Bunnies a’ Bursting

Last week at the beach, Layla was never bored. She would sit on the deck, talking in husky. Everyone knows husky, right? Even the brown bunnies with their ears up in the air like furry antennas.

Sanderling has more rabbits per square foot of sand than anywhere else on the Outer Banks. It’s a fact. Shaded, dense undergrowth and beautifully manicured lawns to nibble salad mouthfuls morning and evening. Come midday when the ospreys are coasting on the thermals, the bunnies go to ground.

Brown bunny, green lawn, they’re not exactly camouflaged. Somehow they like the grass over the pine straw mulch. They need to get their fur dyed green.

Oh, if I had a bunny, just

a fuzzy wuzzy bunny

furry bunnies make me happy

dance on deck like I was Snoopy.

Sung to If I Were a Rich Man, from Fiddler on the Roof

Layla had a rabbit’s profile imprinted on her brain before she’d seen the first—at least before we’d adopted her. She can spy a rabbit from further than a cat—on account of those antenna ears. Some dogs love bones to chew. Layla likes hers with rabbit fur. When they lay their ears back against their heads and crouch, it does them no good; she’s already spied them.

If I let her off the leash, Layla may or might not catch one, not at nine years old, but she’d try her husky heart out.

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The little one sitting on the beach path straight ahead of us froze like her mother taught her. A single palm-size bit of fluff, sideways with one eye staring, cute as a bunny…

Layla assumed her professional stalking mode, slowly one paw placed silently after another, head down, tail down, staring the bunny down. About to reach striking distance, a moment before her big lunge, I tossed a pine cone at the baby, startling her away. Still, Layla launched herself into the brush like she’d give chase. Fifty-five pounds of determined husky will drag you forward, even with both hands on the lead. Bunny one; Layla zero.

I think I heard the bunny yelling for its mother running off, either that or it was swearing. Best Layla might have done was to hang herself up on her collar in that thicket—excellent cover for them.

We rented the same house last year, so when we arrived, Layla was primed to stalk the deck front to back searching for bunnies. After a five hour drive, nothing like finding a good bunny lookout perch. I expect there are predators buried in the underbrush, with such a healthy supply of game, but I didn’t see any the whole week.

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Sanderling was initially planned in the 70s by Washington, DC architects who made a conscious effort to save the live oak and pine groves. Environmentally conscious was the term. And the rabbits thrived.

Ed Pinckney, a professor at Clemson, first opened my eyes to designing the complete environment, not simply the buildings. Pinckney holds a degree in architecture as well as in landscape architecture. Civil engineers don’t know the art of grading and building placement the way landscape architects do.

My ah hah! moment came in a 2nd year project when he suggested I consider how the individual house cabins—the project was to design some kind of camp—might be shaped about the site. I later worked with his landscape architectural firm between undergrad and graduate school. Pinckney’s work at Sea Pine Plantation (on Hilton Head Island) applied Ian McHarg’s principles of following the nature of a site instead of scraping it bare.

Leaving a place for the bunnies.

The houses in Sea Pines Plantation—admittedly mostly single family homes—were spread under the live oaks with gravel drives and the dense vegetation left right up to the beach. Walking the beach, no houses were visible, just miles of white sand. In Sanderling, all the houses are set back somewhat from the dune line, though the beach itself is being steadily eroded much like the rest of the Outer Banks.

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In the 70s, Ian McHarg was the best known East Coast landscape planner. He was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania, but lectured at Clemson once. His book, Design with Nature, was the bible we studied. His influence was wide spread. 50 Years After Design With Nature, Ian McHarg’s Ideas Still Define Landscape Architecture by Billy Fleming in Metropolis Magazine gives an overview of the Scottish landscape architect’s philosophy. He’d kept his brogue.

In those days, I could have easily been persuaded to study landscape architecture. I applied to the University of Pennsylvania for grad school based on taking courses under McHarg, though perhaps I didn’t try hard enough and went to Yale instead.

A cute side story—I did a series of rendered elevations for Ed Pinckney. He wanted to put together a pamphlet of beach house designs he hadn’t sold, a pattern book as it was called a century ago. As part of the entourage (meaning ‘surrounding environment’) I included a woman posing by the front door in each view, who, after the third or fourth rendering, began to wear smaller and smaller bikinis. Setting the scene, so to speak, and I was bored.

In the coastal low country along the Atlantic Ocean—places like Hilton Head, even the Outer Banks—the principal thought is retaining the natural flow of the wetlands. Wide overhangs to shade the buildings and shed rain. Gravel instead of concrete driveways. Live oaks for shade. Out west it means not sucking the aquifers dry to water the turf—xeriscape, meaning zero irrigation. Design with Nature.

Lake Barcroft’s initial development in the 50s predated McHarg’s influence, but applied a similar thought—leaving the rolling hills and heavy forest that still remain in part seventy years later. And we have a community with principals of living with nature—not all of us, but enough. And the foxes, racoons, deer, beavers, et al. appreciate the effort. A neighbor posted some nice photos of a night heron last week.

Night Heron—photo by John Balthis, ©2022

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We kill lots of animals we don’t eat. I see them flattened on the road so many times and wonder who’s paying attention? We steal their land. Great views out on the mesa, yes, but we’ll need to dam the river and get some AC going. Let’s drain this swamp and dump sand on it. Who needs a swamp?

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The passionate arguments of the 70s for environmental consciousness created some results—EPA, for one—but the country has always refused to cede private enterprises’ rights to planning agencies. We live with hit and miss results. There hasn’t been a wide enough consensus for environmental planning. Enlightened individuals sometimes hire landscape architects—even architects—to lead development teams instead of the financial folks. So a minority of the better-off pay for good design—and live in nice enclaves such as Sanderling—and Lake Barcroft.

Not as bleak as what Billy Fleming wrote in 2019, but his view wasn’t entirely wrong either:

“Yet, the limits of such an approach were already apparent by the time Design with Nature was published. With the failures of Modernism obvious for all to see, the design establishment began pushing back against the rational planning methods that arose during McHarg’s zenith. In 1981 Ronald Reagan ascended to the presidency, ushering in an era of devolutionary politics that would undo many of the hard-won environmental victories of the previous decade. It gave rise to the logic of mass privatization and monetization—often referred to as neoliberalism—including resources like clean water, now deemed too expensive to provide in communities like Flint, Michigan. Those reversals in national policy and design ideology ultimately sank the world Design with Nature’s philosophy endeavored to build.” from 50 Years After Design With Nature, Ian McHarg’s Ideas Still Define Landscape Architecture by Billy Fleming

It's easy to blame it all on Reagan, but a clear majority in the country voted for him. We just didn’t want to think about it.