The Great American Backyard Shortage

More than a hundred years before fictional Manhattan attorney Oliver Douglas dreamed of "land spreadin' out so far and wide," rural life was already becoming a thing of the past. Prior to the Industrial Revolution less than 10% of Americans and Europeans lived in cities. By the 1920 census, more than 80% of Americans resided

 

 

 

in suburban poulation centers. But by then the human tide had turned. Reverse urban migration had already begun.

"They paved paradise and put up a parking lot"

— Joni Mitchell

A lack of garden space or greenery sourrounding the family home was not, of course, the primary reason for suburban flight. It did become a symbol for this most recent back-to-the-land movement.

Meanwhile, in a related note...

In the hours following California's 1994 Northridge earthquake, 911 switchboards recieved dozens of calls from frightened citizens reporting odd lights across Los Angeles during the blackout. The "lights" were the Milky Way. The callers, lifelong residents of light polluted urban areas, had never experienced a night sky dark enough to display more than a handful of stars.

In recent years telescope sales have risen astronomically, so to speak, growing in seeming proportion to our loss of true night, and the disappearance of stars that guided us and were a part of every-day life for thousands of years.

Gardening: Thoreau to Whole Earth Catalog to 21st Century...

Most people have a vague notion of suburban life as a social phenomenae that emerged from the ashes of the second world war. Those old enough to remember may retain dim images of the model suburb of Levitown, PA— the social engineers' dream of modern American life, replete with A-bomb shelters and Levitown, PA suburball nuclear kitchens!

The integration of the outdoors into home archtechture is nearly as old as recorded history. Enclosed, Henry David Thoreauperistyle courtyards began in Greece roughly 2500 years ago. Medieval monasteries expanded the peristyle idea to employ a cloistered archtechtural style resembling modern apartment buildings. In recent years shopping malls and even office buildings often surround green, rectangular oases, some supporting their own miniature eco-systems. Our unwillingness to abandon our ties to the land seems innate. From the ancient Greeks to Henry David Thoreau to Green Acres, people have clung tenaciously to their ability to interact with the land.

"Though I do not believe that a plant will spring up where no seed has been, I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders"

 

—Henry David Thoreau

Back to the land movements have often been driven, at least in part, by sentiment. But deteriorating physcal circumstances brings practicality and the need for methods so different as to make modern gardens unrecognizable to an 1890's horticulturist. These are not your grandfather's gardens.

Urban gardening or farming is not an entirely new American concept. At the beginning of the 20th century, labor attorney and back-to-the-land activist Bolton Hall (1854–1938) established the Vacant Lot Gardening Association in New York City. The idea was to utilized undeveloped land in the inner city, using it for communal vegetable gardens.

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