“Before developers established the heights and its various neighboring subdivisions, a massive filling project took placed. It was pretty much a landfill for the City of Houston. . . . Developer clear cut the existing pine forest (the oaks pretty much only existed near the bayous and tribs) and filled in the uneven landscape. A big example is in Woodland Heights. A 60-inch storm sewer line runs in an old trib to White Oak Bayou. The line is 20-ft below the current natural ground in the area. After the line was built, the natural channel was filled in and streets placed on top. The line currently goes under many people properties and houses and many don’t know it exists. . . . Outside of that, several ox bows and other trib were filled in. A couple were not though. There is one just east of TC jester where it cross White Oak Bayou south of 11th. It has water in it. There is another just west of Yale that is dry. I’ve seen historic photos showing people jumping off the banks of the the natural streams in the bayous in the Clark Pines area (14th street west of Durham). A current development is actually being build on an undeveloped piece of land that was a site of the landfill in this oxbow. The houses are being placed on piles driven deep into the ground to avoid them from sinking or collapsing. I doubt they are telling the home buyers this. Long time residents know about it though.” [kjb434, commenting on Wet and Wild: Strip Redo on White Oak]
Last year Transit Antenna, a 7-person “mobile living experiment,” camped out at Joe Nelson Icet’s Last Organic Outpost, did a little farming, and painted the giant “FARMART” mural at the top of the adjacent Comet rice mill. The group, which travels the country on a city bus converted to run on waste vegetable oil, documented its visit — which included a stint in the Art Car Parade — in a series of website posts.
And not long after the rambling group left its urban campground, Transit Antenna’s Seth Gadsden posted this half-hour documentary the group put together about goings-on at the Emile St. farm and its Fifth Ward neighborhood. An HD version is also available.
The Lower Fifth Ward urban farm known as the Last Organic Outpost is set to expand again from its growing campus at 700 Emile, reports founder Joe Nelson Icet:
We are presently working on the Buck Street expansion and hope to get more dirt soon to add to the existing 32 beds we already have growing.
Across the street from the 711 Emile gate, there is a lot up for public auction March 2nd that we hope to farm in the near future. This lot is currently being used for dumping. Also at 4610 Gunter, there is a lot that has been cited by the city for high grass. We would like to take stewardship of these lots for creating a 5th Ward Farm Belt.
“SPACIOUS LIVINGROOM WITH SKYLIGHT & FLOWERBED,” shouts the listing for this 1970s-era home on a cul-de-sac near White Oak Bayou in Candlelight Forest. And it’s no exaggeration. The Swamplot reader who alerted us to the property also expressed appreciation for its mauve carpet and mirrored Dining Room wall:
“A proposed ordinance before council would prohibit the planting of tall trees, including live oaks, under power lines. The measure originally was intended to strengthen existing rules to protect trees in public rights of way from being cut down or hacked up by developers. But the proposed ban on planting live oaks under electric lines — a last-minute addition to the measure — has a vocal group of tree lovers dismayed. Their main complaint centers on the live oak’s usefulness for hiding power lines. ‘If this were to pass, we would have to look a lot more at the ugliest feature of our city: power lines,’ said Hugh Kelly, a former general counsel for Houston Light & Power who advocated against the change on behalf of two neighborhood groups. ‘And we would not be able to look at one of the prettiest features: live oaks.’” [Houston Chronicle]
Been worried that those neighbors of yours have been ruining the delicate balance of petroleum-based fertilizers in their grass with slow oil leaks?
Help is on the way! City Council has passed an amendment to Houston’s parking ordinance that will allow neighborhoods to apply individually for local 20-year bans on front-yard parking.
Signatures of 60 percent of a neighborhood’s residents are required to enact a ban, and restrictions can be appealed. But Intermodality blogger Christof Spieler, who’s been following lawn-parking-ban efforts for some time, notes neighborhoods that don’t have fussy deed restrictions already in place might want to think twice before signing up:
This new version also allows for the use of permeable paving. But it does not address the other problem: ultimately, this is an incentive to pave more. If your neighborhood opts in, you won’t be able to park on your front lawn. But, unless there’s a specific deed restriction in place against it, you’ll be able to pave your front lawn and the park there.
What is it with these Landscape folks and their capsules? Last spring, L.A.’s sly Center for Land Use Interpretation began its residency in Houston by hauling an old trailer, dubbed the organization’s “field station,” to an old junkyard on the banks of the Houston Ship Channel. And now, a year later — the oil-industry spying mission almost complete — CLUI guru Matthew Coolidge and his henchpeople are capping their Houston romp with another demonstration of the delights of enclosed living.
That’s a Brucker Survival Capsule, painted bright red and decorated with a typically deadpan CLUI inscription, being installed outside the University of Houston’s Blaffer Art Gallery, where CLUI’s exhibit on the landscape practices of the Texas oil industry opens — tonight. If planting an offshore-oil-rig emergency escape vehicle on the front lawn of a university art gallery strikes you as slightly absurd, you’re only beginning to appreciate CLUI’s rare and dry sense of landscape humor.
