Edible Estates: video & essay
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Running time: 05:03.
This video documents the creation of an "Edible Estate" in Maplewood, NJ.
Edible Estates is a project by Fritz Haeg, which demonstrates the transformation of lawns into edible landscapes. Since Fritz's project got underway in 2005, several other similar campaigns have launched. Currently, there are some wonderful efforts to create such a 'Victory Garden' on the White House lawn, most notably a project called Eat the View.
I created this video in collaboration with Andrew Freiband. I also wrote this essay about the Edible Estates project:
EDIBLE ESTATES: Gently Radical
We see the loss of farmland to suburban development with distressingly increasing frequency, but it's not often that the tables are turned. Designer Fritz Haeg, however, has sparked a trend to reclaim suburban land for the cultivation of food. His initiative, called Edible Estates, converts stereotypical suburban lawns into densely productive mini-farms. The transformations are dramatic: Haeg carefully selects a host family, then swoops in for 3 days with a team of volunteers and donated materials. Sod is gleefully ripped out, a storm of peat and compost is added to the soil, and seedlings are tenderly planted.
Billing itself as an "attack on the front lawn" the Edible Estates mission is to open our eyes to the frank reality of lawns, recasting this American icon as a polluting, wasteful, alienating space and suggesting that we would do better to grow food there. Haeg points out that the ubiquitous front lawn has become merely a symbolic gesture, so customary that we "don't really see it anymore, at least for what it actually is." So what is a lawn, as Haeg sees it? He is eager to awaken us: "It is an industrial landscape disguised as organic plant material."
Lawns occupy more land than we use for wheat, corn or tobacco. And, frighteningly, it is estimated that, per acre, more chemicals are dumped on lawns than crops. This toxicity leaches into our groundwater and drinking water, and poisons fish, birds, and bees. So it follows that it poisons us too. Lawn pesticides have carcinogenic and reproductive effects, have been linked to birth defects, can cause liver and kidney damage and neurotoxicity. Lawns waste water, accounting for as much as half of household water use, and their maintenance depends on fuel to power mowing and trimming equipment, which in turn contributes to air pollution. Despite all this, a multi-billion dollar lawn care industry is evidence of the lawn's enduring mass popularity.
But what is this turf being relentlessly manicured for? "Nothing," answers Haeg. Aside from the routine mowing, lawns are rarely occupied by people. A lawn exists to assert a home's separation from neighbors and from the community. "One thing that I've noticed from the very beginning of this project is how much is repressed by the lawn — not just native plant and animal life, but social interaction," Haeg says. A manifesto outlining the Edible Estates concept condemns the lawn as a monoculture, and an emblem of mindless conformity. Gardens, on the other hand, are a form of self-expression. He explains, "there's only one way to have a front lawn, but there are infinite ways to have a garden."
Calling the Edible Estates gardens 'interventions', Haeg indicates a desire to interrupt and subvert the repetitive homogeneity of suburbia. It works. Skeptical neighbors fret that the gardens — exploding with stalks and vines, attracting birds and other animals — look disorderly and unkempt. They anxiously ask, could this lower neighborhood property values? Is it even legal? A few days after Haeg planted an Edible Estate garden in Maplewood, New Jersey, a sign that offered information on the project was mysteriously stolen. "If you're threatened by vegetable plants, you need to check yourself," Haeg laughs.
While Haeg's project clearly bears environmental and social agendas, it's an aesthetic notion that motivates him. Wishing to revive an appreciation for the beauty of edible plants, Haeg's gardens emphasize design and present lush, inviting displays of diversity. When you encounter an Edible Estate, situated on a row of monotonous and sterile lawns, the point is vividly made. Despite ruffling a few feathers, the beauty of the gardens generally prompts enthusiastic support from the community, eliciting curiosity — even envy.
And then there's the harvest. A diminutive plot that was formerly a lawn yields an astonishing abundance of herbs, fruits, and vegetables. Edible Estates gardeners have found the bounty so plentiful it is generously shared with neighbors, and some have developed new skills in preserving and canning. Aiming to mend the disconnection between eaters and our food sources, Haeg has provided a powerful example, the ultimate case study in eating locally.
The project asks us to see how the land nourishes us both literally and figuratively. The gardens foster a deeper awareness of place, demanding that those who tend it and witness it consider their relationship to the local climate, soil, seasons, culture and history. It pushes us to connect ourselves, and our habits, to our surroundings. For some, it is radical and perception-altering.
Edible Estates is, in many ways, art. It's a gentle way of prompting us to think critically about how we occupy our land, joining political goals with pleasure and beauty. Haeg has found a way to leak notions of stewardship into suburban monotony. Your lawn is your private property. It needn't look like your neighbors'. You have a choice about how to use your land. Protect it. Take a close look at how we feed the land because it feeds us.
The project has touched a nerve, spanning issues of food, energy, home, climate change, and land use. And with a small gesture, it has demonstrated huge impact. Haeg aspires to set an example that can be replicated, and with this he has succeeded. The project has gathered enough momentum to be called a "de-lawning movement" by the NY Times. In some ways, it's all in the name. "If you give something a title or a word it suddenly has a credibility that it doesn't have if you're just some wacko planting food in your front yard," Haeg comments.
Fritz Haeg's background spans disciplines and his work defies easy categorization. As an architect, teacher, artist, and landscape designer he might be more simply described as a catalyst. He is adept at generating provocative and idealistic visionary schemes. He describes his utopia as an environment in which humans and nature intermingle to the point of being inseparable. Edible Estates is a step in this direction, weaving the natural world back into our industrialized lives. And he's ready to scale it up — while in London for the planting of a Tate-commissioned community edible garden, he publicly proposed a new competitive event for the Olympic Games in 2012: farming.
Currently, Haeg is more than half of the way to reaching his stated goal of nine regional prototype gardens, and in Spring 2008 his book Edible Estates: Attack on the Front Lawn! was released.