Let’s grow a healthy garden city
By Liv Worsnop
This article was first published in the Press on 15 September 2017 as part of the Making Christchurch series organised by Gap Filler, Te Pūtahi — Christchurch centre for architecture and city-making, and Freerange Press.
Over the last five years I have spent my time observing, tending and celebrating the vacant lots in Christchurch’s urban landscape. In these spaces, plants and wildlife re-established mini-ecosystems without our help. For a few weeks in spring 2013, a flock of redpolls feasted on a stand of dried plants on the corner of Manchester and Cashel streets. Though these plants were dead, their seed heads brimmed full with bird food and potential plants. Behind Alice in Videoland, a field of wildflowers flourished for a few years. Californian poppy, borage, wild carrot, clover and yarrow provided a diverse feast for bees and birds, and a medicinal tool box for foragers.
With the quickening pace of the rebuild and an urgency to bring order to our city, these post-earthquake wild pockets are now all but eliminated. Order has historically been the defining characteristic of Christchurch’s urban landscapes. The Garden City is one of cut grass, and orderly rows of single species in street-side planter boxes. Of course there is value in a manicured garden, Mona Vale and the Botanical Gardens are beautiful places of leisure and learning. But what is the cost of this desire for neatness?
In Christchurch, we have imposed order and tidiness onto every road side, berm and empty lot, and into every park and playing field. As urbanisation disconnects us from the natural environment we are stifling the potential of these spaces. Human and non-human inhabitants of our landscape are being denied the symbiotic, interwoven relationships vital for wellbeing.
Every day we hear urgent calls to restore our planet’s ecological health. Often, the space chosen for restoration is on the outskirts of cities — along rivers, on the edges of farmland, in old mines or pine forests. Yet as the rapid expansion of humans reduces wild landscapes we should reconsider how we could redesign our urban spaces to support ecological health. Strategic planting can benefit wildlife, soil and water while meeting the food, material, recreational and economic needs of people.
One of the most common urban gardens in our city is a closely clipped lawn. The Canterbury Plains in spring or the luscious green of the cricket pitch are deeply entrenched in our cultural aesthetic. Yet lawns have limited benefits for ecological health. Grass provides relaxation and exercise spaces or grazing areas for animals. But we cannot comfortably kick a ball on the lawns beneath the oak trees on Bealey Ave, and we don’t graze our cows along the Avon, so why do we have so much lawn? Although the green grass in berms and local parks is appealing to the eye these pockets of nature could contribute far more to the ecological health of our city.
How would we go about designing our urban gardens for ecological health? Looking at nature’s own complex and interwoven systems is a smart starting point. In forests, a vast range of living and non-living parts create the collective whole. Trees, shrubs, flowers, vines, animals, insects and fungi all grow with the help of water, soil and air. The collective health of the forest is a function of its numerous parts. It is complexity that creates this health.
Instead of lawn, we could choose to plant rich, diverse gardens containing food for bees, fruit trees, natives and ground covers. These could actually be cheaper to maintain. They would catch, contain and filter the water runoff from our concrete driveways and footpaths while shading them to reduce excess radiant summer heat.
Using grass to absorb runoff is essentially like expecting a sheet to soak up water, when really we need a sponge. The drastic flooding seen in Christchurch rivers this winter happens partially because the rain runs off paved areas and grass and drains too quickly into their catchments and tributaries. By cultivating suitable native and introduced species along our river banks and throughout our parks, we create the sponge needed to slow stormwater and save our low-lying areas from inundation. In some places along Christchurch river banks the council have recently trialed decreased mowing to provide a spawning habitat for inanga. This positive initiative might also help to slow runoff and prevent flooding.
It’s time for Christchurch to re-evaluate its green spaces. For food security, for climate change protection, for clean air, and to reinstate the relationship we so desperately need to have with nature, it is undeniably worth it. Under our noses we have an abundance of space in which to grow gardens that will be so much more than just appealing to the eye.
Through adopting richness, diversity and prioritising ecological health, we could have a resilient garden city that supports the wellbeing of all its inhabitants. One that establishes a precedent for environmental urban planning that would put us on the world stage. Through gardening with nature as our guide, we can finally move towards how we need our city to be — healthy.
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Bio: Liv Worsnop is the leader of Plant Gang. To join, you must like plants, eat food or breath air.
This piece is part of the City Making series curated by Te Puutahi — Centre for Architecture and City Making, Freerange Press and Gap Filler.
Past pieces from 2015 — present can be found on Stuff.co.nz or makingchristchurch.com
