I first heard the story as a student at Brown University in 2023. It was passed down like an urban legend: Two decades earlier, eight Rhode Island artists set up camp in an off-map crawl space in the Providence Place mall. The group somehow outfitted the undeveloped corner of the colossal (and in-use) structure with the trappings of a home, from a dining table and secondhand couch to a TV set. Sneaking in through pitch-black service shafts, they made the forgotten concrete back room into a covert apartment, going as far as installing a door and running electricity, until they were busted in 2007. Scant news coverage and a few blurry photos were the only proof I could find that the unbelievable story was true.

Two of the occupants, Adriana Valdez Young and Michael Townsend—then married, recent college grads—say that at first, they were simply curious if they could spend an entire day in the hidden section of the busy shopping mall. It spiraled into their group of eight hanging out in the unit on and off over the next four years, filming their escapades and planning art projects. (“When you’re really weird, you don’t think anything you do is weird,” says Valdez Young. “What else are we gonna do?”)

Much of that footage made its way into a new documentary about the saga, in theaters (including a screen at Providence Place) as of March 21, after debuting in 2024 at SXSW. Secret Mall Apartment, directed by Jeremy Workman and executive produced by Jesse Eisenberg (who recently did a Tonight Show bit about the film with Jimmy Fallon), splices together the group’s point-and-shoot clips with present-day interviews, telling the story of their hush-hush living space and unpacking the wider history of the divisive Providence development.

The early 2000s “secret mall apartment” was born at a time of strife in Providence’s real estate market. After more than 150 years of industry driving the local economy, the mid-20th century saw production dwindle, and the city became home to a large community of artists. Then, near the turn of the century, the city’s economy shifted again. The abandoned textile mills where these artists lived and worked were demolished, pushing them out. Simultaneously, Providence Place was being built, promising to bring the city into a new era of economic prosperity. Today, the remaining mills are still under threat and Providence Place has an uncertain future, effectively declaring the state-level equivalent of bankruptcy. Ironically, some are now calling for the redevelopment of the massive mall into housing. I spoke with Valdez Young and Townsend about making a home in the mall, the state of Providence real estate, and (surprisingly) how Dwell influenced their secret apartment. Our conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.

What was the genesis of living at the mall?

Michael Townsend: I had a habit of jogging past the mall’s construction site. I identified a space that didn’t fit into my calculus of usefulness. It didn’t seem like stores or parking. When Adriana and I went to look, we shimmed in, and miraculously, [the empty nook] was there.

Adriana Valdez Young: The project was about knowing the enemy, but also knowing what the future looked like. If the mall was the ideal version of Providence or the modern American city, then we had this curiosity to better understand how this behemoth worked. And if there was room for us in its future.

Providence Place was pitched to residents as integral to the city’s revitalization. What was the development’s ideal vision of Providence?

MT: The [mall’s] advertising campaign had two words: “Defining You.” It was everywhere. We embraced it as a challenge and a threat simultaneously. How far will we let this building define us?

AVY: This campaign was, oddly, for nothing, right? It was about defining the future of retail and of the city. The massive square footage of this shopping center far exceeded all the total retail in downtown Providence. There’s no need to revitalize your little local economy. Don’t worry. We’re just taking care of it in one strike. The mall had a Tiffany’s. There was a Brooks Brothers. How many people are wearing Brooks Brothers in downtown Providence? Nobody, right? It was an image of a lifestyle that didn’t reflect local culture.

When we were developing the apartment and hanging out at the mall as good shopper citizens, I remember [thinking about] the phrase “critique through hyperconformity.” What if we did follow the rules and let them all define us? What would that look like? 

At some point, I recreated the “Defining You” ads. I bought everything from the mall, staged it, and returned it. It was like $1,000 to get everything you want from one picture. The math does not work when you try to achieve that kind of perfection—maybe for the one percent.

Were you viewing this as an art project or a political response to the housing situation in Providence at the time?

