MARA ADAMITZ SCRUPE
Garden for the Third Coast:
Buffalo Bayou Plants Project
Law Offices Project
Space, Houston Texas
November, 2005 - January, 2006
Garden for the Third Coast: Buffalo Bayou Plants Project is the first phase of a larger scheme to reintroduce and repopulate Houston's Buffalo Bayou with (once-plentiful) native plants. An ecosystem specific art project, the Bayou Plants Project showcases ecologically significant plants, grown organically from seed by the artist, which are indigenous to the city’s bayous. The living species, exhibited alongside solar-powered transparencies of threatened and endangered plants drawn in full bloom, are critical to maintaining the health and biodiversity of the unique and irreplaceable Texas bayou ecosystem. The project offered first-hand visual and sensory experiences of the bayou’s intriguing plant life and the extraordinary natural environments they help build and sustain. At the close of the exhibition, all living plants were gifted to local residents and gardeners.
Garden for the Third Coast is an environmentally proactive initiative 1) to educate Houston’s diverse communities about the native flora of the city and its importance for human, animal and aquatic life, 2) to make important practical contributions toward restoring native Texas bayou plants to forest, tributaries, wetlands, prairie and riparian ecosystems, and 3) to help preserve and improve the overall environmental health of the bayou, and thereby significantly contributing to the city’s quality of life in the present-day and for years to come. Future phases of the project involve unexpected and public interventions introducing the plants of Houston's Bayou ecosystem to residents of the city.
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Pitcher Plant
Spotted Beebalm
Yellow Cowlily
Garden for the Third Coast: The Buffalo Bayou Plants Project is the first phase of a larger scheme to reintroduce and repopulate Houston's Buffalo Bayou with (once-plentiful) native plants. An ecosystem specific art project, the Bayou Plants Project showcases ecologically significant plants, grown organically from seed by the artist, which are indigenous to the city’s bayous. The living species, exhibited alongside solar-powered transparencies of threatened and endangered plants drawn in full bloom, are critical to maintaining the health and biodiversity of the unique and irreplaceable Texas bayou ecosystem, and the project promises to offer richly visual, sensory experiences of the bayou’s intriguing plant life and the extraordinary natural environments they help build and sustain.
Garden for the Third Coast is an environmentally proactive initiative 1) to educate Houston’s diverse communities about the native flora of the city and its importance for human, animal and aquatic life, 2) to make important practical contributions toward restoring native Texas bayou plants to forest, tributaries, wetlands, prairie and riparian ecosystems, and 3) to help preserve and improve the overall environmental health of the bayou, and thereby significantly contributing to the city’s quality of life in the present-day and for years to come.
Fragrant Waterlily Rattlesnake Master Turk's Cap