Backyard Days: DIY Ecological Resilience

I build a garden everywhere I lay my head for sufficient months. It just feels right. This journey started a long time ago for me…in Florence, Italy. I even built sidewalk planters in Oakland, CA.

When I arrived in NYC my backyard required a tiny forest. Please enjoy the photo essay!

What happens when we choose to let life live in the areas we usually force it out?

Soil slows the flood of water. It cannot be stopped only slowed.

All this was Inspired by some of the public resilience performances I’d seen around NYC. Maybe they’ll inspire you too…

Fire turns the stored Carbon into a sponge for minerals, nutrients, water and allows it to be picked up by the waters and moved to where it can react to make more life.

small water interventions in uplands can substantially slow the fall line of water, creating niches for life. Beavers used to preform this function with trees as their medium and the sound of running water as their marching order.

Shout out to my landlord for turning on the spigot in the backyard so that I could water this tiny forest.

Fall, and the manual relocation of soil to tree pits around the neighborhood.