Transitory Gardens, Uprooted Lives [Paperback]

Ms. Margaret Morton (Author), Ms. Diana Balmori (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 1995

Jimmy's garden on the Lower East Side of Manhattan - an assortment of stones and garbage bags, five tires, a chair, a skid, a refrigerator shelf, some ailanthus trees and goldfish, a wooden fence, and a pond with water carried by hand from a nearby fire hydrant - was recently bulldozed by the city. Jimmy then disappeared. Anna's garden is surrounded by a tall chainlink fence and filled with a menagerie of dolls and stuffed animals. The animals are whole, the dolls are maimed. Anna is a recluse who speaks to no one. The neighbors say she was in a concentration camp as a child. Gardens have always been associated with wealth and leisure, viewed as an addition to home. In this remarkable book a landscape architect and a photographer show us, in word and pictures, gardens built by homeless or impoverished New York City inhabitants. Like traditional gardens, these spaces are designed for pleasure, social activity, or private retreat. Unlike traditional gardens, they are connected to an active and ephemeral use of the land. Transitory gardens speak the language of our times: here we find the reuse of nearly everything discarded, a sparing use of water and plant materials, an economical treatment of space, and a penchant for icons, toys, flags, and symbols of freedom and nationality. The gardens expand our definition of what makes a garden and what its design means for its creator. Diana Balmori's commentary and Margaret Morton's photographs combine with the gardenmakers' own descriptions to encourage us to take note of gardens grown in unlikely places, on abandoned, littered lots, bounded by debris. By focusing on what homeless people make not for material comfort but from social andspiritual need, the book offers insight into both the meaning of landscape and the place of a garden in the life of an individual under duress.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Nowhere is the ephemeral quality of makeshift urban gardens more apparent than in the very recent destruction of the settlement of "The Hill" so eloquently depicted in this work. The photographs, the text, and the interviews present a moving testimony to the universality of the need for a sense of order and permanence and offer new aesthetic definitions of open spaces for an urban society. As the stone gardens of the East embody the Zen search for a momentary sense of place, these collections of the refuse of a secure society record the creativity of the human spirit. The shape of these spaces takes many forms, from sanctioned community gardens to appropriated and squatter ones, from a tent city in Tompkins Square Park to a flag-decorated space on an abandoned Hudson River pier, but all speak of life and hope: homeless, perhaps, but not rootless. Recommended for large public collections.
- Paula Frosch, Metropolitan Museum of Art Lib., New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: Yale University Press; First Edition edition (February 22, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0300063016
• ISBN-13: 978-0300063011
• Product Dimensions: 11 x 8.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,603,415 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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