MT: This question gets asked a lot. In my memory of the arrest, one of the clear thoughts I had was, Oh no, now I have to curate the story. Until that point, and I know this may sound ridiculous, but it was just our life. That was just how we lived our life. There were eight artists involved in this project, but we made the decision that Adriana and I would be a good face. The idea of a couple who’s trying to make it.

AVY: The shared American narrative.

Welcome to Prefab Profiles, an ongoing series of interviews with people transforming how we build houses. From prefab tiny houses and modular cabin kits to entire homes ready to ship, their projects represent some of the best ideas in the industry. Do you know a prefab brand that should be on our radar? Get in touch!

Years ago, Johnathon Little and his wife, Zoë Little, disembarked from the U.K. to Norway., where Johnathon took a job as an architect at Snøhetta. There, the couple became devotees to Scandinavia’s minimalist aesthetic and its emphasis on nature. Later, in 2017, after designing some projects for themselves with what they had learned abroad, the couple founded Koto with friend and designer Theo Dales to builder modular homes and cabins.

The name comes from old Finnish, loosely translating to “cozy at home.” With yakisugi-style cladding, tidy picture windows, and angular rooflines, Koto’s prefabricated cabins are designed to conjure a cocooned feeling. The company has built several across the U.K., including a custom home in Scotland’s Outer Hebrides, a work cabin, and beach shacks. It’s also completed a couple in the U.S., including a collaboration with Abodu, a prefab backyard home builder in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Now, Koto has developed the Niwa, a flatpack cabin designed to be easily shipped, and has built two in Boston. Here, company cofounder Zoë tell us more about how the Niwa adds to Koto’s impressive lineup.

Tell us more about how Koto got started.

Our journey started in a small apartment on a small island near Oslo, where Johnathon designed a series of tiny outdoor rooms, playhouses, and reading nooks for myself and our two small children. It gave us the extra space we needed. When we saw the finished product, we thought, why not create something like this for adults? That was the spark for Koto: creating sculptural, nature-connected spaces that offer peace and adaptability.

Around that time, Theo and Johnathon began collaborating on smaller architectural projects, moving away from the large-scale commercial work they were accustomed to. The three of us soon realized that by combining our unique visions and diverse expertise, we could (hopefully) create something exceptional. And with that, Koto was born.

Tell us more about the first Niwa project in Boston. How is it different from your other prefabs?

Our clients own a home in Boston near a hill that overlooks a lush pine forest, an idyllic setting where they envisioned placing multiple Koto cabins. The Niwa cabins serve as both guest accommodations and workspaces, connected by pathways that encourage movement through the outdoors. Their favorite aspect of the project is how it blends functionality with tranquillity, offering an immersive retreat within their own property.

Unlike our previous cabin designs, due to the nature of the clients’ remote location and the shipping distance, the Niwas were delivered inside a shipping container in a panelized form, allowing for seamless shipping from Europe to the U.S., and efficient on-site assembly by a small team. This approach not only simplified logistics but also enabled a faster and more flexible installation process. We hope it will make high-quality, sustainable design more accessible in new markets.

What does the base model for a Niwa cost and what does that include?

Niwa pricing varies based on size, configuration, and customization options. The current Niwa family of designs ranges from 67 square feet up to 400 square feet, with more sizes on the way. The small Niwa cabin pack starts at £40,000 (approximately $51,760 USD) and the cost includes high-quality finishes. Shipping, installation, and other costs are calculated separately upon inquiry.

What qualities make Koto’s prefabs stand apart from others?

We’ve always focused on creating spaces that blend seamlessly with nature. We’re passionate about combining thoughtful, sustainable design with craftsmanship, creating homes that feel like part of the landscape rather than just sitting on it.

Our cabins are inspired by the simplicity and serenity of Scandinavian design. We use large windows to bring in the natural light and want to give people a constant connection to the outdoors, while our signature charred-timber cladding helps the cabins blend into their surroundings.

When we design Niwa cabins, we want them to last. We use sustainably sourced materials that are both beautiful and durable, and the cabins are engineered to stand up to different climates while still feeling custom and unique. 

