Environmental Issues
legal and practical

Getting Started Organically
start with the basics

Edible Garden
for food, drink & medicine

Trees & Shrubs
Mother Nature's way

Traute Klein, biogardener
Webmaster's background & work

Healing Hug
spiritual & emotional healing

Biogardener Guestbook

Webmaster's Bio
Meet Traute Klein, biogardener.

Amazon Book

Carrots Love Tomatoes
Companion planting guidebook for vegetables, trees, shrubs, herbs

Related Articles

Creating Your Own Garden of Eden
The philosophy behind Traute Klein's gardening practices.

From Curse to Blessing
In 2005, one neighbor attempted to get the restored natural garden demolished again, but her methods backfired. When she tried to solicit public support through media exposure, she instead invoked the support of hundreds of citizens who descended on City Hall to protest.

Documentation

Read some of the coverage which followed Traute's original order to make her garden conform.

Front page news in the Winnipeg Free Press, Sunday, Sept. 12, 1993

Supporting letters to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 17 to 26, 1993

Neighborhoods section of the Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 10, 1993

Supporting letters to the editor of the Winnipeg Free Press, Oct. 17 to 26, 1993

What can you do? Hundreds of readers of this article wrote to the Winnipeg Free Press at letters@freepress.mb.ca to tell them how they felt, but the newspaper failed to respond to any of them.

If you are upset by the story told in this article, why not mail the URL to a friend?

Paradise Lost, the Tyranny of Conformity

by Carol Wallace

Traute Klein's Garden of Eden was home to native plants, birds, and neighborhood pets. It became a scene of devastation, when a demolition crew unexpectedly and illegally stripped out everything except the clay subsoil, because it failed to conform to the supposed community standard of mowed front lawns.

Traute Klein's Garden of Eden was home to native plants, birds, and neighborhood pets. It became a scene of devastation, when a demolition crew unexpectedly and illegally stripped out everything except the clay subsoil, because it failed to conform to the supposed community standard of mowed front lawns.

Under Nazi rule people were penalized for failing to conform to an established norm. It didn't really matter whether being blond and Aryan was better than any other alternative. There was, and still is, no proof that being blond makes for better citizenship, or a better world. It was simply the standard which Hitler set, and he convinced his followers that it was a good standard. Those who didn't meet that standard paid dearly.

Under the rules in Winnipeg, Manitoba, penalties are also applied to those who fail to conform. Not because of their looks or their religion, but because their yards fail to conform to some vague standards set by the city planning department. It doesn't really matter that a carefully tended plot of native plants creates a better ecological balance in nature. And, unlike the Nazi's arbitrary and specious ideological standards, there is definite proof that this type of garden makes for a better world and a healthier environment. But the building inspectors - not even trained gardeners with an appreciation for Mother Nature's finer points - have developed some arbitrary rules that only they can interpret, and convinced themselves, at least, that they are good ones.

Traute Klein's garden did not meet some vague and incomprehensible standard that a politically ambitious planning inspector decided to set - and she is paying dearly.

Granted the penalty is much less drastic than those imposed by the Nazis. It is far better to be made to pay for nonconformity with one's garden than with one's life. But the tactics the city employed are sadly reminiscent of those used early in Hitler's regime.

Traute's garden was a miniature paradise, a haven of native plants where birds and animals gathered and lived in harmony. It was planned carefully, with scrupulous attention to planting the plants most suited to her environment.

And this was no ordinary, neighborhood plot. People from around the world came to see the marvelous blend of nature and planning that Traute had achieved. A Olds Alberta Agricultural College landscape architecture professor used slides of Traute's garden to illustrate his lectures on innovative landscaping. A University of Manitoba landscape architecture professor brought his graduate students to see the gardens and discuss them with Traute. Her city councilman repeatedly commended her for her environmentally friendly gardening methods.

In her own words, Traute describes this garden:

That garden was a haven for the songbirds and butterflies of the neighborhood who found refuge in the many hiding places while feasting on native plants. All the cats of the neighborhood congregated in the yard without ever fighting with each other, without trying to harass the birds, without digging up plants. The garden provided a true illustration of the "lion dwelling with the lamb." Mind you, as soon as these cats left the property, they were up to their old tricks, chasing birds and scratching up neighboring flowerbeds, but as soon as they entered "paradise," they again behaved as Adam and Eve would have expected them to behave in the Garden of Eden.

