Make a Baltimore alley beautiful? Most folks would find that notion inconceivable, and then crack a joke about maybe choosing a corpulent-rat-and-rancid-garbage theme for the makeover.

Not Patti Fortner.

When an architect at the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation approached Fortner four years ago about the idea of "greening" the crime-plagued alley behind her Luzerne Avenue home, she loved it.

Fortner had already been greening the tiny space behind her own rowhouse, though the Baltimore-born part-time bartender probably wouldn't have used that term.

But she had gotten into urban gardening, found books and magazines on container planting, and turned her yard into a pretty place, with hanging baskets of plants and flowering fruit trees.

"I have beautiful butterflies back there, and praying mantises," she says. "One year I even had a hummingbird."

Alley-greening would mean making the whole alley look that way—better, even. Trees would be planted, fences and walls would come down, asphalt would be ripped up, and a sort of communal garden with perennials, grass, and benches would sprout up. Fortner saw the pictures of other places in the country where urban spaces had been transformed (an Arlington, Virginia-based group called Community Greens had lots of inspiring "before" and "after" pictures) and she was swept away.

She started talking to her neighbors and they quickly realized that before the alley could be greened, it would have to be gated.

"Otherwise, anything nice we put in there would be gone the next day," Fortner says.

Since then, her energized group hasn't exactly turned the alley into the Luxembourg Gardens, but they have made some progress and hope to lead the way for others in Baltimore to try alley-greening too.

With support from the Mayor's Office, they got a temporary permit to put up four locked iron gates at the entrances to the alley, which is just off Patterson Park, between Glover and Luzerne. (The gates are outfitted with Knox-Boxes so that only residents and police and fire personnel can open them.) So far, three of the four gates have been installed.

They got trash pick-up switched to the front of their houses, painted some of the walls in the alley, and put in some flower planters.

And, after many hours logged in meetings and hearings, they have put together an ordinance, still pending before the City Council, to make it easier for other city residents to close and landscape their alleys. The new law would allow residents to lease (rather than purchase) the alley from the City and would clear away a lot of the bureaucratic hurdles that currently stand in the way.

"We've just taken our baby steps, but once we get that last gate in and people start getting flower-pots and planting things, it's going to really be nice," says Fortner.

Proponents of alley-greening and gating see it as part of the renaissance of cities, a way of making city living more pleasant by softening the harshness of concrete, brick, and asphalt, and creating outdoor spaces that feel secure. Boosters reel off a long list of alley-greening's benefits. It provides kids with a place to play and neighbors with a place to meet and chat. It increases property values and discourages crime and loitering.

The environmental benefits are also considerable. Alleys with more dirt and less asphalt would send less gunk-laden water sluicing into storm-sewers and out to the Chesapeake Bay. Adding trees and plants helps clean the air and reduces the urban heat-island effect. Pretty urban spaces attract more people to settle in cities, strengthening them and reducing sprawl.

Another byproduct of alley-greening projects: They grow great neighborhood spirit.

"It's brought the community closer together and created some lasting friendships," says Grant Heslin, of Glover Street, one of the dozen or so energized alley neighbors working with Fortner, holding potlucks, and writing grants. Heslin is hoping the spruced-up alley will be a place for his two young daughters to play.

Alley-greening and gating has gained popularity elsewhere in the country and in Europe in recent years. As part of the British government's campaign to discourage "anti-social behavior," they have spent more than $4 million on Operation Gate It, supporting more than seventy projects in England and Wales.

Another inspiration for the Patterson Park group is Montgomery Park in Boston's South End, a green space shared by eighty-five households. Until the 1970s, fences and an alley separated the homes' backyards from that patch of land. Since then, with the fences removed, the area has been turned into an urban oasis with trees, a perennial border, and a lawn.

Here in Baltimore, there are several of these hidden-gem spaces tucked away in city neighbor-hoods. In East Baltimore, Amazing Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church has reclaimed twenty-one vacant lots behind the church and turned them into a community garden and stone-lined labyrinth that they call their "sacred commons."

In Federal Hill, eleven homeowners donated land from their backyards and gave $1,000 to form the Chandlers Yard Neighbors Association in 1985. Today, it's a quiet nook with benches, tables, mature trees, climbing vines, and colorful flowers.

"People say it reminds them of Italy," says Zoë Saint-Paul, president of the association.

Alleys have a long history, going back more than 2,500 years to ancient Greece. Beijing's hutongs date back to at least the 1200s. After the Industrial Revolution, Western cities developed in a grid pattern that included alleys as service roads for trash collection, coal delivery, fire engine access, and parking. In Baltimore, arabbers (peddlers with horse-drawn carts) clip-clopped through the alleys, selling fruit, vegetables, and other items.

As alleys fell out of everyday use in recent de-cades, they became less a place to see kids playing ball and mothers hanging up wash and more of a haven for crime, trash, rats, and prostitution.

