Human Flower Project
A Paris Garden with Iron Bones
Strong on geometry (and previously, on KFC wrappers, too), an abandoned stretch of Paris has become a community garden, 300 members strong. Nature Deficit Disorder, adieu!
Graffiti and petunias mingle in Les Jardins du Ruisseau, Paris
Photo: Allen Bush
By Allen Bush
André Le Nôtre and Claude Monet, respective talents behind the historic gardens of Versailles and Giverny, used straight lines in their designs. Strong bones make good gardens. Les Jardins du Ruisseau came ready-made with straight lines - an old abandoned Paris rail line. Even with adjacent looming apartment buildings, Le Nôtre might have thought the gardens insufficiently palatial, but Monet would have liked the bright yellow sunflowers and orange nasturtiums.
A community garden along the abandoned rail line
Photo: Allen Bush
The artist Josef Albers said color finds the line, and here golden marigolds, blood red amaranths, orange squash blooms, wands of white gaura, and coral-colored four o’clocks stretch end to end for 400 meters, never straying far from the line. Upper and lower terraces run side by side. Look carefully, Mr. Monet. I think you would like the arches covered with wisteria and climbing roses. You can find a tiny pond, too (but I’ll give Giverny the nod on spectacular waterlilies).
I discovered these wonderful gardens in an article written by Elaine Sciolino for the New York Times and went eagerly looking for them on a recent holiday.
Ms. Sciolino’s knowledgeable local guide described Jardins du Ruisseau as his favorite small Paris garden. I can see why. I was knocked-out by the exuberance of vegetables, color and spirit. The site, overgrown for years by burdock, stinging nettles and black locusts, is very near the flea market (Les Puces) and not far from Montmartre.
Denis Loubaton
Photo: Allen Bush
Denis Loubaton, who has lived in the neighborhood for seventeen years, said the area around the train station had once been a beehive of activity but deteriorated when rail passenger service was discontinued. It became a trash heap, frequented only by drug addicts and prostitutes.
Loubaton wanted to re-create pride of place but didn’t, at first, have a garden in mind. In 2000, he organized neighbors to help clean-up, and plant a few flowers, but soon realized without regular activity and a permanent presence, they would be fighting a losing battle. Loubaton’s original, small committed activist group realized that children should be their focus and a consensus was reached. The gardens opened in 2004 and slowly gained political support, municipal funding and private sponsorship. Today there are 300 members who pay annual dues of 10 Euros ($14.35), but only a third of them garden the communal plots. The rest come to meet their neighbors, picnic or let their children run free, skin their knees, laugh, and harvest more squash than they imagined.
The success of Jardins du Ruisseau confirms that children like and, no doubt, need the natural world. Richard Louv’s book Last Child in the Woods explains why. City kids sit glued in front of screens and miss out on the swinging rope in the woods. In Louv’s interviews a fourth grader confessed, “I like to play indoors better, ‘cause that’s where all the electrical outlets are.”
Busy (ecstatic) gardeners at Les Jardins du Ruisseau
Photo: Yves Laurent
Louv lays out a strong argument for Nature Deficit Disorder and explores creativity and ecstatic places, “Transcendence (for children) did not require spectacular scenery.” He quotes environmental psychologist, Louise Chawla, who says such a place, “…could be evoked by environments as small as a patch of weeds at the edge of a sleeping porch, or during freedom as brief as an escape [into nature] during a school outing.”
Make your way to the Porte de Clignancourt Paris Metro stop if you’re headed toward the Jardins du Ruisseau neighborhood. Ignore the KFC and McDonalds when you pop-up from underground. Instead, try the corn on the cob roasted on makeshift grocery cart grills.
Author’s Note: The Friends of Jardins du Ruisseau cordially invite you to their Festival of Water September 27th and 28th, on Saturday from 1:00 p.m – 6:00 P.M., Sunday from 11:00 – 6:00 p.m. The friends will launch their ingenious new water retrieval system and celebrate the fall harvest.
Comments
Last Child in the Woods ––
Saving Our Children from Nature-Deficit Disorder,
by Richard Louv
Michael J. Vandeman, Ph.D.
