Dg Gledhill

The Wild Garden: A New Illustrated Edition with Photographs and Notes

open space to ‘settings’ and ‘uses’. The chapter on ‘Community Gardens’ raises the many complex issues associated with their management and longevity. I was privileged to see activities of the ‘Boston Urban Gardeners’ and their association with Harvard’s landscape design students under the guidance of Anne Whiston Spirn in the late 1980s. This idealistic enterprise is now being mirrored in Detroit; however, it is important to distinguish between the different types of community gardens and the new urban agriculture enterprises which are not discussed in Harnik’s book. Instead he provides useful examples of cities with effective community gardens programs. He also highlights some of the problems with these enterprises that involve multiple interest groups. This is also brought out in his chapter on sharing schoolyards. Again Boston is taking the lead, as well as Denver with its ‘Learning Landscapes’. Harnik suggests that there are potential urban parks which could result from dual roles such as cemeteries, boulevards, and motorway reserves. These are all worthy ideas but they are not without their problems. In Sydney, Australia, cemeteries are always seeking more space; such as the struggle between a very old Chinese market garden and an equally old cemetery on the foreshores of Botany Bay. The resulting pressure for space means that cemeteries are losing green space. This does not make them any less atmospheric, such as the evocative Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but they are not urban greens. In Australia, motorway reserves through urban areas are also less amenable as green space because of the requirement for acoustic walls and associated dense shrubbery. Harnik is brave enough to challenge a sacred cow in his chapter on removing parking from parkland. Here he provides some convincing statistics about the extent of alienation of green space within parks due to provision of parking. As a book about planning for new green space in today’s American cities, the strategies are comprehensive and the examples salutary.