Sustainability is at the heart of everything we do. From the FSC-certified timber to energy-efficient designs, we make sure every detail has minimal environmental impact. The Niwa collection, in particular, focuses on light-on-the-land construction, so ideally a cabin’s natural surroundings would go largely undisturbed.

The Niwa collection is designed with ease and accessibility in mind. It’s panelized, so it ships efficiently and assembles quickly, making it possible to bring our designs to remote locations, from mountain retreats to urban backyards.

There’s something picturesque about a city of old homes. Charming 1950s bungalows in Los Angeles, 20th-century brownstones in Brooklyn, or a success story from Cheap Old Houses in Orange, Massachusetts—a small town where a $98,000 house was transformed into a bed and breakfast—are what make cities great. These homeowners preserve unique vernacular architecture, demonstrating a devotion to repair and care for their houses and their communities at large.

Yet as housing construction has slowed over the past decades, older homes have dominated not just the real estate market but the housing stock entirely: “Improving America’s Housing,” a new report by the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released last week, highlights that the average American house is now more than four decades old—by far, the most “senior” our housing stock has ever been. An aspirational vision of vintage living comes to a screeching halt when you remember just how much time, energy, and cash has been infused into these properties to modernize them—or even to keep them standing. As climate change threatens Americans from coast to coast, and the cost of housing becomes more burdensome to those with stagnant wages, the risks faced by homeowners and residents make the proposition of a “cheap old house” a lot less romantic, and a lot more precarious.

“Improving America’s Housing” is issued every two years and tracks significant changes in the home repair and renovation markets over time, utilizing data from the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s American Housing Survey conducted by the Census Bureau. But it’s not an industry trend report, says Sophia Wedeen, senior research associate at the JCHS; rather, “Improving America’s Housing” speaks to the renovation market’s health, possible causes for fluctuations, and the effects that renovations can have on the housing market at large.

While the pandemic fueled a massive growth in renovations, the report reads, Wedeen says that one long-term force driving a continued interest in home improvement (and our aging houses) is a lack of new homes. “The Great Recession really slowed the pace of single-family home construction. We haven’t been adding as many new units since,” she says. “And at the same time over the decades, with the introduction of much stronger building and energy codes, our homes are also lasting longer.” It’s yielding a housing stock that has grown progressively older: In 2003, the mean American home was 31 years old; by 2023, houses had aged on average another 13 years, according to the report. A plethora of old houses becomes an affordability issue, says Wedeen.

“We need to increase the [housing] supply because many households don’t have the cash on hand to improve their housing conditions, to increase their home value by undertaking these activities that add value to their homes or just maintain existing conditions,” she explains. As families inhabit increasingly older homes, the cost of performing repairs or upgrades only increases. Wedeen says that over the course of two decades, homes begin to require more frequent repairs as roofs, HVAC systems, and more begin to wear out. For those built before 1940, costs are especially high: The study shows that those who own houses built before 1940 spend 50 percent more on improvements and repairs than those who own homes built after 2010.

For those looking to buy their first home, this means that a less-expensive price tag on an older home could be enticing, but it doesn’t include the costs of doing necessary repairs or updates. “Across the board, homeowners living in older homes spend much more than homeowners living in newer homes,” says Wedeen. “Recent home buyers consistently outspend homeowners who hadn’t bought recently by more than a third.”

Not only does the study show that lower income households spend less on renovations and repairs, but they spend a higher proportion of their total income on these projects in comparison to higher earners—16 percent versus four percent, respectively. The study also emphasizes that lower-income households are particularly vulnerable to the problems of older homes, especially those projects that can affect basic livability. In 2023, more than three percent of homeowners lived in “moderately or severely inadequate homes“—defined by the Department of Housing and Urban Development as homes that lack basic infrastructure like hot water, heating or cooling systems, or other major deficiencies. The study notes that, among homes built before 1940, nearly seven percent are considered “inadequate”; homeowners with lower incomes, as well as Black and Hispanic homeowners, are the most likely to live in them.

