and one restaurant owner is above us on the terrace covered with collard greens and others. I try one leaf and the pepper is overbearing - I should sautĂŠ with butter. For now I persevere with one fruit Mentos and half my bottle of water. A photo shoot was the catalyst for the tree swing, the hustle of I-5 in the canyon below. The merging of infrastructure and community response and a well organized machine of participants. His socialist patterns blended with the capitalistic economies of scale. I asked about the bees and was impressed with his depth of knowledge. The vegetable harvests were exponentially greater after the colonies were brought in - a critical connection between flora and fauna. He rants about global agricultural patterns and the deterioration of local produce. Slightly long-winded, but valid points. Ties between pesticide production, bee kills, and increased potato patches. Engineered water systems. Nonprofit growth and banking options. We walk the steep grounds and sample new growth. Thorny raspberries and blackberries as perimeter safety in response to issues with stolen fruit tree harvests. He explains that the bees act in response to white clothes, as that is what the beekeepers wear when they extract the honeycombs. Just my luck.
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MARGINAL TO MAINSTREAM shantytowns as models for sustainability Jana Perser Illustrations by Chris Hadley The old view: slums are blighted communities—dirty, unhealthy, crowded, dangerous. The solution is to clear them away, forcing the inhabitants to relocate to orderly government housing—typical cement block, high-rise towers—and bulldozing away anything that remains. The new theory to explore: slums are vibrant, resourceful communities with complex social dynamics, thriving sub-economies, and shelters that capitalize on the re-use of materials discarded by others. For centuries, developed countries have served as the model of development for their colonies and other third world countries. It is becoming clear that the model of unchecked growth and resource consumption which the first world has been following is not sustainable; we must ask what other paths of development should be taken. What if the social structure and settlement patterns of third world shantytowns are more sustainable than the models the first world has been trying to force on them? Is it possible to embrace these makeshift communities and to incorporate lessons learned from them to high-rise cities?
Why leave the rural village? To outsiders, rural living is often viewed as idyllic. The common perception is although people work hard to make a living, life is simple, straightforward, and peaceful. Though true on some levels, this is a superficial view. For many who live in rural villages, the reality is that village life is monotonous, restrictive, exhausting, and dangerous. “Brigands get you, an accident gets you, disease gets you, and there’s no help nearby. You work like hell; then the weather changes, and you don’t have crops to eat or sell” (Brand 26). Land is becoming depleted and less productive, and civil instability is a threat. Compared to this life in the village, city work is generally less arduous and higher-paying, there is more freedom to change jobs, more upward mobility, more social freedom, and more privacy. Kavita Ramdas, the head of Global Fund for Women, explained at a 2001 conference, “In the village, all there is for a woman is to obey her husband and relatives, pound millet, and 22 _
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sing. If she moves to town, she can get a job, start a business, and get education for her children” (in Brand 26). The economic pull of the city can be strong. According to the 2003 United Nations Habitat report, the provision of services in cities costs so much less than providing the same services in rural settings that experts suggest moving people into the cities as a poverty reduction method. While there are high concentrations of poverty within cities, there are also more opportunities for escaping it. Cities are more successful in developing new forms of income generation. They benefit from “economies of agglomeration,” the acceleration of economic activity as a correlation of higher density (Brand 31). Take Mumbai as an example; the city has the world’s highest density, with 17 million people. Although half of that population lives in slums, the city produces one-sixth of India’s gross domestic product. Overall, 80 to 90 percent of GNP growth takes place in the urban environment (Brand). “Why would anyone leave a brick house in the village with its two mango trees and view of small hills in the East to come here?” asks Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City. “So that someday the eldest son can buy two rooms on Mira Road, at the northern edges of the city. And the younger one can move beyond that, to New Jersey. Discomfort is an investment…” (in Brand 37.) When presented with the opportunity, many will choose to sacrifice their present comfort for the prospect of a better future for themselves or family.
Homes are little more than make-shift shacks, built wall-to-wall. As these communities are not formally recognized by the government, they typically lack infrastructure for sanitation, water, electricity, and transportation (Brand). Crime has long been associated with squatter communities and is partially responsible for policymakers’ and the general public’s negative views of them. However, there is increasing awareness that shantytown residents are more typically the victims of crime, rather than the perpetrators (United Nations Human Settlements Programme). The failure to incorporate shantytowns with civic services and infrastructure (especially with regard to policing) has led to increased exposure to organized crime within these communities (U.N. Human Settlements Programme; Brand).
