The Department of Parks and Recreation will soon choose how to remediate the landscaping at City Hall after damage it sustained during its Occupation. They’re considering some excellent changes for the space. They aim to incorporate about fifty percent native plant species into a new design that scales back on turf in order to showcase a more water-wise plant palette. Native and waterwise landscaping are the future. This is a noble effort.

But the design can go further. Should the emblem of our city, the nexus of municipal power, boast a landscape of only grass and flowers? Is that what we stand for? I think Los Angeles should ask more of its landscapes, public and private. I think we can do better. At City Hall we should also grow food crops in a demonstration garden, out front for everyone to see.

After attending a few of the redesign meetings downtown, we drew up plans for a City Hall landscape restoration, Farmscape-style. You can view a small version of our plan above, or click here for a high resolution version of our design.

At Farmscape, we care deeply about sustainable and socially responsible land use. The food we grow for ourselves in gardens tastes great, is good for our health and reduces the resource footprint of our diets. The gardens themselves visually re-humanize the urban landscape and insert growth and seasonal change into our midst.

What we do with the land outside our buildings is a very public exhibition of our values. And at a landmark like City Hall, our decisions echo across the city. Landmarks are models for landscaping options to all residents and land owners in charge of LA real estate, and that’s how movements are built.

Still you ask: Is it feasible? Is it reasonable? Isn’t gardening a throw-away hobby?

Gardening is not an idle hobby. Farmscape manages nearly one hundred intensive edible gardens across the city and has grown at least 30,000 pounds of produce by organic methods in these gardens. We estimate a well-managed garden in LA can grow at least 3-5 pounds per square foot per year, meaning a garden instead of several hundred feet of lawn could on average yield more than twenty pounds of heirloom fruits and vegetables per week. Fruit orchards perform even better on a pound-per-square-foot basis. For a small fraction of the anticipated maintenance budget for the City’s preferred landscape design -- $135k annually -- we could easily provide weekly maintenance of a demonstration garden larger than 1000 square feet.

If we decide to grow food at City Hall, we wouldn’t be acting without precedent. Cities like Portland, San Francisco, Provo, and Baltimore have already built their own City Hall gardens, in the wake of the highly publicized White House garden. Los Angeles would be able to outdo them all, however, because our climate is so favorable for year-round gardening. Southern California is a vegetable gardener’s paradise.
But at City Hall? Don’t gardens look unkempt?

If maintained correctly, food crops can and do make sense in public landscaping. Gardens and fruit orchards can be very attractive. If designed well from the start and maintained consistently by a skilled gardener, intensive plots look orderly and beautiful in a landscape.

Convinced at last, you want to know: How can I help?

The city solicited feedback on their plans for City Hall, and you can offer your opinion on their website. Tell them you want our city to grow vegetables and fruits at City Hall. Tell them you’d prefer the Farmscape plan, or something similar.

The City is moving forward at breakneck speed to replace the City Hall lawn trampled during the Occupy protests. As debates continue regarding the benefits of native plants versus the benefits of turf grass and historic preservation, city officials, landscape architects and journalists rarely mention edibles as part of the discussion.

At Farmscape, we are proud of LA’s track-record as an innovator in urban agriculture, and we believe that it has the potential to be even greater, as Jesse observed in his love letter to the city. In a lot of ways, food is a key part of the LA’s identity – after all, farmers cultivated vegetables on more than 50,000 acres of Los Angeles County when City Hall was constructed in 1928. Today, countless residences, schools and vacant lots grow many tons of fresh produce.

Based on a good deal of research and experience, I believe that Los Angeles is the “Urban Farming Capital of the U.S.”

Los Angeles has a rich agricultural history. Early settlers were lured to the area by promises of homesteads anchored by groves of fruit trees and ample space for annual vegetable cultivation. The citrus industry, meanwhile, was a major draw for those looking to find work in the region’s plentiful orange groves. And, as recently as 1950, Los Angeles County produced enough fruits and vegetables to feed its entire urban population. Los Angeles history is important for more than sentimental reasons; it left behind a robust legacy in the University of California’s agricultural extension.

Southern California’s history of agricultural production is no accident. The area’s temperate Mediterranean climate allows for a year-round growing season that is the envy of urban farmers worldwide. While cities around the U.S. are shuttering for the winter or struggling to extend the growing season with greenhouses, cold frames or hoop houses, Southern Californians are harvesting lettuces, cooking greens, peas, carrots, beets, broccoli and cauliflower. During the summer, our tomatoes and squash never seem to stop yielding.