A love letter to Wall Garden – As submitted to EVST 1810
“If you are truly interested in propagating baffling and absurd nonsense, I would meander to the WALL GARDEN sometime TWO HOURS after NOON on a beautiful SUNDAY afternoon. Come with a pure heart seeking true friends and flying balls. It is optional to bring a green thumb or an interest in bicycles. Join us for our merrymaking and antics galore in said garden. Not convinced? Let me paint a little picture. You, me, gaping our mouths open at the sheer beauty of our blossoming garden as our skin basks in the sun’s tasty, tingly rays. We are moved by the pleasure in our eyes that we frolic, like bugs and worms amidst the grass. You hear laughing. You are happy.”
Excerpt from About: The Benevolent Society for the Propagation of Assorted Tomfoolery and Other Sorts of Peculiar and Otherwise Absurd and Baffling Nonsense
Every story has a beginning, and, at least twice, these stories have begun with a garden. For centuries, millions of believers have held that the advent of this strange and wondrous universe was built in and around the Garden of Eden, a heaven-on-earth where humanity was unblemished and in perfect concert with the natural and the divine. This splendorous garden-to-begin-all-gardens has been lost for centuries since the fall of man. But all hope has not been abandoned – for those with whimsical hearts who know where to search, there is a garden that reveals what might have happened if, instead of eating the fruit from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, Adam and Eve plucked the apples and began to juggle them.
That garden and its rich history can be found behind the Wall Residential College dormitory at Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana. Upon a first glance, it is difficult to conjure the supposed significance of this specific humble garden amongst millions worldwide. An iron gate welcomes visitors, from sunbathers to small children, onto a modest sunny lawn nestled between the various surrounding domiciles. Butterflies and bees flit between the shrubs and flowering trees that separate the grassy park from the garden beds that lie in various states of cultivation. A weathered shed adorned with faded chalk doodles guards its secrets behind a locked door as it watches over its domain. Meanwhile, a series of benches sit along the perimeter under the shade of citrus trees that readily yield their kumquats and satsumas to any wanderer who encounters them in their fortuitous fruit-bearing hour. The space is pleasant, but unassuming; it is no Garden of Babylon, but yet it is an Eden.
According to the university, the garden’s official name is The Glazer Family Garden and Bocce Court and has been its christening in 2011. The students of Tulane use this title just as much as they play bocce on the court shoehorned on the side of the lawn – that is to say, never. Rather, undergraduates in-the-know know of Wall Garden, a quirky little space and infamous stoner haunt by night. Such a reputation is a far cry from the upstanding prestige of the billion-dollar name the garden was saddled with. As a result, it is not hard to buy the idea that, like most everything in the ultra-controlled and curated environment of a private university campus, the garden is simply another manifestation of immeasurable wealth and genteel ideals imposed onto the landscape, co-opted by students for their own uses. This would be easy to believe, but it would also be a grave disservice to the true visionaries of Wall Garden. A plaque posted to the shed wall, under whispering wind chimes and baffling antique vanity suspended upside-down from the rafters, is one of the few physical indicators of greater forces at work than the billionaires’ donations. Dated from March of 2010, its message proclaims: “In appreciation of the many students and student groups, particularly the Juggling Club, for their vision, their labor and their care of these gardens.”
The Benevolent Society for the Propagation of Assorted Tomfoolery and Other Sorts of Peculiar and Otherwise Absurd and Baffling Nonsense, colloquially known as the Tulane Juggling Club, has just as off-beat of a reputation as the garden of their dominion. The Benevolent Society was founded by Phil Schapker Mendez, class of 2010, as an organization of free-wheeling freethinkers seeking sanctuary from the stifling atmosphere of the rigid rat-race of contemporary Tulane culture. The club is a mosaic-like manifestation of the founding members’ interests, amalgamated under a Benevolent Parliament that presides over matters such as siege warfare (chess), transportation (cycling), and of course, agriculture (gardening). United by the inherent folly of juggling and fueled by the myriad of initiatives propagated by the parliament, the society flourished as an oasis of childlike wonder and community in its early years. Eventually, as all great and fearless leaders must, Phil began to consider the future and turn his sights towards the survival of the club beyond himself: in other words, empire building.
As stated in the Benevolent Society’s manifesto, the club’s ultimate goal is world domination starting with the takeover of all undergraduate student governments in the country. The difficulty with launching such a campaign from a collegiate club is, of course, the lack of continuity from year to year. The greatest gift Phil could bestow in his final term of presidency was a living, lasting legacy – land the club could cultivate and pass down. And the abandoned lot behind the Wall dorms seemed the perfect place to start. The club’s vision was, as always, fantastic and a little ludicrous; the garden would be a haven for native plants and insects, an orchard of fruit trees, and the site of a community bike help-desk. Birds would sing its praises and bugs would find refuge in its arms. Cyclists could bring their afflicted rigs every Sunday for repairs, free of charge. And, in perpetuity, the club would possess a piece of land to call their own – perhaps as a staging ground for global designs, but simultaneously a simple safe harbor from the exacting, oppressive atmosphere of the university. In pursuit of the absurd, Phil and his parliament secured thousands of dollars in presidential grants, approval from head architects, and, ultimately, a home.
Though some might argue its divine inspiration, this Eden is undeniably the work of human hands and as such, subject to human falls. The project was commandeered by the Glazers, who decided the maligned bocce court was worth more than an orchard of regenerative juggling balls. To them, native wildflowers read too much like weeds, so a hundred thousand dollars was instead invested into a redundant quad of golf-course green. But even in its infancy, the club refused to acquiesce fully; not much could be done to assuage the damage done by donor dollars, but nevertheless the club ensured that their sovereignty over the ultimate garden would remain unshaken.
For those lucky enough to stumble into Eden on a sunny Sunday afternoon, wonder abounds. All afternoon, jugglers bloom like magnolias in the sun to frolic together – nearly fifteen years since the completion of their garden sanctuary. This enduring project is marked with the indelible character of practical absurdity, even with the Glazer’s appropriations. Now, revelers juggle torches set aflame in the gravel bocce box and fly a gym class parachute on the lawn. Scores of students seek the assistance of benevolent bike mechanics and ride away with new wheels and new friends. Plants and assorted tomfoolery alike are propagated. We hear laughing. We are happy.
The garden is small, misunderstood, and in a constant fight for its own preservation and growth. It is obscure and misrepresented and taken for granted. But, above all else, the garden is extraordinarily loved. Wall Garden is unspeakably precious, and the legacy of adoration and affection it carries manifests in charmingly peculiar ways. Love can be seen in the jugglers who wear their keys to the shed on necklaces next to their hearts and sketches of the garden tattooed onto their skin for the rest of their lives. Love manifests itself when the club president appears at a study session with freshly harvested kumquats to share – a physical, delicious reminder of the splendor of life beyond our studies. Love rings out from the voice of the Minister of Agriculture recalling the privilege of responsibility to the land that has passed through so many caring hands. And, love is present in every word I have spoken, shared, and written about the little Garden of Eden behind my dorm.
Georgia Marie, your most loving presidential candidate and current Wall resident