Lately, architects and planners—including New Urbanism leader Andrés Duany—have championed the use of alleys, with trees and set-back parking areas, as a setting for social interaction. New urban dwellers have turned to gating and greening their alleys to give them the security of a backyard, along with the communal feel of a mini-park.

"In an era of diminished resources, in a city like Baltimore where there are not a lot of small community parks, alley-greening can bring nature back to cities in a way that's human-scaled," says Kate Herrod, director of Community Greens, an initiative of the Arlington, Virginia-based Ashoka group, which supports the transformation of the interiors of blocks into shared parks and gardens. "These greens also provide a place for citizens to get to know one another, create community, and increase the city's social capital, along with stabilizing and improving real estate values and reducing crime and violence in neighborhoods."

City regulations, however, still reflect the pre ­ vailing view of alleys as nuisances—which is why a change in the law is needed, proponents say.

Responsibility for the use of the 456 miles of alleys in Baltimore falls to the City's Department of Public Works. (Maintenance is handled by the City's Department of Transportation.) Small alleys, meaning those less than 10 feet wide, are generally considered to be privately owned, but gating still needs to be approved by DPW, following the consent of all adjoining property owners, according to Joe Kostow, engineering supervisor for the department's Development Center.

Larger alleys are not supposed to be gated, though some Baltimore residents have ignored the law and gated them anyway, Kostow says. Generally, this has been done as a security measure, not as part of a greening plan. City ordinances spell out a legal procedure for closing off an alley. But as the Patterson Park residents discovered, that process is difficult and costly, requiring them to purchase the land from the city and jump through numerous bureaucratic hoops.

The Luzerne Avenue/Glover Street group came up with their more user-friendly proposal by working with the Patterson Park Community Development Corporation (particularly Francis McLaughlin), the University of Maryland School of Law, Baltimore law firm Hogan & Hartson (the school and the firm both supplied pro bono legal help), and Loretta Colvin of the Patterson Park Neighborhood Association.

The ordinance they put together, with support from City officials, required the passage of enabling legislation by the General Assembly. (They got that last year.) Then, the proposed ordinance got hung up. The City's lawyers wanted a law that would re ­ quire all the neighbors with property abutting the alley to agree to the gating.

"This would be seen by some people as a taking of their property; people are very sensitive about their private property rights," Kostow says. "We would be in court in a minute."

Proponents of the ordinance fought against the unanimity requirement, fearing that it would allow "one curmudgeon" to hold up a whole project, says Bill Henry, director of external relations for the Patterson Park CDC. But the City remained adamant and the residents recently backed down. They are hoping the City Council will approve the ordinance this spring.

Three or four other groups from other city neighborhoods are eager to green their alleys and have been watching the issue closely, Herrod says.

On the verge of finally getting started, the Patterson Park group has realized they will have to scale back some of their plans for now. A new property owner wants to retain parking rights in the alley behind his house, so now the gated communal space won't include the entire alley. "That parking issue is going to keep coming up," says Fortner, sounding a bit discouraged. "People are always going to want to use the alleys for parking. Still, I can't see many cars fitting into the small alley spaces."

Another setback was the difficulty of replac ­ ing asphalt and cement with dirt and grass. Water might not drain properly, causing basement flooding. Emergency vehicles and utility trucks might not be able to drive over the soft surfaces. Avoiding those problems would mean costly landscaping and engineering, so for now, they're going to stick with trellises and planters.

"We're out of money," says Fortner. (By pooling their funds, holding a fundraiser, and getting grants, they raised about $14,000, which they've used for gates, benches, path lights, paint, and other needs.)

Still, spring is in the air and Fortner knows that everyone will feel better once the last gate's in place and they can get their hands in the dirt and start turning their alley into the lush oasis they've been dreaming of.

"When that last gate is in, we're going to have a really good party," she says. "In the alley, of course!"

 

How To Do It

So you want to green your alley? Here are some tips to get you started.

Meet informally to gauge neighborhood interest.

Find resources (community-oriented planning and architecture groups, civic or neighborhood associations, environmental groups, the local law school).

Split into teams, hold a design charette, and come up with a good plan. Hire a landscape architect, if possible.

Find a design that works for everyone. Since alleys are often narrow, one approach is to take down fences or hedges and move them back toward the homes. The property line wouldn't move, just the fence. Neighbors would have to be willing to give up a bit of their yards for the common space. Make sure that ripping up pavement won't cause drainage or rat problems. Planters are another way to go.

Raise money. Gating and landscaping aren't cheap!

Gear up for the government approval process. Find out what laws are on the books regarding alleys. Call your neighborhood liaison at the Mayor's Office to find out the current status of pending laws regarding alleys.

If you get permission to gate your alley, install Knox-Boxes and alert the fire and police departments about the change. Arrange for trash to be picked up in front of the houses.

Set up an organization to interact with the City, oversee the initial work, and be responsible for long-term care for it.

Obtain agreements from all neighbors on sharing costs, and establish etiquette for use of shared space.

—F.S.