All Posts Tagged With: "Fritz Haeg"

ISky was created in 2007. With its offices located in Takoma Park, Maryland, 1Sky is helping raise the bar for leadership on climate change action in the context of the 2008 elections and the new Obama Administration. Their goal is to “create bold federal action by 2010 that can reverse global warming,” by “identifying steps our leaders need to take in order to shift our nation away from global warming and toward the prosperity of a green economy.” They have engaged a network of leading scientists and economists to create the 1Sky Solutions and have a growing number of allies working directly with them for this same common goal.
A few solutions are to:
* CREATE 5 MILLION GREEN JOBS in order to conserve 20% of our energy by 2015.
*FREEZE CLIMATE POLLUTION levels now then cut by at least 25% below 1990 levels by 2020 and 80% by 2050.
* NO NEW COAL PLANTS that emit global warming pollution; invest in renewable energy.
One of my personal highlights from their site is a list of Climate Matters Video contest winners. My favorite is “This Lawn is Your Lawn” by Roger Doiron which is also a part of a website called EatTheView.org that is petitioning for President Elect Obama to act on climate control and send a message to millions of Americans by planting a garden on the White House lawn. After watching I can’t help but note artist Fritz Haegs project Edible Estates which expressed similar sentiments about the front lawn at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello. Haeg visited Baltimore this past spring to continue his project on a front lawn in West Baltimore where artists, homeowners and community peoples participated in planting a vegetable garden. Haeg’s visit was also in tandem with the addition of several DIY community lead gardens on abandon lots around the city; Participation Park and Village Green Community Garden in Remington , to name a few that started in 2007. Mayor Sheila Dixon expressed her interest and support of revitalizing grassroots efforts for healthy food = healthy communities by visiting a few gardens Sat. Oct. 18th, which came just three days after she joined Robert F. Kennedy, Jr , the nations forerunner in environmental activism, and 9,000 other delegates at the Baltimore Convention Center for the National Recreation and Park Association Congress and Exposition.

Edible Estates is a project created by artist and architect Fritz Haeg that involves traveling around the country converting front lawns into beautiful edible gardens. He started by asking the question, if Thomas Jefferson had planted his garden on the front lawn of Monticello, what would our lawns look like today? Haeg’s project has captured much enthusiasm from families who are challenging that "estate" mentality. The idealistic picture-perfect green space is an unfortunate inheritance of the seeds planted on the plantation lawns of our founding fathers. To Haeg, the front lawn is a waste of valuable resources and the locus of mounting concerns over the effects of pesticides on human health and surrounding ecosystems. What’s most interesting about Haeg’s project is one of the first in his series of gardens was planted on July 4th, 2005 in Salina, Kansas. Part of the Great Dust Bowl of the 1930’s, Salina is also home to The Land Institute . This organization has been working for more then 20 years to find ways to restore topsoil through perennials and polycultures. Haeg’s Edible Estates aren’t just a novel idea; they are a call to action for the right to know where our food is coming from and a patriotic move to restore our homeland.

The above picture is from an Edible Estate project started April 2008 in West Baltimore. Here’s an article from the Urbanite .