Wow! eBook
Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The History of Urban Gardening and the Coming of the Next Food Revolution
Author(s): Kate Brown (Author)
- Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
- Publication Date: April 20, 2027
- Language: English
- Print length: 336 pages
- ISBN-10: 1324156929
- ISBN-13: 9781324156925
Book Description
From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban gardening: nurturing health, hope, and community.
Nurturing health, hope, and community, gardeners in cities and suburbs are reclaiming lost commons, transforming vacant lots into vibrant plots, turning waste into compost, and recreating what was once the most productive agriculture in recorded human history.
In a history that has been hidden in plain sight, working-class gardeners have consistently played an outsized role. In London, they devised ways to feed themselves when wage labor fell short. In Paris, a superabundance of horse manure in the streets nourished urban gardens that fed two million residents. In Berlin, gardeners built social safety nets for those marginalized by the state. In Washington, DC, African American migrants brought rural traditions of self-provisioning that were later disrupted by “urban renewal.” In rustbelt Mansfield, Ohio, farming ex-cons grow hope for the city’s future. In post-Soviet Estonia, shared gardens became lifelines for survival amid economic upheaval. And in Amsterdam, activists are reclaiming sustainable farming practices in a sinking landscape oversaturated with fertilizers.
Tilled into this rich history of urban agriculture is an inspiring layer of contemporary activism. Each chapter includes contemporary stories of people from all walks of life who, in their gardens, are continuing a great tradition of mutual aid, political resistance, and bold experiments in sustainability.
A manifesto for the next food revolution, Tiny Gardens Everywhere blends past and present, archive and experience, to offer a truly inspiring vision of the transformative potential of gardening and urban life.
16 photographs, black-and-white illustrations throughout
Editorial Reviews
Review
― The New Yorker
““Kate Brown’s
Tiny Gardens Everywhere takes the argument about the future of food to the streets and cities of North America and Europe, a kind of updated urban Berry. Her book is kaleidoscopic and humanistic; it is part memoir, part history, and part manifesto, grounded in place and featuring the diffracted view of many examples. . . Her multinational survey of the past and present offers a push for policy reform that takes urban land as an opportunity for growth.””― Benjamin Cohen, Los Angeles Review of Books
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Tiny Gardens Everywhere makes a powerful case for more urban gardeners to be encouraged to grow their own produce […] Could this be the time for town gardeners to dig for victory once again?”― Constance Craig Smith, Mail on Sunday
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Tiny Gardens Everywhere shows us the path between the plot and the planet. It’s an amazing, beautiful book; I couldn’t put it down.”― Anna Tsing, author of The Mushroom at the End of the World
“A sparkling new history of urban areas demonstrating that they have long been full of vibrant green shoots. Diving into this visionary blend of history, memoir, and political insight is like eating a salad of fresh spring greens with a sprinkling of wild strawberries?refreshing, delightful, and nourishing for both mind and spirit.”
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“For urban farmers worldwide, this vibrant secret history validates our work and guides future gardeners toward better composting, radical use of common spaces, and plenty of zucchini.”
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“With enviable skill, craft, and insight, Kate Brown shows that the past of small-scale urban provisioning contains the seeds of a more resilient future for us all.”
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“What a wonder this book is! Absolutely riveting. I hope we can heed its wisdom.”
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“”Offers small garden pockets across the globe and through time… where urban agriculture tendered hope and resistance to political, social, and environmental crises. I recommend this to everyone who finds calm in putting their hands in the soil.””
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“Engaging and inspiring. A fascinating history into the quietly radical role of allotments and guerrilla gardening. A reminder that cities are still places where plants can thrive, where people can connect to the earth, despite all the concrete, brick and asphalt. Superb.”
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“Brown, an environmental historian, offers a blueprint for the future in this punchy narrative about all manner of urban gardeners in the U.S. and abroad… Brown’s book shows us that inspiration for a new food system doesn’t have to be so hard. A riveting social history of the world, as seen through gardens.”
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