Tired of looking at the same old images of Hurricane Ike devastation? Now, thanks to the amazing aerial camerawork of Dallas’s Hawkeye Media, you can conduct your own Bolivar Peninsula post-disaster flyover, focusing only on the destruction you want to see — from the comfort of your own broadband internet connection.
Hawkeye’s interface allows you to navigate through the company’s panoramic overhead views of wasted homes and newly desolate landscapes, zooming in and out as fast as your middle finger can scroll.
What to do with the 5.6 million cubic yards of wood waste left after Hurricane Ike? The city doesn’t know either — so it’s sponsoring an ideas competition: “The contest will pay $10,000, $5,000 and $2,500 for the top three ideas for how to best use the heaps of debris, which city officials have said would be enough to fill up the Astrodome nearly four times over. . . . So far, the city has given about 700,000 cubic yards of wood waste to two companies that will turn it into mulch and compost for resale. But the sheer volume of debris far outstrips local market demand for recycling it. . . . ‘We don’t want to have to fill up our precious landfill sites with a bunch of wooded waste, so we’re going to try to recycle all of it,’ [Mayor] White said. ‘It will probably be the single biggest recycling project that there is in the country this year.’” [Houston Chronicle; competition site]
Threatened patch of prairie? Shovels to the rescue! “The 90-acre patch at Saums and Greenhouse roads north of I-10 is a subtly spectacular example of what the dwindling Katy Prairie looked like before development spread west out of Harris County. Sometime later this fall, construction on the extension of Greenhouse Road, plus a detention pond, will start there. Folks in straw hats, with shovels, buckets and bug spray, spent several mornings digging up clumps of this mature prairie for transplanting to other sites. . . . Digging up clumps of little blue stem, rattlesnake master and bee blossom gives prairie gardens a jump start they couldn’t get from seeds - and seeds are hard to come by.” [Inside Fort Bend]
Poet Mark Doty, while explaining Houston to the Travel set: “Here the city’s splendid tradition of patronage is on its best display, so the great old live oaks thrust their bowing branches out beside the Cy Twombly Gallery and the Rothko Chapel. The limbs dip perilously toward the ground, and the roots heave the sidewalks beneath them into little concrete alps, but since nobody walks anywhere it doesn’t make much difference. In summer the trees resound with cicadas, like electronic versions of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir chorusing an insanely repetitive song. Gangs of bronzy black birds—boat-tailed grackles—prefer smaller trees in busier areas; they like grocery store parking lots and the drive-through lanes at the Taco Cabana, and they shriek and holler long into the night, as if in avian parallel to the traffic below. They’re the loudest part of a plethora of urban wildlife: opossums, raccoons, the occasional snake slithering across the road, a sadly large population of stray dogs. Coyotes roam the cemetery north of Buffalo Bayou, where Howard Hughes is buried. All over town, tiny green lizards hold their heads up with notable alertness.” [Smithsonian, via HAIF]
Landscape students attack the Washington Ave. Corridor! A modest proposal for widening Washington and Center St. between Sawyer and Sabine — from LSU student and SWA summer intern Taizo Horikawa:
During Week 3 I focused on the area along Washington Avenue between Sawyer Street and Sabine Street, pushing the idea of Colors of Ribbons forward. The underused area between Washington Avenue and Center Street is developed as a human-scale, vibrant commercial area with two-story commercial buildings. The north-side sidewalk of Washington Avenue is widened to be 30 feet with a row of shade trees. It works as linear plaza where people spill out from the commercial buildings and lounge around.
The Houston Airport System has found its first customer for some of those bales of hay you’ve seen lining roads leading to IAH. The hay-harvesting project began as a pilot using contractors 2 years ago, but airport employees are now doing the work.
Of the 10,000 acres that comprise IAH, 250 acres are presently being used to harvest hay and 50 of the 2,500 acres at EFD are being used.
Right now most of the hay is a low grade Bermuda grass mainly used to feed livestock such as cattle. . . .
When the hay project is finally in full swing some 2,000 acres of land at IAH and EFD will be used to grow hay, providing a projected revenue source of roughly $4 million dollars a year. Cutting and baling at the airports this year will continue until the fall.
500 round bales at IAH and 400 square ones at Ellington Field are currently available.
Here’s the kind of project that ought to excite every truly patriotic Houstonian: County Commissioner Steve Radack wants to build a 500-acre lake — for fishing — on the Katy Prairie! How will it get filled? With rain, of course . . . and those regular floods from Cypress Creek! Apparently, they’ll have to excavate five Astrodomes worth of dirt. Where will they put the other four?
Best yet: Radack’s gonna name it after the Pope!
Them Katy birds want their wetlands? We’ll give them wetlands!
Of course, there are some naysayers:
Because the lake will not have a constant source of flowing water, biologists remain worried that there will not be enough oxygen in the lake to support a viable fish population, said [Donna] Anderson of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Texas Parks & Wildlife has also questioned whether nitrates and fertilizer from farm runoff might pollute the lake, said Jamie Schubert, coastal biologist with the department.
Yeah, we’ve heard that line before. Isn’t that what they said about the Gulf of Mexico? Hey, maybe we’ll find oil here, too!
Swamplot covers real estate, home design and renovation, architecture, and the landscape of Houston, Texas. Swamplot did not flood during Allison — or Ike! Honest! Read more