Economic capital may be scarce among shantytown residents, but social capital is at a high.
Squatter Cities: Acknowledging and dispelling common perceptions Shantytowns typically build up on the marginal lands of a city—swamps and floodplains, steep hillsides, municipal dumps, spaces bordering highways or rail lines. Those spaces deemed uninhabitable by the government are claimed by people who have no place else to go. These settlements form without a plan or government guidance, and they may stretch for miles.
Many squatter communities are typically more exposed to crime and violence, have transient residents and social patterns that fall outside the cultural norm, and yet still maintain social cohesiveness, functionality, and vibrancy (U.N. Human Settlements Programme). “Their narrow lanes are bustling markets, with food stalls, bars, cafes, hair salons, dentists, churches, schools, health clubs, and mini-shops trading in cellphones, tools, trinkets, clothes, electronic gadgets, and bootleg videos and music. This is urban life at its most intense” (Brand 36). Economic capital may be scarce among shantytown residents, but social capital is at a high. Everybody knows everybody else, which leads to an air of hope rather than despair (Brand). The informal economy of shantytowns could not be successful without a strong network of social capital. Squatters do not hold a title to the property they occupy, and they don’t pay taxes or apply for permits or licenses. Yet they successfully take part in business, buying and selling goods and services within an informal system based on understandings (Brand). The economic activities in which squatters engage may be located within their community, or 24 _
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beyond its limits in the surrounding city (U.N. Human Settlement Programme). In its 2003 report, the United Nations estimated that 60 percent of the developing world’s urban employment is within the informal sector, and that the informal economy is directly linked with the success of the formal economy. Within squatter communities you will find “not a populace crushed by poverty but a lot of people busy getting out of poverty as fast as they can” (Brand 36). Planning Strategies for an Unplanned Community Historically, governments have dealt with undesirable squatter communities with forced evictions and bulldozers. While these actions do persist in some cities to this day, rarely do governments openly support such policies and practices. Policies have instead shifted to more constructive approaches “such as self-help and in-situ upgrading, enabling, and rightsbased policies” (U.N. Human Settlement Programme xxvi). Where such policies have been enacted, social cohesiveness, opportunities for secure tenure, local
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economic development, and incomes among urban poor have all increased (U.N. Human Settlement Programme). The 2003 United Nations report, The Challenge of Slums, makes informed recommendations regarding slum policies. Relocation and bulldozing destroys housing that is affordable to the urban poor, and replacement housing often turns out to be unaffordable. This leaves the former residents with no choice but to move back to slum accommodations in a different location. Slum policies should instead support the urban poor and the livelihoods they have begun to establish for themselves. Squatters themselves should be involved “in the formulation, financing and implementation of slum upgrading programmes and projects” (U.N. Human Settlement Programme xxvii). As the informal economy of the shantytowns is directly linked with the formal economy, governments should aim to further integrate marginal communities with the rest of the city in a productive and creative manner. Historical evidence points to in-situ slum upgrading
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as a more effective means than the resettlement of slum dwellers. The provision of basic infrastructure, including water, sanitation, electricity, access roads, footpaths, and waste management, should be at the foundation of efforts to improve slums’ habitability and economic production. Only in instances where high densities prevent the installation of infrastructure, or in squatter settlements located on physically hazardous land, should relocation be considered (U.N. Human Settlement Programme).
walls with rebar sticking out the top, ready for further construction” (Brand 41). The rebar is there with the expectation that the future will allow for another level to be added. Stewart Brand describes the process, “the magic of squatter cities is that they are improved steadily and gradually, increment by increment, by the people living there. Each home is built that way, and so is the whole community. To a planner’s eye, squatter cities look chaotic. To my biologist’s eye, they look organic”. The result is a place that, somewhat subconsciously, becomes “walkable, mixed-use, and adapted to local climate and materials” (Brand 42).
Shantytowns present a model of sustainability to be adapted by anyone who has the wisdom to notice it.
