Harper and 30th Streets, San Francisco, California
In the early days of Planet Drum Foundation, we were thinking bioregionally and loved seeing plants growing up through the cracks in the sidewalk outside the office. We envisioned a future with the whole hillside’s sidewalks covered in California native plants, in fact Peter considered our sidewalk might be a last stand for these indigenous plants.
However, sometime in 1984 the City of San Francisco became distressed at the sidewalk outside the Planet Drum office. This was a time when some peninsula cities had forbidden planting California natives in front yards because they were “messy”— not only messy, also illegal.
The City sent us a notice saying we were responsible for repairing and replacing the crumbling sidewalk—or else we would have to pay them for fixing it. So Peter came up with a novel idea. The sidewalk was fairly wide, so there was enough space for people to walk and also have California natives planted in it.
He began proposing this idea to various city agencies. Peter was eventually shunted to the Urban Forestry office, and after about 9 months of discussions, the Urban Forester grudgingly agreed to the allow the sidewalk gardens—a first for San Francisco. The Forester was fairly discreet about giving the permission and later all records of the permit had mysteriously disappeared. Currently sidewalk plantings are both legal and encouraged in San Francisco.
We decided to do the sidewalk renovation ourselves. We had used the quote, when one edge is pried up a little, a sharp rap in the center will break a slab of concrete on the cover of Planet Drum Bundle #2 some years earlier, so it seemed possible. Ron Thelin, a close friend from our adventures during the 1960s, agreed to help us with the project. Together we created the first California native plants sidewalk garden in San Francisco. It was later expanded into three plots.
