America Community Greening Review

I really like this book. It had very personal, humanistic stories about community gardens focusing on different areas such as the benefits, history, art and compost, managing gardens, and community garden movements around the world. I wish I had time to read the entire book, but I looked over most of it and the points of particular interest to me were the World section and the Transformation section. The article I reviewed was called "Southeast Asian Gardeners: Teaching fish to swim" (149). It talked about the similarities of Thai villagers to North American citizens. The stereotype is that all Asians know how to farm and grow vegetables. Also, gardening in the tropics, you would expect that they could farm all year round because there are 365 frost-free days. However, Thai villagers are reluctant to farm; only plant during the cool season; and do not use intensive practices. Looking at the culture, some of these things can be explained by the fact that rice is the primary crop and food and vegetables are merely used to add flavor and color. There are 3 seasons: cool, rainy, and hot. During the rainy seasons, the vegetables rot from too much rain; and during the hot season there is not enough water and it is too hot for many crops. The only viable season to plant is during the cool season. There is little motivation for Thai villagers to grow their own vegetables. They view farming as a low status activity and wish to rise about their roots into a higher class and income level. The women would rather spend more time shopping and socializing than gardening. The families aim to be wealthy enough to buy their own food, so they do not want to resort to a lower status by growing food. Despite these oppositions to growing food, the article comments on the benefits. Nutritional education programs improve diets. Growing food saves money and can also produce some income. Intensive gardening saves labor, water, and soil fertility. In conclusion, inspiring people in Southeast Asia to grow their own food faces similar problems as people in North America. Successful extension of these practices depends on understanding attitudes, motivations, and sources of resistance as well as developing communication techniques between the people and the educators.

I also read about the success story of Seeds of Survival (SOS) in Ethiopia. It was inspiring to know that agricultural techniques that preserve the world's agricultural diversity and build food security can exist and even out-yield techniques of the Green Revolution that use single varieties of seeds. SOS showed that using diverse seeds can yield 10-15% more produce that even Green Revolution techniques. The article related this success story to community gardens by promoting the growth of heirloom varieties, buying seed stock from small companies, and educating people about the movement.

I looked through the Transformation section because I love the random, reused art pieces that are found in community gardens. The creatures made out of old bottles that we saw on top of the fence of a garden in NYC were really cool. In the book, there were lots of ideas for reusing unwanted items. I liked the bottle tree. The use of bathtubs and car tires for planting gives personality to the garden. Even the fence can be crafted using reused wood or other materials and made into a work of art.