Investigative reporter Robert Neuwirth discovered, while living in squatter cities himself, that residents of shantytowns rarely consider the condition of their housing to be a primary concern. “The sad fact is that when governments and idealistic architects try to help by providing public housing [without collaborating with the residents], those buildings invariably turn into the worst part of the slum. The people who build the shanties take pride in them and are always working to improve them” (in Brand 37-38). More importantly, residents “need to know that their homes and community won’t be suddenly bulldozed out of existence”; they want security of tenure, and they want to live close to where they work (Brand 38). The Squatter City Model for the Developed World The United Nations Human Settlement Programme has found “abundant evidence of innovative solutions developed by the poor to improve their own living environments” (xxvi). Squatter dwellings generally begin as vulnerable structures constructed from cardboard, cloth, plastic, scrapwood, oil drums, and corrugated steel sheets (Brand). As time passes and incomes increase, the residents make improvements to their homes, shifting to a state of greater permanence.
Shantytown residents do not pour large amounts of capital into their developments up front, taking out loans and waiting for a return. For them, this is not an option. They use whatever resources are available at hand to create what they can, then improve upon it as their situation improves. “The most compelling image of hope in squatter communities is something you see everywhere—masonry and concrete building
Thus, shantytowns present a model of sustainability to be adapted by anyone who has the wisdom to notice it. The Shantytown Principles of Sustainability are: place higher value on social capital; develop urban areas by filling in the existing interstitial spaces; build only what can presently be afforded, which allows for expansion when conditions improve; make use of local and reusable materials; and maximize space and increase walkability through high density development. Reaching Equilibrium Cities hold the key to a sustainable future for humanity. The cutting-edge technology of modern cities is making significant and obvious strides, but we must also look in unexpected places for more solutions. Marginalized communities hold insight into social structures and resourceful living which are equally vital to creating settlements that can sustain themselves. These communities can serve as an example for maximizing resourcefulness of materials and land use, and creating strong social networks of capital. But in order for shantytowns to be sustainable themselves, they must receive collaborative guidance and support from governments and formal communities. When knowledge and resources are shared between all communities, discomfort and waste can be minimized, and an equilibrium can be reached. References Brand, Stewart. Whole Earth Discipline: An Ecopragmatist Manifesto. London: Viking Penguin, 2009. United Nations Human Settlements Programme. The Challenge of Slums: Global report on human settlements, 2003. London; Sterling, VA: Earthscan Publications, 2003.
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1155AM There are six working aussie dogs and one of them is demanding attention from my right hand. The other five are in crates, stacked and content. Strong scents of earth and hay and drying boots. It has been driving rain for 2 days now and my car is liable to be stuck when I return, but we are talking sheep and goats and I'm incredibly interested in the latter. The expert on all things livestock is probably in her 40's and wearing rubber boots because she needs them. I'm curious about the unit operations. What materials flow in and what materials flow out, what remains within the loop. All manure produced is kept onsite, I learn. Piled to create heat through the winter and then given to the pastures when turned in the spring. The sole donkey roaming the grounds at night can easily fend off a pack of coyotes. "This one is vicious", she says, and relatively new picked up after 20 lambs and 4 ewes were taken out last year. An hour passes with dairy production and meat and shearing and the unsustained economic cycle. And why the goats aren't rented out for fire fuel management. How much I would pay for a goat or a lamb after the fair. Goat meat, she insists, is actually sweeter. The "rejects" that won't be sold. Butcher cost breakdown per pound. Chops and cuts and legs. $0.79/lb to butcher. $6/head to shear. Two pygmies for land maintenance will require one bale of hay a month at about $10/bale. When I leave she gives me stern warnings about adequate fencing for my goats.