All of these issues are exacerbated by the climate crisis, which is expected to hit lower-income families hardest. Not only are insurance costs growing beyond the means of many, disaster repair expenditures have grown since 2017 ($23 billion was spent on such fixes between 2021 and 2023)—repairs that may also be burdensome for lower-income people. “Given that housing quality, and I should say poor housing quality, is linked to so many other health issues, financial instability, and housing instability, it has all of these spillover effects,” says Wedeen. “This is a critical issue that needs more attention in the policy space, and certainly should be considered by people who are concerned with housing affordability.”

What’s required is a full commitment at federal and state levels to provide financial support for those most vulnerable to the problems of our aging housing stock. We might love how older homes appear after repairs and replacements, where the love and care is plain to see. But what’s hidden are the financial realities—the high prices paid from even the smallest earnings that don’t only benefit homeowners themselves, but contribute to entire neighborhoods. 

Top photo of downtown Cincinnati by Pgiam via Getty Images

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Location: 13290 Electron Drive, Fort Myers, Florida

Price: $2,395,000

Year Built: 1986

Designers: Mary and Lawrence Voytek

Builder: Richard Pottorf

Footprint: 2,144 square feet (3 bedrooms, 2 baths)

Lot Size: 3.25 Acres

From the Agent: “Discover a property steeped in artistic history, a sanctuary for creatives and visionaries. This exceptional estate, known to renowned artists, is now available for purchase. The spacious lanai overlooks the stunning acreage, offering a serene setting to relax and recharge. This estate is possibly the largest residential parcel available in proximity to Sanibel, Fort Myers Beach, and the commercial districts of Fort Myers, providing seclusion and convenience. Whether you’re an artist seeking inspiration, an entrepreneur envisioning your next endeavor, or someone looking for a unique and spacious property, this estate is a canvas ready for your vision.”

 The home is finished with imported tile and heart pine flooring.

Real Tours

Owned and designed by Sculptor Mary Voytek—a longtime Robert Rauschenberg collaborator—the property has hosted artistic icons including Roy Lichtenstein and Dale Chihuly.

Real Tours

As a part of our 25th anniversary celebration, we’re republishing formative magazine stories from before our website launched. This story previously appeared in Dwell’s March 2007 issue.  

As the old saying goes: People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. But what about people who design them? Philip Johnson made a name for himself with his iconic, bare-faced structure, and, in turn, was judged as being an architect of both pure genius and pure artifice. Now part of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, Johnson’s 47-acre estate will again be open to the public, and public scrutiny.

“We used to talk about the hedgehog and the fox,” recalls the writer Hilary Lewis of her favorite subject, Philip Johnson. She’s referring to the poet Archilochus’s observation, “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” which is typically applied to opposing artistic temperaments—the former pursuing multiple objectives, the latter governed by an overarching vision. Johnson, who upon his death at 98 in 2005 was remembered, in Paul Goldberger’s New York Times obituary, as a “combination godfather, gadfly, scholar, patron, critic, curator, and cheerleader,” readily acknowledged his uber-foxiness. But he also knew one big thing. And there’s no better place to experience it than at his New Canaan, Connecticut, residence, the Glass House.

That was Johnson’s name, not only for his 1949 modernist landmark, but the entire estate, which he gradually expanded from 5 to 47 acres and adorned with ten provocative constructions. And it will all be on public display beginning in April, when the National Trust for Historic Preservation, to which he donated the property in 1986, opens what will officially be called Philip Johnson’s Glass House.

The Glass House’s executive director, Christy MacLear, explains that by offering tours and seminars, the trust’s mission is “to make the estate a center point of preservation of modern architecture, and maintain the spirit of inspiration Johnson brought to the site by creating residential fellowships for young talent. Our goal is to make sure the house isn’t stuck in time”—a sentiment that would have pleased the forward moving architect.