November 16, 2006
In this eloquent and comprehensive work, Louv makes a convincing case for ensuring that children (and adults) maintain access to pristine natural areas, and even, when those are not available, any bit of nature that we can preserve, such as vacant lots. I agree with him 100%. Just as we never really outgrow our need for our parents (and grandparents, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.), humanity has never outgrown, and can never outgrow, our need for the companionship and mutual benefits of other species.
But what strikes me most about this book is how Louv is able, in spite of 310 pages of text, to completely ignore the two most obvious problems with his thesis: (1) We want and need to have contact with other species, but neither we nor Louv bother to ask whether they want to have contact with us! In fact, most species of wildlife obviously do not like having humans around, and can thrive only if we leave them alone! Or they are able tolerate our presence, but only within certain limits. (2) We and Louv never ask what type of contact is appropriate! He includes fishing, hunting, building “forts”, farming, ranching, and all other manner of recreation. Clearly, not all contact with nature leads to someone becoming an advocate and protector of wildlife. While one kid may see a beautiful area and decide to protect it, what’s to stop another from seeing it and thinking of it as a great place to build a house or create a ski resort? Developers and industrialists must come from somewhere, and they no doubt played in the woods with the future environmentalists!
It is obvious, and not a particularly new idea, that we must experience wilderness in order to appreciate it. But it is equally true, though (“conveniently”) never mentioned, that we need to stay out of nature, if the wildlife that live there are to survive. I discuss this issue thoroughly in the essay, “Wildlife Need Habitat Off-Limits to Humans!”, at http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/india3.
It should also be obvious (but apparently isn’t) that how we interact with nature determines how we think about it and how we learn to treat it. Remember, children don’t learn so much what we tell them, but they learn very well what they see us do. Fishing, building “forts”, mountain biking, and even berry-picking teach us that nature exists for us to exploit. Luckily, my fort-building career was cut short by a bee-sting! As I was about to cut down a tree to lay a third layer of logs on my little log cabin in the woods, I took one swing at the trunk with my axe, and immediately got a painful sting (there must have been a bee-hive in the tree) and ran away as fast as I could.
On page 144 Louv quotes Rasheed Salahuddin: “Nature has been taken over by thugs who care absolutely nothing about it. We need to take nature back.” Then he titles his next chapter “Where Will Future Stewards of Nature Come From?” Where indeed? While fishing may bring one into contact with natural beauty, that message can be eclipsed by the more salient one that the fish exist to pleasure and feed humans (even if we release them after we catch them). (My fishing career was also short-lived, perhaps because I spent most of the time either waiting for fish that never came, or untangling fishing line.) Mountain bikers claim that they are “nature-lovers” and are “just hikers on wheels”. But if you watch one of their helmet-camera videos, it is easy to see that 99.44% of their attention must be devoted to controlling their bike, or they will crash. Children initiated into mountain biking may learn to identify a plant or two, but by far the strongest message they will receive is that the rough treatment of nature is acceptable. It’s not!
On page 184 Louv recommends that kids carry cell phones. First of all, cell phones transmit on essentially the same frequency as a microwave oven, and are therefore hazardous to one’s health –- especially for children, whose skulls are still relatively thin. Second, there is nothing that will spoil one’s experience of nature faster than something that reminds one of the city and the “civilized” world. The last thing one wants while enjoying nature is to be reminded of the world outside. Nothing will ruin a hike or a picnic faster than hearing a radio or the ring of a cell phone, or seeing a headset, cell phone, or mountain bike. I’ve been enjoying nature for over 60 years, and can’t remember a single time when I felt a need for any of these items.
For the rest: http://home.pacbell.net/mjvande/louv
Many thanks, Mike and Georgia, for following up on Allen’s references to Louv with critique and more resources.
My own sense is that human behavior (whether describable as stewardship or exploitation or something else ) is likewise part of “nature.” Pollan’s “Botany of Desire” makes a case for co-evolution, and there are others, showing that some plants have greatly benefitted from human intervention, even in ways that could fairly be called “exploitation.”
Let’s keep this conversation going!!
For those interested in Louv’s nature-deficit argument, read an older essay by Robert Michael Pyle - “The Extinction of Experience” - in his book The Thunder Tree: Lessons from and Urban Wildland.
Thanks for the garden tour Allen.