Introduction

Among the orderly procession of front yards that appoints nineteenth-century homes in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston, Martha Schwartz created the Bagel Garden. Like its neighbors, a clipped boxwood hedge bordered the garden. Yet, in contrast to what you might expect to find cradled in this shady residential yard—a brick patio, blooming roses, a small bubbling fountain—the hedge enclosed 96 lacquered bagels (a mixture of salt and pumpernickel). These bagels were not accessories to a garden scene, placed in a bowl gracing a table. Instead, they were brazenly laid out in a grid pattern upon a ground of colored gravel.