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Landscape Design, 70’s Style Clint Kruger
Following is a series of non-sequiturs, anecdotes, and recommendations from my memory vault. The greatest success in my family’s yard was a Torrey Pine tree (Pinus torreyana [California]) on the downhill side of our lot. Our late 60s-style flat-roofed home was situated about a mile up the hill from La Jolla Shores. The Torrey Pine benefited from good drainage and had the divine fortune of not being located in anyone’s view corridor. Many large trees suffered the fate of being brutally topped halfway through their life cycle because, say, Mr. Poppendeik up the hill couldn’t see a small sliver of ocean from his second story bedroom window. The Torrey Pine is also an iconic San Diego skyline tree with a relatively thin canopy. It provided a cool grey accent in our southwest view and often swayed in the afternoon breeze. We had two Olive trees (Olea europea [Mediterranean]) out by the street, one of which never found its true shape. They dropped olives where they hung over the driveway and street, but were generally lowmaintenance and echoed the blue-grey colors of the Torrey Pine. They are more than adequate at holding Christmas lights up into the dark night. Out back by the pool there was a row of Bottlebrush (Callistemon viminalis [Australia]) that my Dad insisted on trimming into geometrically correct spheres at least twice a year. They grew heartily, and brought flocks of hummingbirds to our yard. A couple strategically-placed bird feeders could bring these tiny jet pilots into formation over unsuspecting sunbathers. Dad made us scoop the red droppings of the Bottlebrush flowers out of the pool. This neverending task provided the basis of an important lesson about the benefits of hard
work. This work ethic was the secret to Dad’s success in business, and he secretly plotted to teach me and my siblings how to be as successful as him. We secretly plotted to subvert his plan. Regardless, the pool stayed clean 80% of the time. Below the Bottlebrush was a blanket of bright green Ice Plant with white flowers (Delosperma alba [South Africa])normally covered with bees. Homeowners, if you want your children to understand the pain of bee stings at a young age, then I recommend this plant. However, your Russian neighbor who is allergic to bees will never visit. At the very bottom of our lot, where no one ever went — except to evade the watchful eyes of parents — was a volunteer Pampas Grass (Cortaderia selloana [South America]). We let it go for years totally unaware of the true evil nature of these imperialist invaders. Since prevailing winds blew up the canyon, all those attractive wispy feathery stalks would sprinkle seeds in an ever-widening cone of dispersal. About 10 years in, my brothers and I got tired of weeding baby Pampas shoots out of our yard, and attacked the mother plant several times, with hoes, shovels, and machetes. It always grew back no matter how ruthlessly we hacked it down. This became one of the great ongoing wars of our landscaping history. In fact, the great Pampas wars of the 1970s and early 80s were rivaled only by my dad’s ongoing efforts to shoot gophers with his .22 rifle at 6 a.m. This was usually done in his robe after about one-and-ahalf cups of coffee. Many gophers were lost. The trick is to aim about three inches lower than the gopher’s head. When they hear the gunshot, they 28 _
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pull back fast. At 100 yards, a bullet will give a gopher about a three-inch lead. You won’t find this information in Sunset or any other gardening book. Pyrocantha (Pyrocantha koidzumii [Taiwan]), way out by the back fence where no one ever went, was an excellent choice. It thrived in all its spiny glory for decades and only became a major problem when some poor soul wanted to repaint the red fence. The painter’s color choice was beige, a dubious choice in my opinion, and I rooted for the Pyrocantha as it twisted and snapped back with every attempt to subdue it. Use English Ivy (Hedera helix [Europe]) to attract rats. If you want to scare the crap out of your oldest sister when a plump breeder rat charges her from the far side of the lawn, then by all means have a good chuckle. However, you will be cutting the clingy Ivy climbers down off of trees and walls at least three times a year for the rest of your life. If I were English, I wouldn’t want to be associated with this invasive plant. Who would have thought the humble Rosemary (Rosmarinus officianalis ‘Tuscan Blue’) could become a whopping 6-foot tall row of hillocks on the West slope of our lot. After several kinds of groundcover failed on this extremely hot exposed incline, the Rosemary sprawled out and laid claim to most of the real estate bringing birds and beneficial insects. On a hot summer afternoon this mini ecosystem would buzz with life and the scent of Rosemary has taken a seat in my Pantheon of great fragrances. The Jacaranda (Jacaranda mimosifolia) is a storied specimen from South America. In late spring it will bloom into a formal lavender umbrella. Just when I thought it was all over, the trumpet-shaped flowers would fall and blanket the lawn beneath for another two subsurface
