Trails

The fact of having grown up in this or that city is oftentimes weak support for the returnee finding his way through the post-childhood development that ravages the landscape of memory. We tell ourselves that we know this, remember that, but when conjecture comes face to face with a street grid, many of our suppositions crumble like a house of cards. But in fact, the falling house of cards on Monday wasn’t a matter of badly remembered streets, but one of walking on ground once thick with forest growth and wetland, a place Daniel Boone might have charged into, but one most of the non-pioneer types stayed out of. But then a lot can happen in fifty-two years over which new streets and highways rise out of dirt and neighborhoods evolve to tweak a city impatient for growth.

Back in the days when the only Elvis around was not named Costello the area of Baton Rouge bordering Jefferson Highway in the southeast was woodland waiting for the developer’s axe. One or two connecting roads cut through the green, but it was land earmarked for a future we couldn’t yet see. A large tract of the land belonged to the Ollie Steele Burden family and was in the 1880s site of Windrush Plantation. At the time of his death in 1995, Steele Burden bequeathed the land to Louisiana State University with a stipulation that it be used for agricultural and horticultural research with minimal development otherwise.

Today this large tract of 440 acres is home to the Burden Center-LSU Agcenter. In addition to research plots devoted to agriculture, the property includes a rose garden, camellia garden, five miles of walking trails, the Windrush Gardens, the Rural Life Museum and grounds offering a look at plantation life in the nineteenth century. Unmentioned in the center’s brochure is a meditation garden, one focused solely on a lotus-filled pond.

For the past several days walking has been confined to Sevenoaks Avenue, but hearing about the Burden Center’s nature trails widened my options. An easy drive from Old Goodwood and I found everything exactly as described, with plenty of parking. The several nature trails branch off from a spot very near the parking area and within minutes the chosen path is wrapped in wall-to-wall green. But the first yards of walking are confused by the sound of cars on I-10 just off the eastern edge of the Burden acreage. Apart from sky every corner of the walker’s view is enclosed in a rumpled green blanket sprinkled with wildflowers, and over the wall of green comes the whoosh of high speed traffic headed for New Orleans. Walk around the next curve in the trail and there through a thin mesh of trees are the cars skimming over the unseen interstate, and then just as quickly lost again around the next clump of swamp cabbage. And in the next moment a long-lost earthy musk of Louisiana rises to my face.

Lost in the middle of all this protected land, somewhere off the marked trails and wandering a crushed shell road, I came upon a scatter of gargantuan iron cogs and wheels, a thrown down sculpture of giant parts from an archaic industry. The road passed along an assembly of old wooden buildings behind split rail fencing, and thinking it unremarkable I ducked between the fence rails to have a look. Two people, standing nearby and startled, told me the gate was off thataway, at the rear of the Rural Life Museum and that I had saved $6.00 by coming in the back way. To mark my savings I took a photo of the “old slave” statue just in front of my secret entrance. Despite the lack of a blue visitor’s tag no one bothered me as I walked about the church and slave quarters of the old Windrush Plantation, but I didn’t push my luck by venturing too near the museum.

Not five minutes after crawling back out the split rails and once again on a marked trail, payback came in the form of a sudden downpour. Too much rain and too much distance made it clear getting wet was the only way back. Back in the car my glasses were running and my shirt sopping, but my pedometer showed almost four miles of walking. Enough to make wetness a secondary concern at the end of a happy day.

Trailing off into green along the Palmetto Trail

Green Mansions

The title here comes not from any connection to W.H. Hudson’s old book Green Mansions, but rather from its fitting reference to the beauty of rampant green in nature. More than thirty years ago the French botanist and artist Patrick Blanc brought a jungle of sorts into the city of Paris by literally turning gardening on its side and inventing what some people call ‘living walls.’ Blanc’s is a type of urban gardening designed as an art form to decorate city buildings while creating something spectacularly beautiful that also helps enliven a space, humidify the air and moderate indoor and outdoor building temperature. These living walls and green roofs provide relief from excess heat in urban environments due in part to heat absorption from surrounding concrete or asphalt.

The Caixa Forum Museum in Madrid

No doubting the natural beauty of these vertical gardens or the benefits they bring to urban ecology, but the next thought is of what it must do to the structural integrity of a building. Any weekend gardener can tell you that attaching plants to a wall, be it wood, stone or brick will over time damage the wall. Roots open cracks admitting water that can freeze and open fractures, insects follow root tendrils and bring a deterioration of their own. The ivy covered walls on an old church or university are splendid to look at, but the pretty picture has its cost. Patrick Blanc and his followers have solved that problem.

The Musee du Quai Branly in Paris designed and executed by Patrick Blanc

Vertical gardens are attached to the exterior (or interior) of a building so that the plants root in a structural support which is fastened to the wall itself. The frame is built in front of a pre-existing wall and attached at various points. No damage is done to the building. Rigid waterproof panels are mounted to the frame providing structural support. A cushion of air remains between the building and the panels, enabling the building to breathe. This adds beneficial insulating properties which become a rain-screen protecting the building’s original wall. Because the vertical garden is hydroponic (using no soil) it is very clean and eliminates the possibility of soil borne pathogens. A lightweight porous material takes the place of soil making the walls very light. The plants receive water and nutrients from within the vertical support instead of from the ground.

Building in the town square of San Vincente del Raspeig, southeast Spain

Diversity is the key and by utilizing hundreds of different types of plants, striking patterns and unique designs can be created. The gardeners achieve this by utilizing a multitude of colors, textures and sizes. The plants create a garden that filters air and water, soaks up carbon dioxide and helps lessen the “heat island” effect in urban areas, reducing air conditioning costs in the host building.

Unidentified Building in Madrid

While these large vertical gardens are impressive, critics question their sustainability, considering the energy input needed to run pumps and other equipment used to maintain proper nutrient and air flow. Some critics also question the emissions caused by the manufacture and transport of specialized materials. And since larger green walls need more water than rain alone can provide they don’t necessarily save water. Proponents of these large urban vertical gardens assure critics that as the science matures, practitioners are finding wider varieties of plants to choose from, species that are better at taking care of themselves. There is also a move toward scaling back on inputs and supporting machinery with the hope that one day many of the walls will be self-sustaining gardens that cleanse our dirty air as well as impure storm water.