The plants in that paradise were healthy and were never attacked by the pests and diseases which abounded in neighboring gardens. An invisible wall seemed to separate my paradise from the rest of the neighborhood. (See "Creating Your Own Garden of Eden," linked in the left column.)

Apparently someone resented that wall. Certainly cruel neighbors resented the fact that Traute's yard was unlike any other in the neighborhood. Instead of tidy lawns hers had an abundant garden spilling forth with environmentally friendly plants. She indulged in such suspect practices as composting. While most of the neighbors openly admired the effect, a few saw this as unacceptable.

They complained to the authorities. This was in 1991, when Traute was ordered by the city planning department to make her garden conform to those in the rest of the neighborhood.

She appealed, and, in a unanimous decision, the city planning commission voted not to enforce the department's order. But that was eight years ago. Politics change, and what is politically popular changes along with it.

The ordinance under which Traute was cited forbids gardens that are "untidy and unsightly." A vague ordinance, at best. Some might call it unconstitutionally vague and over-broad, because it is worded in such a way as to give absolute discretion to the individual inspectors to interpret "untidy and unsightly" according to their personal whims - or their best political interests. Such ordinances have been successfully fought in other cities. In Toronto, Sandy Bell won a case that sets an important precedent that may give hope to others. (See "Naturalized Gardens, Legal but not Desirable," linked in the left column.) It came too late to save Traute's garden.

In Traute's case, the garden was judged "untidy and unsightly" because, according to the inspector, "the growth was excessive." In other words, her garden was healthy and the plants much more vigorous than those of her neighbors.

So Traute won a reprieve, but the neighbors continued to stew and complain.

Eight years later, they got results.

On June 1, 1998, Traute awoke to the sound of bulldozers. She paid no attention at first, thinking it was a nearby construction project. She was wrong - this was a project of destruction. When she looked out the window, Traute saw, to her horror, that the huge front end loader had stripped away most of her garden - right down to the bare clay subsoil. And this was in the backyard.

A policeman, complete with cruiser, stood by to make sure that Traute would not interfere. As the work proceeded, reinforcements arrived, even though there was no ostensible need for back-ups. The neighbors, some aghast and a few quite smug and satisfied, stood by. Traute watched helplessly as they stripped away 15 years worth of work. They took not only the plants and soil but lumber and paving for a future project, the garden tools and the new door she had purchased for the garage. They even took the clothes off the clothesline.

According to the city of Winnipeg's statutes, an inspector may not enter private property unless at least one of three conditions has been met: they must have the owner's permission, or, lacking that, a court warrant or a bona fide emergency such as fire where official intervention is necessary to save lives and property. None of these conditions was met.

Nevertheless, five hours work by a crew of six, with one front-end loader and two huge dump trucks making several trips destroyed Traute's little Eden. The bill for the work was added to her tax bill.

She managed to talk the inspector into a temporary reprieve for the other three sides of the property, and that gave her sufficient time to appeal the destruction of the rest of her property and to win the appeal. The little, untouched front yard now stands there in stark contrast to the devastation of the huge backyard.

Even though Traute has so far managed to stave off any further destruction of her property, the ecological balance that she so carefully established has been destroyed. Disease and decay have entered; the birds no longer gather so happily; the cats, deprived of all their favorite hiding places still come by, but now they fight among themselves and leave, looking lost. Traute's own cat, deprived of paradise, not only gets sick every day but actually screams if a stranger comes into the yard.

According to Traute, "This is so much like what happened in Germany. There we did not need to break a law to be arrested. The Nazi leaders neither knew nor respected laws. I was always able to counteract their [the planning department's] harassment because I made a point of knowing the law. I had to. I was not prepared for them circumventing proper procedure, though."

"I have experienced that kind of terror twice before in my life," she said, "once under the Nazis and once under Russian occupation. My parents brought us to Canada so we would never have to live under terrorism again." But terrorism is everywhere, and for Traute it has reappeared in Winnipeg.

Traute Klein has been ejected from Paradise for the sin of being original. Or rather, her paradise has been taken from her, simply because she cared too much about the earth to conform.

It is a sad commentary on the standards we impose on ourselves and our neighborhoods.

© Carol Wallace & Traute Klein, used by permission