For many, the biggest revelation may be not the house but the estate’s lesser-known attractions, each of which represents “a response to a different type of architectural problem,” Lewis says. Principal among these are the lake pavilion (1962), a small-scale folly-composed of four arched structures pinwheeling around a water-filled center—that enabled Johnson to experiment with precast concrete and the challenge of joining arches at corners; the painting gallery (1965), a grouping of cylinders—completely submerged in an earthen mound—in which Johnson suspended giant, art-covered movable panels; and the 1970 sculpture gallery, a five-level Mediterranean village in miniature that spirals downward past a series of asymmetrical galleries to create dynamic, constantly shifting perspectives—”a spectacular enactment,” observed Johnson biographer Franz Schulze, “of his belief in architecture as procession.”

Johnson’s other additions are no less lively: The library (1980), a spartan workplace notable for its conical skylight; the “postmodern medieval” entry gate(1977); the ghost house (1984), a barn-shaped homage to Frank Gehry in chain link; the tower (1985) dedicated to Johnson’s friend Lincoln Kirstein, a concrete-block stairway to nowhere, which he designed using dominoes; and what Johnson called da Monsta (1995), a pavilion representative of his late-career enthusiasm for biomorphic forms.

But it’s the Glass House, both manifest and mythically speaking, that’s the draw. In 1945, Johnson, whose practice and curatorial duties at the Museum of Modern Art based him in New York, decided to find a country place, and gravitated to New Canaan, a well-heeled community that was home to fellow architects Marcel Breuer and Eliot Noyes. Johnson came upon five overgrown acres on Ponus Ridge Road that sloped down to a promontory with superlative views.

Though he quickly selected the promontory as his site, neither the house’s form nor, surprisingly, its material were givens. Over two years, Johnson explored 27 separate schemes and a range of building types, some of which incorporated masonry walls and distinctly unmodern Syrian arches. The architect ultimately decided to set a glass pavilion on the overlook and a guest house, identical in form but composed of brick, at a remove behind it—thereby looking outward to the view and inward to an entry court. “When I came to an isolated box,” he recalled, “it was quite a break.”

Johnson had Mies van der Rohe to thank. In 1946, while preparing a MoMA retrospective of Mies’s work, Johnson reviewed sketches for what would become the Farnsworth House, a residence with entirely glass walls. Inspired, Johnson finalized his own design in 1947, and spent his first night on the property (sleeping in the guest house) on New Year’s Eve, 1949—beating his hero to the finish line by two years.

Though Johnson has been accused of ripping off Mies’s masterpiece, there are significant differences between the projects. Farnsworth—bone white, elevated on piers, its steel columns sited outside the glazing-is grandly classical and structurally expressive. Johnson’s house—black-painted, its columns suppressed beneath glass walls, the whole nearly flush with the ground—is a discreet rectangular object. The buildings also differ within: Mies inserted a substantial core that delineates living spaces, whereas the Glass House’s 56-by-32-foot interior is broken only by a low kitchenette counter, a taller cabinet that separates sleeping and public areas, and a large brick cylinder containing the bathroom and fireplace.

In short, whereas Mies designed a home (however iconoclastic), Johnson’s box makes few domestic concessions—and therein, believes the architectural historian Vincent Scully, lies its importance. “The objective of modern art was to liberate the individual from the past and from all traditional constraints, and the Glass House is the ultimate expression of that in architecture,” he says. “Johnson gets rid of the porch, the stairs—everything that suggests tradition—so there’s nothing iconographic between the individual and nature.”

That last is key: As the house’s jaw-dropping views attest, the architect cared less about the structure than what was outside it. A gifted garden designer, Johnson spent decades ruthlessly tearing out trees (despite complaints from the neighbors) until he’d achieved a sublime interplay of clearings and woods that suggests an 18th-century English landscape filtered through a modern sensibility. Amidst all this, the house was, to Johnson, “a viewing platform or a bandstand in the park,” Lewis says. The architect put it best: “The Glass House is a permanent camping trip protected from weather.”

