Thursday, July 2, 2009

the dirt on the Farm Initiative


More good press. We had missed Meredith Cohn's item about the Rodgers Forge Farm Initiative, which appeared about a month ago on the Baltimore Sun's "B'More Green" blog.

As some might have already seen, there is another story in this month's Urbanite about Scott Carlson's front-yard vegetable garden -- and what the Rodgers Forge Community Association thinks of it. (Scott is a co-founder of the Roders Forge Farm Initiative.) Here's a clip:

"Horticulturally, my formative years were schizophrenic. My father was a salesman for a lawn-fertilizer company; I’ll always remember him on top of a riding mower, plying his monotonous expanse of suburban green. My mother, on the other hand, grew up a farmer’s daughter, and she was used to putting the land to work, growing peas, lettuce, or rhubarb for the table.

"Four years ago, when I bought my own home in suburbia—a run-down Rodgers Forge rowhouse with a scraggly, south-facing lawn—I had to choose which side I would follow. I get my environmental sensibilities from Mom, so I did what seemed natural: I started ripping out the grass and planting vegetables....

"But if the process of re-greening the Forge has earned us the admiration of some neighbors, it’s also stirred some ire. This spring, I got a letter from the Rodgers Forge Community Association telling me that my front-yard garden 'does not adhere to the ideal of keeping a traditional design.' The association wants the garden gone...."

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