1401 7th St. – Yard of the Month (September 2015)

September’s Yard of the Month is 1401 7th St., a sweet Craftsman bungalow in a quickly revitalizing part of Fairmount, near Magnolia and 8th Avenue. The 1916 home belongs to Marnie Hart and Wayne Plummer, Jr., who are excited to celebrate the bungalow’s 100th birthday next year. In 2014, they left Austin after a decade, and began looking for house close to the hospital district where Wayne works and takes graduate classes. Marnie reports not much was for sale in July. In their search for the perfect Fairmount home, they kept driving by 1401 on their way to see other properties she describes as “the least worst.” It was perennially under construction and not ready for the market when they needed to buy. “One day as we passed,” Marnie said, “I said to the realtor, ‘I really want to live in THAT house.’” Suddenly, she noticed a small ‘For Sale by Owner’ sign out in front. The sign had been out less than half an hour. It was kismet.

Formerly a rental property owned by three separate investment firms since 2010, 1401 7th Ave. was restored in 2013-14 by David Mayfield’s Caelum Capital, LLC. Completely gutted and given a new interior, the bungalow still retains several historic features, including the original wood floors, the front porch and deep gables. But after a lengthy construction period, and all of the heavy foot traffic that entails, not much history survived in the yard. Two old large pecan trees, “self-pruning,” yet still producing nuts, dominate the back yard and one curious feature remains just outside the fence: a vintage toilet, still hooked up to the sewer line, but filled with soil and planted with flowers. (Marnie thinks this may be a remnant of the World Wars, when soldiers were quartered in the house). In the front yard, the lone survivor of an earlier garden was a “pathetic rose bush,” which had been mowed and trampled by contractors and crews. She kept the rose, along with a wandering Jew (transcendentia pallida), both which survived moves around the yard.

With just these few elements, Marnie, a former art teacher and full-time painter, had a mostly blank canvas to begin landscaping. Inspired by a friend’s mission of becoming food self-sufficient via stockpiling prepared foods, she set about realizing her dream of a fresher version of independence: four seasons of high-yield, organic food crops just outside her kitchen window. One year later, she grows mostly vegetables for the family of three, and cooks fresh from-scratch meals three times a day, supplementing the garden’s yield with organic, sustainably produced animal and vegetable products from a local CSA. She composts and recycles everything from the kitchen.

Shade from the pecan trees, occasional visits from a neighbor’s free-range chickens, and the need for a space to exercise family pets made the back yard inhospitable for a kitchen garden. Marnie looked to the front yard for a solution. There she has installed a beautiful version of what the Scots call a “kailyard,” or, in French, a potager. First, Marnie and Wayne had the yard leveled and St. Augustine grass professionally laid (sodding the back yard themselves was a huge project, she reports, and not one they would soon repeat). The landscapers put in small, rectangular beds at the same time, which Marnie then revised to make more “organic.”

Undeniably, some folks prefer flowers in a front yard. Some municipalities and HOAs explicitly forbid planting kitchen gardens that are visible from the street. But it’s hard to object to Marnie’s gorgeous vegetable beds, which perfectly coordinate with the bungalow’s dark green paint, red front door and cream trim. The Craftsman palette was originally intended to celebrate nature, and Marnie’s nectarine trees, mustard greens, collards, Swiss chard and kale all harmonize beautifully with the home’s colors. Her artist’s eye is visible in the composition of the beds, as well as in the porch décor: a starburst sculpture hanging near the front door is upcycled paint brushes, mannequin arms and sharpies from her art classrooms of the past decade. The garden also inspires further art for Marnie who has an Etsy shop with pen and ink representations of her produce with mottos like “Dance to your own beets” and “Lettuce help you.”

Marnie’s beds have a continually rotating crop of seasonal vegetables. In a few weeks there will be a spinach border. Currently the garden boasts mums, marigolds and several types of tomatoes; San Marzanos and chocolate stripes have performed particularly well for her. She’s ready to harvest jalapeños, habañeros and Thai chilies in September. In the herb beds there’s basil, parsley and dill and cilantro (the latter two bolted in the heat but are sure to reseed in the cooler temps to come). She planted okra for husband Wayne, though she doesn’t love the vegetable (she did enjoy the plant’s beautiful hibiscus-like flowers). Snap peas, early peas, carrots and beets were all amazing this year, Marnie reports, and the cold weather plants like kale and swiss chard continued to produce all summer. The biggest disappointment has been squash, sadly gutted by squash borers two years in a row.

Ninety-eight percent of Marnie’s vegetables come from an heirloom seed site dedicated to fighting GMOs and pesticides in our food (www.survival-essentials.com). The remaining plants were started from saved seeds or rooted from organic produce which include black-eyed peas bought in the Central Market bulk section and a row of celery plants rooted from the ends of organic celery stalks. Improvisation, in conjunction with discipline and planning has been her guide. For Fairmount gardeners without the patience, space or light for starting seed trays, Marnie suggests Bonnie brand plants, a company which has provided pesticide-free, non-GMO plants since 1918: they can be found at Marshall Grain on Lancaster as well as big box stores like Lowe’s. She also recommends several seeds (spinach, marigolds and cilantro) that can be sown directly into the vegetable beds with excellent yields.

Our thanks and a $35 Gift Certificate from CC’s Touch of Nature go to Marnie and Wayne, owners of Fairmount’s September Yard of the Month.

The Yard of the Month selection committee is Susan Harper and Bonnie Blackwell