Spade & Spoon: Localizing the way Westerners Eat

Growing Gardens, Not Lawns

By Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel, 3-06-07

	Image courtesy of H.C. Flores, author of Food Not Lawns

Each week in the ”Spade & Spoon” column, writer Kisha Lewellyn Schlegel discusses the localization of the food system in the Mountain West by profiling organizations and individuals who are attending to the issues and possibilities of eating closer to home.

Each year, Americans spend about $30 billion to grow a collective 23 million acres of lawn. We soak our grass with 270 billion gallons of water, an amount that would irrigate over 80 million acres of organic veggies.  And to make sure it grows thick and ankle high, we douse every acre with ten times the pesticides, fertilizers and herbicides required for an acre of industrial farmland. Then we waste the weekend flaring up lawn mowers that emit enough pollution in one hour to equal the 350 mile journey of a car.

With the over abundance of grass in this country, and the ever dwindling amount of farmland, two western organizations have formally taken up the cause of replacing lawns with gardens.

The Cascadia Food Not Lawns program provides information and encouragement for those interested in taking the bold step.  In doing so, the gathering of grassroots gardeners from the Willamette Valley, works to create a thriving bioregion through permaculture, ecological design and biodynamics.

A similar initiative out of L.A. called Edible Estates, proposes that lawn growers replace grass with, “a highly productive domestic, edible landscape.” By replacing the uniformity of grass with the, “chaotic abundance of biodiversity,” the initiative hopes to reconnect eaters with the origin of their food. (With hyper-local eating, who needs a Country of Origin Label?)

Both of these programs can be replicated in the Rocky Mountain West, and are perhaps even more pertinent in our arid region.  While land west of the Cascades gets an average rainfall of 50 inches, the lower elevations of the Rocky Mountain West see about 15 inches per year.

Food Not Lawn’s chapters already exist in St.Cloud, Montreal and Bisbee, Arizona, promoting the idea that the edible landscape can save water, your back and a few gallons of oil.

In the next three years, the Edible Estates initiative will also replace suburban front lawns in nine cities to provide a working model for those regions. Initiative members will work with the family to remove the lawn and plant a unique and varied landscape that exists within the community’s and climate’s restraints. While Edible Estates doesn’t have any immediate plans for such models in the Rocky Mountain West, they do provide a how-to guide, good for lawn removal in any region.

It is bold to remove a lawn (particularly a front lawn), and make it edible.  Grass-loving neighbors might turn their heads and complain or find obscure ordinances to save the sod.  Some of this tension might be eased by planting fruit trees and shrubs along the border of the yard (an edible hedge), but it will still take a while to change American perceptions and expectations of what it means to have a yard.  Perhaps reticent neighbors can be persuaded by tasty eggplant and peppers.  There should be plenty to share because as H.C. Flores writes in her book, Food Not Lawns, a 1/3 of an acre can actually grow enough food to feed a family of six, and still have some lawn left for lounging.

And perhaps the shift in perception is not far off. Even the latest Time magazine has devoting space to the benefits of local food. And if Time’s ready for it, maybe your neighbors are too. 

Just this week, my Granddad, Truce, an avid gardener who lives in San Antonio, emailed to let me know about the recent article…

“…It says the best food may be what you grow in your own back yard. I planted 27 tomato plants this week and had to cover them with cups this afternoon. The temperature will be down to 35 tonight and tomorrow night. We had eighty degrees two days this week. I hope to supply tomatoes to the [retirement community] residents here.”

As a lifelong gardener, he has long believed that local food is best.  When he had a yard, he always allotted a portion for a garden, and even now, while living in a retirement community where his “yard” is a balcony, he still found some space for a garden.  Rather than put his gloves away, he looked around the sprawling campus and found a long neglected side yard, which he asked to dig up.  The community’s management agreed and even gave him a budget to plant tomatoes (and a few rose bushes).  He grows the tomatoes for their taste and freshness, but most of all he grows them to give away to other residents and share with friends.  He grows food to give folks a taste of what they would otherwise miss.

Digging up the lawn is not some new fad.  There is a long standing tradition of growing gardens wherever one has space.  This tradition has held particularly during times of war.

During the First World War, soldiers planted gardens behind the trenches. In the Second, prisoners of the Warsaw ghetto grew food and astonishing flowers.  People of Japanese descent planted traditional dooryard gardens during their internment in this country, and American soldiers in Iraq plant small patches of grass to remind them of home.  As Kenneth Helphand writes, these are Defiant Gardens.  They are tangible reminders of life and beauty during the times of hardship and death that come with war.  They send a message of peace. They give folks a taste of what they are otherwise missing.

So as we start this Rocky Mountain growing season of over-fertilized grass and meager rain, amidst dwindling acres of local food and a fifth year of war, consider the elegant pea vine trellised along your porch, the plump tomato dappling the view. They are more beautiful than any fescue or bluegrass. They are unexpected. The best things usually are.

Look for the Spade & Spoon column here every Tuesday. If you have article ideas for Spade & Spoon (www.newwest.net/spadeandspoon), email kisha@newwest.net.

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