Update on Toronto Garden Destruction
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 09. 1.07
The destruction of Deborah Dale's garden has drawn a lot of attention. She wrote to TreeHugger:
"Thank you for all your kind wishes! As for the "lazy gardener" comment...who ever said propagating, planting, rescuing, purchasing from ethical local sources was easy? I still had almost 50% of the front yard maintained as turf grass to allow access to the beds for weeding. The City is now threatening my backyard woodland garden...which was in the midst of having a stream/pond installed. It too contains a range of native plants..although confined to areas away from the hardscaping work...including bloodroot, blue cohosh, various ferns, wild ginger, tall coneflower, pagoda dogwood."
The Star says about the City employee who did the deed:
He's been called a grass Nazi and a pompous bureaucrat who overstepped his authority and he's even been called a jerk, but Bill Blakes stands by the city's decision to raze a woman's front lawn garden in east Toronto.
"Honest to God, I have never – and I have dealt with some pretty controversial issues – never in my life have I had a reaction like this," Blakes, the Scarborough District manager for Municipal Licensing and Standards said yesterday. "Never. That's dealing with body rub parlous, strip clubs, lap dancing, smoking. Never."
There is the touchy issue of the alleged dead raccoon. Blakes says:
"This natural garden – I'm sure there was some wild grass and stuff like that in it – but there was also a dead raccoon. The people next door were complaining of the stench."
She [Deborah Dale] admits there was a dead raccoon on her property, but says she had covered it in mulch to suppress the odour.::The Star
Amy Lavender at Reading Toronto notes:
Bill Blakes sounds like a nice guy. He seems genuinely perplexed by the uproar. In the media reports I've seen he comes across as a hardworking, conscientious manager. I have no doubt that he is.
But that doesn't mean he's not, metaphorically speaking, talking out of his ass.
I have several problems with the City's expressed position on Deborah Dale's natural garden(s).
First, the raccoon. As I wrote yesterday over at the Spacing Wire (where a similar discussion has occurred), there are raccoons living -- and dying -- under people's eaves all over this city, but we don't tear down entire houses in order to remove them. Nor should Deborah Dale's entire garden have been destroyed in order to remove one (alleged) dead raccoon. A shovel and box would have been sufficient.
Second, by seeking to protect itself behind a paper wall of procedural requirements (notices sent, an "exemption" Dale could have applied for), the City exposes how untenable its position is. Blakes' own admission -- that had Dale applied for such an exemption, "all action against her would have been stopped" -- underscores the reality that there was nothing inherently objectionable about Dale's garden.
Third, in the context of the City's other policies encouraging Torontonians to maintain natural gardens (see the City's Guide to Natural Lawn and Garden Care), the idea that residents must apply for a special exemption in order to do so is ludicrous. In the interests of fulfilling its own policies, the City should instead require residents to apply for special exemptions if they want to grow conventional lawns (monocultures requiring costly overseeding, clandestine applications of pesticides, aggressive fertilizing, and wasteful applications of water).
For these and other reasons, the City of Toronto needs to settle with Deborah Dale and restore her wild garden. At the same time, it must re-align its policies to fall in line with its overarching principles espousing ecological sustainability. We'll follow up here at Reading Toronto when there's more to report.
it would be awesome if they made people who keep grass lawns apply for an exemption (living in So Cal as I do, I think they are not only ugly and a waste of resources, but immoral in a desert)
Wow...
I really feel that since Dale KNEW she should apply for an exemption, it's 100% completely her fault. You live in a city, you abide by it's rules, or pay the price. If you don't like the rules, you abide by the rules WHILE you try to change them, or you pay the price.
Besides, if she's so hell-bent on having a natural garden, she should seriously consider moving into a more rural area, where she'll have more space and less neighbors.
The city needs to know that a plot of land isn't a vacant, uncared for lot, and the only way to do that is to have it's citizens declare that it isn't, every-so-often.
The city owes NOTHING to Dale, Dale owes an apology to the city for not accepting her responsibilities as a citizen of Toronto.
As a general matter, some public jobs are best performed by people who avoid putative solutions whenever possible. (Police departments have to screen out candidates with such propensities, for example.). The ability to negotiate and settle differences discretely, achieving compromise by the "offending" party as well as by the municipality is a skill that has to be cultivated and encouraged by top level administrators. In others words, it is likely the City's top level leadership that needs to change, not just the manager of a particular department.
As I've all too often told my neighbours, cedar hedges are not responsible for the presence of raccoons in Toronto. Please note, the much-vaunted raccoon was in a decomposed state already when the neighbours pointed it out...and it had not been there only two hours previously. The corpse was buried...not merely under a sprinkiing of mulch, resurfacing only when the media appeared. The City was so concerned by its presence...they left it behind when it took away my garden..
I've got no idea whether or not the area floods, but that garden would be amazing for catching runoff, more people should strive for that yard =)
While I agree that it's silly to make people apply for exemptions to do something good, while those who do something bad face no such beaurocracy, I present the following comparison for thought:
If I parked my car somewhere where it was not in anybody's way, but there was a "No Parking- Violators Will Be Towed" sign, and then my car got towed, you would think I was stupid to make a ruckus about it. Plain and simple, if I saw the sign and parked there anyways, it would be my decision to risk getting my car towed, no matter how unreasonable the 'No Parking' sign was.
Likewise, while I can see how Ms. Dale would be upset, we can hardly be suprised or shocked that the city acted in this manner.