It is, of course, much more. By the 1940s, Johnson was strongly associated with the International Style, which he helped popularize as founding chairman of MoMA’s architecture department. Yet he’d also become a devotee of architectural history, and subsequently cited Claude Nicolas Ledoux and Karl Friedrich Schinkel (among others) as having influenced his house’s design. As such, despite its apparent modernity, Johnson’s creation is predictive of his later style, the historical eclecticism for which he remains best known—indeed, according to Lewis, Johnson saw the house as “an ode to 1920s modernism.” The latter contains a measure of mischief, but that was part of Johnson’s personality, too, and partly accounts for his attraction to Mannerism, the 16th-century antecedent to postmodernism. Johnson “was always a Mannerist,” says Lewis. “Everything has a little twist,” as is evident in the outsized brick cylinder rising from his urbane, elegant box. The effect is amusing but also mysterious, a mystery heightened by the seemingly windowless guest house that stands at a remove, a composition suggestive of a thing and its shadow, an apparent fact and a secret truth, a narrative that renders the house—for all of its transparency—strangely opaque.

If the Glass House shows the fox’s kaleidoscopic intelligence, it’s this tension between the hidden and the seen that reveals the hedgehog’s big idea. In many ways, Philip Johnson was one man within another—a Mannerist within a modernist, a homosexual operating in a closeted society, an elitist promoting an egalitarian style—and his contradictions are amply expressed at his estate, nowhere more so than in the architect’s 1953 renovation of the guest house. Here Johnson created a master suite into which he inserted decorative vaults, sliding panels covered in Fortuny silk, and sensual indirect lighting, producing an environment MacLear describes as “Tangier in Fairfield County”—all of which he concealed in a brick box.

Similarly, within Johnson’s pursuit of excellence lay a ravening lust for fame. Toward this end, the Glass House was his greatest weapon. In 1949. Johnson was six years out of architecture school and had yet to make a definitive splash. Though he worked hard at its design—though he cared—it seems inconceivable that the house was not meant to, as Schulze wrote, “persuade the American profession that he was a figure of consequence as an architect.” Indeed, Johnson publicized it himself, in a 1950 article citing his influences, and it became a sensation—”a calling card,” as Lewis puts it, where he engaged two generations of architects, artists, and students with his protean charm and intellect.

Gardening everywhere is changing with the climate.

If you take care of outdoor plants, you’ll probably be familiar with a litany of unnerving shifts, from severe heat and drought to shifting plant palettes and longer growing seasons. Dramatic and sometimes catastrophic bursts of heavy rainfall and coastal flooding are also intensifying around the country, thanks to the persistent (and apparently now accelerating) burning of fossil fuels.

In New Orleans, one of the rainiest cities in the country, the rain “tends to come all at once,” says Anna Timmerman, a horticulturist and extension agent at LSU AgCenter. “The most I’ve ever seen was 13 inches in a day.”

In addition to experiencing stronger storms and heavy rains (recently accompanied by periods of historic drought), coastal Louisiana is losing land for a variety of reasons, including sea level rise, land subsidence (or sinking), and wetland destruction by the oil and gas industry. In response to these conditions, there is a deep well of local expertise on how to live—and garden—with water.

Your garden, of course, can’t prevent disasters, or address desperately needed policy solutions. But it is possible to help limit the impacts of heavy rainfall on your neighborhood and waterways, and create refuges for people and wildlife along the way. Below are some broad principles that should be useful for anyone who cares for rainy landscapes, whether they are backyards or shared spaces.

Grow food in raised beds, and take care of your soil  

“One of our giant recommendations for this area is raised beds,” says Timmerman.

Flood water can contain sewage and other waste (like dog poop) that carries a risk of E. coli, as well as a toxic blend of motor oil, trash, and other pollutants and pathogens. Elevating garden beds a foot to 18 inches above the soil line can help facilitate drainage and protect the plants you eat from getting contaminated.

Maintaining healthy, biodiverse soil ecosystems also takes on special importance in areas that frequently flood. Soils with lots of organic matter and nutrients are better able to soak up a ton of water, explains Devin Wright, deputy director of producers and sustainability at SPROUT NOLA, a nonprofit that supports growers in Louisiana.

