Loading ...VICTORY LAWNS?
What happens when oil really gets expensive, and 3,000-mile strawberries become $30 strawberries? Welcome to Plan B invites Jan Lundberg, one of the most prolific, commonsensical “solutions” writers in the USA Today. Created in 1969 and defended by local residents, Berkeley’s People’s Park has become a model for U.S. cities. On the 4th of July, Lundberg planted corn and beans there, while marveling at “the healthy state of fruit trees, berry bushes, vegetables, and herbs.”
Driveways and parking lots are easy to remove, he notes. And “Rooftop gardens are advisable if water is available.” [Culture Change Letter #104 July 8/05]
Heather Coburn picks up this theme in her book, Food Not Lawns. “More than 58 million Americans spend at least $30 billion every year to maintain over 23 million acres of lawn. That’s an average of over a third of an acre and $517 each,” she reveals. “The same size plot of land could still have a small lawn for recreation, plus produce all of the vegetables needed to feed a family of six. The lawns in the United States consume around 270 billion gallons of water a week -enough to water 81 million acres of organic vegetables, all summer long.”
For apartment dwellers, “An amazing amount of produce can be grown in containers or window boxes, especially greens like lettuce,” the Sierra Club’s “Mr. Green” Bob Schildgen suggests. To promote peaceful “perpetual salads” instead of perpetual war just snip some leaves and let the plant grow back. [Sierra Nov-Dec/06]
In terms of labor, fuel, and poisons, lawns are bigger than industrial agricultural sector in the United States. American lawns use 10-times as much toxic chemicals per acre as industrial farmland, poisoning playing children and downstream groundwater, and making them tricky to convert for veggie growing unless allowed to lie fallow for a few years. In the meantime, if pesticides are a problem, make some “raised bed” sandboxes filled with clean soil.
Now is a good time to park the power mower, which excretes the same pollutants in an hour as a car driven 350 miles.
“Let’s turn our cities into gardens,” suggests Nick Routeledge in the Whiteaker Community Newsletter. “Right now is the time. We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.”
An English vegetable garden can produce 8 tons an acre! During World War II, 40% of Britain’s food and vegetables were derived from some 300,000 acres of home vegetable gardens and community plots. The return of urban households to vegetable gardening in cities like Vancouver, British Columbia is one of the biggest, quietest and most transformative revolutions currently underway.
“The suburban family farmer is the savior of the world,” Bill Mollison believes. Anyone can join! While returning some 14,500 pesticide-soaked golf courses in the United States to safe food production, many of the nation’s 700,000 athletic grounds could be used in part or completely to grow food. [Front Porch News May/00]
“If we truly feel committed to treating the earth and each other with equality and respect, the first place to show it is by how we treat the land we live on. It is time to grow food, not lawns!” Deborah Coburn urges. “The reasons include reducing pollution, improving the quality of your diet, increasing local food security, and beautifying your surroundings, as well as building community and improving your mental and physical health. You will save money and enhance your connection with the earth and with your family.”
What about introducing school playground gardens to kids? “If we can change our land-use philosophy from one of ownership and control to one of sharing and cooperation, we can renew our connection with the Earth and each other, and thus benefit through increased physical and mental health, an improved natural environment, and stronger local communities,” Coburn extols. In other words: “Use Permaculture to make peace real.” [Front Porch News May/00; Food Not Lawns; Discover Magazine July/03; Global Warming Crisis Council in Aug/03]
Popularity: 44% [?]
We can pave our streets green: Wouldn’t you give up your extra parking spot for a garden plot?
The asphalt will crack and erupt, and green plants and vines will sprout forth.
No, this isn’t my end of the world prophecy, this is about parking. Or gardening. Or both.
The street I live on has several apartment buildings and five houses. In other words, every person who lives on my street has underground parking or their own spot off the back lane. Yet the street is lined — choked — with parked cars. What’s the problem here? Or rather, what’s the solution? I am not usually one to advocate for another law — in fact, I have considered running for office on a “One Bylaw Repealed Every Day” ticket. But, an easy way to free up space in our cities would simply be to require that if you have a parking spot on your property, you use it. Leave the public space for public use.
