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Inspirational Green Thumb Award Interview: Eileen O'dea's interview of me to find out how I can carry on gardening in spite of tremendous opposition.

Paradise Lost, the Tyranny of Conformity: Carol Wallace's account of the illegal destruction of my naturalized garden by the City of Winnipeg on June 1, 1998.

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Inspirational Green Thumb Award

by Eileen O'dea

Eileen O'dea awarded me the first annual Inspirational Green Thumb Award. Let her tell us why. This article was first published November 18, 1998.



in·spi·ra·tion

1. a: a divine influence or action on a person believed to qualify him or her to receive and communicate sacred revelation
   b: the action or power of moving the intellect or emotions
   c: the act of influencing or suggesting opinions
2. 2: the act of drawing in; specifically: the drawing of air into the lungs
3. 3 a: the quality or state of being inspired
   b : something that is inspired
4. 4: an inspiring agent or influence
© 1998 by Merriam-Webster

So says Merriam-Webster inc. I say Traute Klein. She is this years winner of the Annual Home and Garden Inspirational Green Thumb Award.

The winner of this award had to meet some pretty hard criteria. Traute Klein, met them all and then some, without even trying. In fact, if you ask her, she would have rather not met any of the criteria. Here is her story.

Traute is our Suite101 resident Natural Health editor.

In 1945, her brush with the odds began with the Russian occupation of her homeland of Germany. When she moved to Canada, she learned English and French and became a teacher. Her love for natural things sprouted into her love of gardening. She learned of natural remedies and how to grow and create them.

Sixteen years ago Traute lost her career as a teacher in the school system and at university. She was disabled in a car accident. At that time she began her wonderful garden. Every painful planting was done with love and care. She had to build up her dry clay soil with feet of rich compost. She built raised beds and planted things that were both healthy for her and indigenous to her area. Anyone who gardens knows that is not always easy, but Traute trudged on in pain and created a garden which was becoming quite famous.

People came from all over the world to see her wonderful garden. A University of Manitoba landscape architecture professor brought his graduate class to view her garden and talk to her. The landscape architecture professor from Olds Agricultural College in Alberta even used slides of her garden to illustrate innovative landscaping.

Traute was making a name for herself in the landscaping community. It was a good name. That is, until June 1, 1998. Here is what happened in her own words:

On June 1, 1998, we were rudely awakened by the noise of a demolition company. I thought that they were working on the back lane until the noise came so close to the house that I went to look. In our backyard was a huge front-end loader which had already stripped most of the property of everything except the bare clay subsoil.

There had been no warning, not even any mention that the above was contemplated. There was a police cruiser in attendance which did not allow me near any of the people working there. At times, that increased to two cruisers, even though I made no attempt at interfering.

They took with them 15 years of work, work in spite of constant pain. Beside the rich humus, they took away many fruit trees, cherries and plums, all berry bushes, raspberries, gooseberries, red currants, yellow currants, strawberries, grapes in full fruit, all perennial herbs for herb teas and medicinal purposes, my source of perennial salads, which provided us and other people with huge fresh salads daily, the entire crop of perennial flowers and vegetables, planted for this year, all my bricks which I need to build sidewalks, all of my lumber including a new door for the garage, the extension to the downspout of the house, all garden tools, even the clothes off the clothesline.

What had Traute done to deserve such treatment? It seems her garden was offensive to two of her neighbors. They had complained so long and loudly that the local bureaucracy was forced to listen. They found an obscure law on the books, disallowing the overgrowth of weeds on private property.

Now we're not talking of a bunch of weeds here. Traute's garden was much like yours or mine. She grew fruits and vegetables, and medicinal herbs for teas and such. I just looked out my back window, and saw the same things growing in my garden. I'm sure many of you can say the same.

We are not growing weeds and neither was Traute. The worst thing she did was to condition the soil so well that her plantings grew LIKE weeds. I don't think it takes a language professor to see the difference in writing. Yet it took a municipal worker to decide all of the wonderful things Traute was growing were weeds. I wonder how he thought the clothes grew on the clothesline? I guess he used HIS discretion. What higher power gave him that right? His position as a city bureaucrat.

© Eileen O'dea

Read more on this story in "Paradise Lost, the Tyranny of Conformity," linked in the left column. It is written by senior managing gardening editor and law professor Carol Wallace. She includes documentation. Eileen's interview of Traute is linked there as well.