The Crack Garden

1. Gail Pink
   June 4th, 2009 at 9:30 am

   Very cool and beautiful. Too bad the name "Crack Garden" instantly conjurs a mental image of drugs. Maybe "Concrete Garden" would have been a better name choice?

2. Skipweasel
   June 4th, 2009 at 9:52 am

   Years ago my wife wanted to tidy up the front garden, but having been a flat-dweller all her life she didn't know what was what. I told her to leave anything big and important looking but pull everything else up.

   I came home from work to find a fine specimen each of dandelion and thistle amidst a barren waste.

   She's learned a lot since then and does most of the floral gardening now and a large part of the allotment.

3. OddNumber
   June 4th, 2009 at 10:50 am

   @ Gail Pink - There may be something very wrong with the way my head works because I didn't picture a drug garden when I read the title. No, my mind envisioned a plumber with a flower sprouted up from the back of his pants.

4. OddNumber
   June 4th, 2009 at 10:52 am

   I like the concept, but the concrete isn't going to hold up over time now that it has been intentionally damaged. I would have rather seen them haul the concrete out of there.

5. creesto
   June 4th, 2009 at 12:30 pm

   I also question how well the plants will do given that most of their foliage will be laying atop the hot, hot crete. Seems like less than ideal growing conditions especially for vegetables.

6. Gauldar
   June 4th, 2009 at 12:36 pm

   In Canada there is alot of this "green roof" campaigning happening too, getting things like tax breaks and compensation for converting the tops of buildings. I'm sure it will be a requirement of new buildings to have this feature which are of a specific size.

7. SenorMysterioso
   June 4th, 2009 at 1:40 pm

   People have concrete slabs for backyards?

8. Skipweasel
   June 4th, 2009 at 2:06 pm

   SenorMysterioso - very popular round here. When I was making the front garden nice around half the passers by who passed a comment said it'd be easier just to put slabs down.

9. SenorMysterioso
   June 4th, 2009 at 4:49 pm

   Interesting, Id never heard of doing the whole yard. Ive seen some slabs laid down for parking, basketball and other purposes, but never the entire yard. I like grass too much to consider paving over the yard, its like your own little personal oasis.

10. seefish3
    June 4th, 2009 at 7:11 pm

    @OddNumber

    I thought butt-crack, too. It doesn't help that there's a guy bent over in one of the pix!

11. LisaL
    June 4th, 2009 at 10:36 pm

    Lol, glad I'm not the only one who thought buttcrack as well rofl.
    It does look nice, but if they were just going to go through the trouble of making these cracks in the concrete, just do a little bit more work, and take out big slabs of it to expose the earth underneath.

12. chuck b.
    June 4th, 2009 at 11:29 pm

    ***YES***!!!

13. ted
    June 5th, 2009 at 7:28 am

    The funny thing is they used a jackhammer to make those cracks. Exactly what LisaL said. What a waste of effort.

    And I too, was thinking "I thought they made crack in a lab".

14. Lyken
    June 5th, 2009 at 7:43 am

    very interesting, I may try to doing sth in my yard.

15. Kalel
    June 5th, 2009 at 11:42 am

    Now where can I find a crack hoe?

16. HersHers
    June 5th, 2009 at 12:55 pm

    @Gail Pink

    Maybe "The Cement Garden" would have been better:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cement_Garden

    "In The Cement Garden, the father of four children dies. His death is followed by the death of the children's mother. In order to avoid being taken into care, the children hide their mother's death from the outside world by encasing her corpse in cement in their basement. Two of the siblings, a teenage boy and girl, enter into an incestuous relationship, while the younger son starts to experiment with transvestism."

    You just can't win with this thing. Whichever way you go it conjures up images of drugs, incest and mayhem.

17. Larfin Jackarse
    June 6th, 2009 at 7:32 am

    Concrete gardens were popular in Melbourne in the 60's/70's among certain ethnic groups. Saved mowing and weeding.

18. Tracy
    June 6th, 2009 at 11:03 am

    Makes me want to pave over my back yard and then break cracks into it

19. r
    June 8th, 2009 at 2:35 pm

    Is this where I go for the five o'clock free crack giveaway? The name makes me think of the Dave Chappelle crack addict character Tyrone Biggs. I'm trying to figure out if CMG was kidding with the title and if the ASLA jury was aware of the joke.

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