Mapping it out
So how much space is there, and what could we do with it? Google Maps shows my block is 850 feet long and a little quality time with a tape measure finds the distance between sidewalks is 41 feet, so in just one block we have 34,850 square feet to play with.
First, let’s make it a one-way street, one lane wide, with a couple of pullouts. This maintains access for emergency vehicles, taxis and mini-buses for wheelchairs. We could also throw four spots for visitors into each block. At one end we can put a half-court for basketball, street hockey, skateboarding or rollerblading so once again shouts of “Car!” will mean the players get a short break. For the rest of the block, I propose gardens. We have enough space left for 150 very nice garden plots, each about 3 by 4 meters, plus walkways.
Or, we could continue to enjoy the heat rising off the asphalt, with the rich visual stimulus of dented bumpers and the sound of car alarms.
Volunteers anyone?
Cleveland, Ohio is a hub of Asphalt Gardening, where planter boxes are put right on top of parking lots, separated from the polluted soil and oily road by a layer of wood chips. This would be a great way to try Garden Streets — do a block or two, then a couple of years later rip up the asphalt and put roots down.
I happen to live in Vancouver, where the city council passed a motion to have 2010 new garden plots by 2010. A handy graph on the linked page shows there is not even a dream of actually achieving it, even though it is a pittance by some standards. (The city-state of Singapore, for example, produces 25 per cent of its own vegetables.)
So call me the answer to Vancouver City Hall’s prayers because 2010 new garden plots is only 14 blocks of Garden Streets.
Could we start street gardening without a controversial bylaw to eliminate street parking? Sure. The city could run a newspaper ad explaining the idea and asking blocks to volunteer. Let the citizens do all the legwork of convincing their neighbors. Using bio-intensive gardening methods, my block could provide all the vegetables needed for 22 people, plus all the plant material needed to keep the soil productive — no need for chemical fertilizers here.
Tasty numbers
Arable Acres found that Vancouver could grow all its own produce by farming the existing front and back yards. Times have changed since the study was done in 1980 — there are more people living in the city, and development has eaten up space. But other things have changed too. That study suggested those gardens could produce $100 million worth of produce. That is $265,000,000 in today’s dollars.
The possibilities make your head spin — 70 hectares of farm in Burnaby produce 10 per cent of the vegetables grown in the Fraser Valley. Arable Acres estimates Vancouver has about 3,000 hectares in streets and another 3,000 hectares in yards. Putting this into practice, the Edible Estates project is farming front yards in six cities across the United States, from Lakewood, California to Maplewood, New Jersey.
All of these delicious statistics beg the question whether the current trend in zoning experiments — reduced on-site parking so drivers have to fight for spots on the street — is entirely a good idea.
The idea has been: remove parking and you will remove cars, thus helping build more great places like the pedestrian-scale streetcar neighborhoods that are being or have been gentrified all over North America. And yes, this appears to be at least a mossy shade of green.
But why should we let private cars be pushed onto the public street in the first place? Why should the taxpayers, including the pedestrians, cyclists and transit riders, pay for the real estate and the asphalt underneath other people’s cars?
True cost of cars
Land in urban centers is at such a premium that each street parking spot in front of my building is worth $25,000. Add to that the fact that each car actually has three to four parking spots scattered around the city, just waiting for it (otherwise you wouldn’t be able to find a spot at the end of your trip and would be forced to drive back home, spinning like a hamster in a wheel). The total subsidy to drivers is at least $100,000. If drivers had to mortgage their street parking, they would be paying $600 per month. And to think I can’t find bike racks.
It would be easy to turn my block, with all its underground parking, into a Garden Street, but why stop there? Imagine your own block stuffed with flowers and vegetables. Big sprays of lupins, colorful mats of marigolds, nodding rows of poppies. The big white blossoms of pumpkin changing to the shiny orange of jack-o’-lanterns-to-be. Fat, red Early Girl tomatoes alongside the sweet Gold Nugget grape tomatoes.
Speaking of grapes, why not trellis a few up for summer shade and delicious juice? And, instead of the “decorative” street trees, you can have fruit and nut trees — with no cars for fruit to fall upon there is really no reason not to do it.
If what I’ve said here makes sense to you, please feel free to practice this rallying cry: A garden plot — not a parking spot — for every citizen!