This is, without a doubt, a good time to be an urban gardener. Wandering through our neighborhood, one can spy pots of tomatoes dangling from fire escapes and whole plots of veggies planted on rooftops. In part, this is due to the proselytizing of locavore foodies like Alice Waters, Michael Pollan, and all the city chefs who have created a fetish for lumpen, mottled and thoroughly delicious heirloom tomatoes and, for meat eaters, free-range, grass-fed beef, and the food activists who insisted that access to fresh food is a social justice issue.
One can see the general influence of the same DIY movement that brought us hipster feminist knitters and open-source appliance hackers. And once the recession kicked in, growing one’s food from seed started to look a hell of a lot better than paying the prices at farmers’ markets or Whole Foods: By some counts, seed catalog sales are up 19 and even 75 percent over last year and “recession gardens” are all the rage. And certainly it helps to see Michelle Obama outside pulling weeds with local schoolchildren in the White House organic veggie garden.
But city gardening is nothing new.
Tags: gardens