MARA ADAMITZ SCRUPE

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Paradise
Site-specific installation with minivans
and ethnobotanica,
Graduate School of Design, Harvard, 2000
 (click to view completed installation)

Edward O. Wilson’s The Diversity of Life piqued my interest in plant species which, though currently underutilized, have extremely high nutritional value and great potential to help feed all the world’s hungry human mouths. Developed in the cradles of agriculture, a few favored food crops, for example apples, peaches and pears, have been spread around the globe, narrowing the human diet and threatening less favored species with extinction.  

Paradise was commissioned for the Centennial Landscape Architecture exhibition and combines the husks of several minivans (purchased from local salvage yards), the interiors of which were cleared out in preparation for use as plant beds. Because the exhibition took place in very early spring, in Massachusetts, I chose to first grow over 300 heirloom plants from seed at my farm in Virginia. I transported these plants to the installation site on the grounds of Harvard's Graduate School of Design, where they were planted inside the minivans.


Exhibition curator John Beardsley directing placement of minivans

Each minivan functions as a self-contained mini-greenhouse and is equipped with solar-powered grow lights which illuminate nightly for five hours and are designed to enhance the natural growth cycle of the selected plants.


Graduate student assisting with planting in minivan/greenhouses

The gardens of Paradise feature several different ethnobotanical plant species which are native to the coastal regions of the Eastern United States, or have been naturalized in this region, and have proven capable of providing excellent nutrition for human beings, as well as supplying other substances and materials useful to our species. These plants are considered "heirloom" varieties because of their long history of usefulness to humans, but they are currently threatened with extinction. Major seed companies prefer varieties which are easier to grow, better looking, and in some cases, lend themselves more readily to genetic engineering of plant stock. The following is a partial list of "old" vegetables included in the Paradise gardens:

Jacob’s Cattle Bean
Old Homestead Pole Bean
Black Valentine Bean
Scarlet-runner Bean
Hyacinth Bean
Early Jersey Wakefield Cabbage
Green Striped Crookneck Crushaw (Zucchini)
Yellow Crookneck Squash

I chose to make my gardens inside recycled late-model minivans for several reasons: as the ubiquitous symbol of the American suburban lifestyle, the minivan epitomizes the remarkably high standard of living enjoyed by most North Americans, in contrast with the poverty and constant hunger which is the norm for a fairly high percentage of the world’s population. Moreover, automobile emissions contribute more than any other single source to the destruction of the ozone layer and to dangerously high levels of air pollution worldwide, with Americans, who drive more than any other people on the face of the planet, leading the assault.


Scrupe watering newly planted seedlings


Installation of solar power system

Daily the world loses more wild places to overgrazing by beef cattle and other non-native animals that are raised to provide meat for the relatively well-to-do, while native plant species which might provide a source of nutrition for the world’s hungry go unresearched and undeveloped, and known and unknown species of plant and animal life are forever lost. China, India, and many Asian countries are currently making dramatic efforts to develop their economies in efforts to raise the standard of living of their citizens to a level consistent with what is experienced by Western nations, further threatening air, land and water resources worldwide. In his recent book entitled Earth Odyssey, Around the world in search of our environmental future, Mark Hertsgaard states: "Like the United States, China can all but single-handedly guarantee that climate change, ozone depletion, acid rain, and other hazards become a reality for people all over the world. What happens in China, like what happens in the US, is therefore central to one of the great questions of our time: Will the human species survive the many environmental pressures crowding in on it at the end of the twentieth century?"

I made the Paradise gardens for Harvard’s Centennial Landscape Architecture exhibition because I believe that it explores ideas which are relevant to the central issues of degradation of the environment and loss of biodiversity which define the millennial, worldwide, environmental debate. These are issues which are also currently impacting on the work of landscape architects as well as on the profession as a whole, and will undoubtedly continue to be critical to the development of the thinking of site sculptors, public artists, and landscape architects in the future.