In recent years, Wright notes, periods of severe drought have actually exacerbated the experience of flooding. During a drought, soil microbes can die off—and without them, the soil is less able to absorb all that water. “What that means for soil health is that making sure that you have year-round best practices in place is really important.”

At the community garden hosted by SPROUT, “soil health is something we focus on extremely acutely.” They apply compost and mulch to enrich and protect the soil, test soils regularly to keep tabs on nutrient levels, and avoid synthetic fertilizers and pesticides.

Crop rotation, cover cropping, and no-till gardening are some other techniques that organic growers use to keep nutrients in balance and protect the soil’s structure. 

Soak up the water 

If the ground is covered in concrete, or already inundated with water, then the rain needs somewhere to go. Often, it runs into the street, picks up a bunch of contaminants, pollutes local waterways, and sometimes causes flooding.

There are lots of ways that homeowners, gardeners, and communities can help absorb water, from rain gardens, stormwater planter boxes, and trees to concrete removal, permeable pavement installation, and rain barrels.

If you have a low area in your yard that’s already collecting water, that’s an easy place to install a rain garden, also called a bioswale. Rain gardens are filled with native plants and often well-drained or sandy soils to help absorb and filter stormwater. (Since rain gardens will often be dry, it’s important to choose plants that can tolerate drought, too.)

“Everything in green infrastructure is a form of biomimicry,” says Keree’ Blanks, green infrastructure and engagement coordinator at The Water Collaborative, a nonprofit based in New Orleans.

“In nature, bioswales naturally happen,” Blanks says. “And we’re just taking those strategies and borrowing them.” The Water Collaborative often helps residents connect to local organizations like The Urban Conservancy and Green Light New Orleans that offer installation support and cost-sharing opportunities.

French drains—long trenches filled with a perforated pipe and gravel that collect and redirect water—are another popular solution in New Orleans. Daniel Johnson, founder of New Orleans-based landscaping company Greenman Dan, notes that effective stormwater solutions can involve a “daisy chain” of installations.

“Maybe it starts with a rain barrel, and then when the rain barrel is overflowing, maybe that water is collected in a drainage system, and then that water is routed to a rain garden,” he says.

Add some native plants

Plants that are adapted to your region are great at feeding and sheltering the animals and insects who evolved with them. When planted in the right place, native plants are also relatively low-maintenance, often with deep root networks that can help absorb rainwater and hold soils in place.

In New Orleans, much of which was originally swamp and marsh, native plants that excel at soaking up water—like buttonbush, swamp rose mallow, bald cypress trees, and dwarf palmettos—are popping up in front yards, rain gardens, community gardens, and public parks.

“There’s a real shift happening,” says Timmerman, as tough native plants that are less disease-prone and can tolerate both flooding and drought are getting used more in landscapes as a stormwater management tool.

“I think now, and especially in New Orleans, people think of the utilitarian and environmental value of gardens,” says Diane Jones Allen, professor and program director of landscape architecture at the University of Texas, Arlington.

Before Hurricane Katrina, “New Orleans had its standard palette of aspidistra and liriope and camellias,” Jones Allen recalls. “Post-Katrina, we realized we have to live with water and think of other ways to capture water.”

Plants that aren’t adapted to periods of inundation (or don’t like “getting their feet wet,” as it’s often put) can struggle with fungal pathogens like phytophthora root rot, Timmerman explains. Roots need oxygen, and when they’re submerged, they can start to die. Pathogen spores carried by floodwater can then rot the roots, at which point the plant’s branches and leaves will start to wilt and die.

If you’re interested in shifting to more flood-tolerant species, check your local native plant society or extension office website for new plants to try adding in. 

Swapping plants with neighbors, whether they’re native or beloved crops and ornamentals, is another great way to learn how your community (and their plants) are managing local conditions. When Jones Allen lived in the city, “I would give my ginger to somebody else, and somebody gave me a satsuma, and we’d grow avocados and give them away,” she says.

“So there was a lot of sharing of plant material and transfer of garden knowledge, which is really wonderful.”

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