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weeks. I’ll never forget trying to empty the lawnmower bag into a trash can and finding my entire haul to be the color of a geisha’s obi. While I’m on the topic of lavender blue, a late success in our landscaping experiment was the introduction of two Blue Hibiscus (Alyogyne huegelii [West Australia]) specimens at the lowest point of the yard. Just down from the stately Torrey Pine, they grew quickly to eight feet tall with moderate watering. The thin rangy habit seems less wild from a distance and the tops of the branches displayed papery blue translucent flowers that persisted through much of the summer. A word about fungus. If you mow a single mushroom one week, you will be mowing a row of fifteen ‘shrooms the next. This logarithmic expansion will continue until you concede to the little white buttons and hand pick them before cutting the grass. Just say “no” to Eucalyptus (Eucalyptus polyanthemos [Australia]), and you can quote me on that. Don’t think: “A shaggy trunk and light blue-grey silver dollar leaves that shimmer in the wind;” think “Shallow roots that can’t handle even the mildest of Pacific coast winters.” Of course, if the homeowner is an engineer, he will spend more than a decade rigging a system of ropes and pulleys to hoist the scrawny tree back upright over and over and over. Our ultimate replacement was a handsome Coral Tree in the late 80s that we never got to see mature. One of the two natives on my lot, a Wild Lilac (Ceanothus [California]), died after only 3 years. We suspected foul play in the form of chlorinated pool runoff from the neighbor’s house uphill from us, but now I suspect we were over-watering the poor thing. We tried several other species on this west slope which
was cut into the heavy clay soil, but nothing worked. Eventually — and I can see your heads shaking as I tell you this — I put in two small unassuming palms. Turns out not all palms are the same! The one on the right stayed a manageable three feet tall and wide. The one on the left, however, turned out to be a King Palm (Archontophoeniz cunninghamiana [Australia]) that grew so fast it threatened to knock over the neighbor’s fence. What was I supposed to do, read the nursery’s tags? What am I, a botanist? Natal Plum (Carissa macrocarpa [South Africa]): My childhood baby-sitter, a German woman with a huge heart, would harvest the fruit to make jam. Why this impenetrable hedge was at the edge of our lawn, I’ll never know. But it popped many soccer balls and foiled many Frisbee catches over the ages. Also, one of our window-washers fell off a ladder and landed painfully in the loving thorny arms of the Natal Plums. I’m certain he changed careers or at least stopped having beer on the job. Never touch the fuzzy-looking cactus (Opuntia microdasys [Mexico]). That fuzz is evil, it stings, and will take a long time tweeze each and every one of those tiny thorns out of your fingers. They aren’t thorns, actually. They are called glochids and they make thorns seem predictable and honest. Don’t plant your Lavender Star Flower (Grewia occidentalis [South Africa]) in the sun, not if that sun is going to disappear in a couple years under a thick canopy of Ash trees. Plant them in full sun and hook them up to a wall with lots of reflected light. A better spot would have been where our occasionally beautiful Bougainvillea languished in the summer heat. By August the thorny vine from a Frenchcolonized island looked like a toothpick sculpture. It’s a hard “L” sound in this word, by the way, since the Spanish missed that particular
Island as they roamed the planet looking for things to conquer and name. What idiot thought that wooden edger board would hold up to a mower-wielding teenager? When I was 16, I was grumpy that I had to do chores before going to the beach and generally in a mood to break things. One to many wide turns with the mower and I had to get out the hacksaw, mallet, and hammer and reestablish the meandering edge of our lawn. A triple layer of edger board will hold up well to all kinds of abuse, provided you install it with a 12-inch stake every two feet. An alternative, I suppose, would be to let the grass blend naturally into the unweeded side yard creating a lovely meadow effect. If you forego the weeding, the mowing, and the edger board, then you can spend the whole day at the beach. Also, our generation was more or less completely ignorant of mulch. I still talk to people who think it looks “messy,” but, hey, it’s you’re weekend. You can either install three inches of mulch twice a year, or get down on your knees and pray to the Spurge (Euphorbia maculata [Tropical Africa]) each and every fortnight. On the topic of weeding, you will never get all the Bermuda Grass (Cynodon dactylon [South Africa]) out of the African Daisies (Dimorphotheca aurantiaca [South Africa]). You will chase endless streamers from one root node to the next. If you brag to your friends that you pulled out a 30-foot-long Bermuda shoot, you have no social life and it’s time to sod the entire hill. At which point you will find yourself dragging the mower back up from the base of the lot wishing your yard was either smaller, or large enough to justify investing in a ride-on mower.
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