EDIBLE ESTATES regional prototype garden #1: SALINA, kansas
> initiated july 4th, 2005 / exhibit curated by Stacy Switzer from 09.25.05 - 12.31.05
> commissioned and sponsored by the Salina Art Center / Salina, Kansas
> the salina kansas edible estates edition #1 video (quicktime)
> view the Edible Estates: Edition #1 informational brochure produced for Salina
> watch the presentation prepared by the Land Institute for the Edible Estates show in Salina
The first application of the Edible Estate project is in Salina, Kansas, close to the geographic center of the United States. For the first part of the project, Stan and Priti Cox have offered their typical suburban front lawn as a working prototype for the region. For the exhibit at the Salina Art Center in September of 2005 there will be documentation of this local test garden, with design drawings and with time lapse photographs of it's progress throughout the summer and fall.
For the second part of the project a booklet produced specifically for Salina will be distributed for free, demonstrating to residents how they might go about replacing their lawn with a food producing landscape. This will include listings of local nurseries, fruits and vegetables that are recommended for the region, native plants that are edible, local businesses that may assist with the labor and maintenance, basic gardening principals and further reading resources. This information will be assembled with the help of local specialists, such as the Land Institute in Salina and also be available on the internet.
The Lawn Goodbye
by Stan Cox (Salina Edible Estate owner)
It's May, and maybe you're looking out at your lawn, thinking that it needs a mowing. Instead, you might want to think about whether you need that lawn at all.
The problem isn't grass. Humans first evolved on the grasslands of Africa, and until not so long ago, grasslands covered far greater swaths of this continent than they do in this century.
But landscapes like those bear little resemblance to the industrial, shocking-green
carpets that surround homes, workplaces, and public spaces today.
Science has shown that lawn management without chemicals is feasible. Rugged
plants -- including grasses -- that need little mowing, less fertilizing, and
in drier regions, no watering, can be combined to make attractive home landscapes.
High-input lawns, meanwhile, are boring, yield no useful harvest, and may rarely
even be trod upon. But for growing a crop of hard cash, the synthetic grasslands
of suburbia are proving to be fertile ground indeed.
Toiling in America's front yards, homeowners and hired lawn-care workers produce
two shades of green: the color of chlorophyll and the color of money. Replace
all of that shallow-rooted, high-maintenance turf with something more resilient,
and a $150 billion industry will go into heart failure.
Lawn-care companies employ mostly immigrant workers, but even with the industry's low wages, labor costs typically eat up half of a firm's budget. That, along with their drive to process more yards per day, has hastened evolution in every species of lawn-care machinery.
The commercial lawn mower has evolved most rapidly, coming to resemble a hybrid
between a lunar rover and a La-Z-Boy recliner. And despite tightened regulations,
it's still a serious polluter.
For the homeowner, a little electric mower may seem clean, but its cord leads
back, more likely than not, to a carbon dioxide-belching coal-fired power plant.
A University of Florida study showed that battery-powered electric mowers have
about the same environmental impact as gas mowers, if you account for manufacture
of the battery.
And other gas and electric contraptions like leaf blowers and string trimmers
have joined mowers in making Saturday afternoon in suburbia sound more like
Monday morning in a sawmill.
Meanwhile, business is booming in the lawn-and-garden chemical industry. The
Environmental Protection Agency says that home herbicide use almost doubled
between 1982 and 2001 and continues to grow.
Research shows that 29 of the 30 most commonly used lawn pesticides are toxic
to birds, fish, amphibians, and/or bees. Environmental groups have raised the
biggest clamor over the herbicide 2,4-D, which, a growing number of studies
have shown to be a health hazard.
The industry's response? One company has developed a form of 2,4-D that doesn't
have the chemical's notorious odor. That, apparently, allows lawn-care workers,
neighbors, and passersby to inhale it freely, without undue concern.
Hard times on the farm are partly responsible for bringing more chemicals to the suburbs. In a 2003 study, Paul Robbins and Julie Sharp of Ohio State University showed how "profits from agricultural pesticides have been low for years" and how that has "paved the way for increases in the sales of lawn chemicals."
Last summer, my family and I removed our front lawn and replaced it with an "edible landscape", as part of a project by Los Angeles-based artist/architect Fritz Haeg and our local art center. We've been asked plenty of questions about that move, the two most common being, "What do your neighbors say?" and "Has the city fined you?"
Our answers: "They like it" and "No". But fears like those keep many Americans from ditching their lawns.
In their paper, Robbins and Sharp cited studies showing that to homeowners,
"property values are clearly associated with high-input green-lawn maintenance
and use," with the result that many Americans have "associated moral
character and social responsibility with the condition of the lawn."
How did a patch of ground that delivers fertilizer-laden runoff into storm drains,
greenhouse gases and a terrible racket into the atmosphere, and pesticide residues
into the neighbor's dog (and probably the neighbors) came to embody "moral
character and social responsibility"? It's really no mystery -- as usual,
all you have to do is follow the money.
resources in salina, kansas:
garden centers:
earthcare services garden store
470 s. ohio street
phone: (785) 827-9056
ten acre gardens
8853 e cloud street
phone: (785) 536-4672
garden oasis
3363 w. armstrong rd
(785) 493-0199
true value hardware
460 s. ohio street
phone: (785) 823-6400
other resources:
Kansas State University Agriculture Experiment Station and Cooperative Extension Service
Organic Community Garden at KCK Urban Academy
Kansas Association for Conservation and Environmental Education
books:
Edible Wild Plants of the Prairie, by Kelly Kindscher, University Press of Kansas, 1987
Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America, by Francois Couplan, Keats Publishing, 1998
Gardening in the Heartland, by Rachel Snyder, University Press of Kansas, 1992
Midwest Gardener's Handbook : The What, Where, When, How & Why of Gardening in the Midwest, by Jan Riggenbach, Cool Springs Press, 1999
The Rodale Book of Composting : Easy Methods for Every Gardener, by Grace Gershuny, Rodale Books, 1992.
Culture and Horticulture: A Philosophy of Gardening, by Wolf D. Storl, Biodynamic Literature, 1979.
Gardening: Plains and Upper Midwest , by Roger Vick, Fulcrum Publishers, 1991
How to Grow More Vegetables: And Fruits, Nuts, Berries, Grains, and Other Crops Than You Ever Thought Possible On Less Land Than You Can Imagine, John Jeavons, Ten Speed Press; 6th Edition, 2002.
The Complete Book of Edible Landscaping, Rosalind Creasy, A Sierra Club Book, 1982. Also see other books by this author (This is the definitive book on the topic)
many thanks to:
Stacy Switzer, curator
Stan and Priti Cox, garden owners
Ted Zerger, fellow gardener
the Land Institute & David Van Tassel
Pam Harris, Wendy Moshier, Becky Atkinson & Jay Heiman at the Salina Art Center
Katie Bachler & Erin Marshel for research and assistance
Department of Graphic Sciences, brochure design
links: