Is it ethical to harvest someone else's fruit, if it's hanging over the public sidewalk? We urbanites tend to be sensitive to each other's boundaries. I can hear my neighbor's toilet flush, after all. And so, we construct imaginary boundaries, invisible lines over which we don't cross.

But fruit is delicious, and thus merits special treatment. Here's my rule of thumb. If fruit hangs over a public space, like a sidewalk or park, it's fair game. If I have to reach my arm over a fence, that's trespassing.


The persimmons were barely legal.

NPR's Day to Day had an interesting story a while back about this form of foraging. Personally, I wouldn't feel justified in fetching a ladder. Even though the fruit 15 feet above the sidewalk is available, a ladder would make me look like a thief, or a peeping tom. Luckily, I found that I could fold up my umbrella stroller, and holding it high above my head, pluck the fruit without compromising my air of confidence. In such circumstances, one's soul should appear spotless.


Even I would not harvest these figs.

I try not to go overboard. I limit myself to a single fruit, or perhaps three if we're talking about Italian prunes. I avoid perfect apples for fear of pesticides. And I never take the last fruit.

Of course, the polite thing to do is knock on the door and ask. But sometimes they're not home, or you can't be bothered.

Some may be bothered by my cavalier attitude. For those humbugs, I recall the fodder radishes I grew as a cover crop last year.


One of them in the parking strip grew to several feet tall. I was just about to harvest one to feed to my chickens, when an elderly woman walked by. "Oh, I love that plant," she said in a thick Eastern European Accent. "What was it?"

"It's a fodder radish," I said.

"It's delicious. I take the leaves and cook them. My husband loves them."

She never thanked me for the leaves she'd stolen. She didn't seem to feel any explanation was required. And somehow, I didn't mind. I left the fodder radish in the ground an extra month before I pulled it out.

How about you? Do you have trees that overhang a sidewalk or street, or harvest from someone else's? What's your take on the respectful harvesting of foodstuffs from other people's property?

Some years ago, our species climbed out of the trees and retreated into caves. Personally, I've never gotten over it. I miss living with plants.

Maybe it's a sign that I'm disconnected from the landscape, but I'd love to live in a house covered with plants. A house like that would help me feel part of the natural world, rather than part of technology. After all, the city is technology - it's all about human-built systems, functioning at peak efficiency to replicate those functions formerly performed by the natural world. Don't get me wrong, I'm no luddite. I like technology. But it's not what I'm all about. I'm about leaf litter, and worms, and tomatoes, and all that good stuff.


Photo by Kıvanç, shared via Flickr

I'm not alone in my desire to live among plants. Many people want ivy to grow on their homes. And not just on houses. There's something about plant-covered walls that make large buildings seem inviting, approachable. Architects call this "bringing down the scale of a building." City planners respond to this need by requiring trellises on some buildings, especially on multifamily residences (huge blocks of apartment buildings). Builders respond grudgingly. Check out the pitiful cupful of dirt at the base of the trellis at left. I feel sorry for that plant.


Photo by City of Lynnwood.

When it comes to respecting plants, architects usually don't do much better than builders. They often draw elaborate trellises on their drawings. Then they'll draw some generic plants on their drawings and refer to them disparagingly as "growy things." The plants are an afterthought. Like on the beautiful trellis below: How would a plant even get up there?


Sometimes this is just self-deprecating humor, a nod to the more specialized field of landscape architecture. But it's also a response to the dire warnings of structural engineers, bricklayers, and all kinds of other contractors: Plants destroy houses. Ivy, for example, has little feet that pulls the weatherproof outer surface off walls, exposing the wall's vulnerable interior.


Photo by moplants.com


Photo by Christian Herman, St. Louis Brick

Other plants can damage buildings in other ways Wisteria pulls structures apart. Hedges trap moisture near wood walls, causing them to rot. Roots and vines will seek out a crack, then pry it open as the plant grows. Even my favorite little mountain flower, the saxifrage, comes from the latin meaning "rock breaker."


Saxifrage photo by Brewbooks, shared via Flickr

But some innovative designers are trying to break down that barrier between garden and home. They're using new techniques that allow plants to grow directly on walls, where a highly engineered layer of construction materials protects the wall itself from the plants. Below, the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, France.


Photo by Markhillary, shared via Flickr

Below, the Millenium Village, U.K.


Photo by Thingermejig, shared via Flickr

In other projects, the plants are held away from the building on a stand-alone metal screen. Below, the Capitol Hill Library in Seattle hopes to be completely covered in vines some day. There are several inches of air circulating between the plants and the brick wall.


Photo by Johnston Architects, Seattle

In some places, you can do it without the building. Check out the "living wall" in the photo below. I don't know how these plants get the minerals they'd normally attain from the soil. But it sure looks cool:


Photo by Thingermejig, shared via Flickr

Growing plants on the roof also helps reduce stormwater runoff and cool down overheated cities. Works equally well on big stores and little garages.


Photo by Mountain Equipment Co-op, Toronto store, shared via Wikipedia


Seattle Architect Rob Harrison's garage

I remember reading an essay by E.B. White from his collection, One Man's Meat. He had recently retired to a small Florida town near the Everglades. He described how, down there, plants thrived in every crack in the sidewalk, consumed buildings on the edge of town. In short, nature would consume this village in a heartbeat. The moment the citizenry put down their machetes, they'd be buried in greenery.


Photo by Eric I. E., shared via Flickr

There's a the old frontiersman's fear of wilderness in that observation. But I think White also admired that wilderness for its tenacity, its fecundity. Personally, I find nature's resiliency comforting. And I don't see any reason to wait for civilization to collapse before we can bring nature into our cities. Really, nature can be quite a polite houseguest. It requires so little of us. Just a crack in the wall.


Photo by Tim Parkinson, shared via Flickr

After following green roof and living wall designs for years, I got a kick out of a recent article in the Seattle Times. Perhaps this is the next frontier:


Photo by Chris Butler, Idaho Statesman

ZRecs.com cover photo by Geishaboy500, shared via Flickr.

Seattle's parks program has been demolishing a lot of houses lately. Each time it purchases land for a new "pocket park," there's a house that needs to come down. And increasingly, people are choosing to leave portions of the existing foundations to help define public spaces in the park's gardens.


In the park pictured above, most of the foundation had to be demolished. Then the contractors recreated portions of the foundation wall to create a sense of space in the center of the park. As I stand in the middle of this park, I can't help but feel I'm playing house. I imagine the kitchen, the bedrooms, check out the view from the back porch. I feel a little sad for the people who lived here before. Did they want to leave? Were they forced into a smaller house, or into the suburbs? But the walls also make me feel happy. There's a spectacular view from this park, and through someone's selflessness, this private property became democratized, became the property of the everyone. It's not easy to build parks in the city. Something has to die. It's only right to honor this house by celebrating its foundations.

At Gasworks Park, a large concrete wall contains a field. There used to be a big pile of dirt inside these walls, many stories high. Before that, I can't remember what it was, something vaguely industrial, I think. The Parks department sawcut portions of the wall, allowing this aquisition to bleed into the existing Gaswork's park. They left enough of the wall to create a sense of space. Inside, they sculpted the earth into interesting berms, shaped earthen hills designed to contain stormwater runoff. Depending on where you stand on a berm, you either feel contained the walls, or you can look out over them.


There are lots of ways to end the wall too. You can sawcut it, for a crisp entrance. Or, you can break it down in a landscape bed.


These projects show how an existing wall can contribute a sense of space to gardens and parks.

So I'm giddy with excitement about a new property recently aquired by the city. There are a couple of houses on the property, and a network of existing concrete walls. These are no ordinary foundation walls though. They seem to be the remains of a long-gone full-height garage. But absent their roof, they create a series of outdoor rooms with a quality unlike that of any other park I've seen. Consider this outdoor room: It has the bones of a courtyard in an old Italian Piazza. It just needs a little love. I love the windows, no headers, open to the sky. Aren't these walls just itching to be covered with golden hops, or bright red collegiate ivy?


Check out the old driveway. A small grove of trees grows in the middle of it. I love the idea of planting a grove of trees right in the middle of the entrance path. It says: You are entering the domain of the natural world. It speaks of a post-apocalyptic eden.


I saw a similar gesture in Fremont Peak Park. You have to walk around the trees. Check out what it looks like in a finished park:


But what I love best about this property is the story it tells. The family that owned these houses asserted itself on the land, spelled out its name on a hillside, sliced itself into strange, narrow and diagonal spaces with bold rows of trees. It's like a miniature Versailles built by hippy children of a senile timber magnate, a blank checkbook hanging from his limp hand. The only thing by his deathbed is a coffee table book on Picasso - the children memorized it without the guidance of art counselors. In their naivete, they created our little neighborhood Xanadu.






Just to leave this family's footprint in the final design would make this park a magical place.