I've recently picked up You Grow Girl from the library. It's a very handy, low-fuss guide to gardening, written and photographed by Gayla Trail. Trail seems to have equal parts passion and know-how. This book is perfect for the city gardener. She'll walk you through the basics and answer most novice gardening questions. She also gets into some trouble-shooting, and dives deeper into organic gardening for the more motivated gardeners. This book WILL grace my bookshelves.
I particularly enjoyed her "guerrilla" growing chapters. "Who says you need a garden to be a gardener? Cities and suburbs are packed with fallow land, empty lots, sidewalk cracks, and wasted space ready for planting guerrilla-style." She is an advocate for a "green revolution" and says all you need are seeds, shovel, compost, and some water.
This philosophy instantly conjured up memories from my trip to St. Lucia. The open land in St. Lucia is public land,
so any citizen can pick a sunny hill on the side of the road and plant their garden. My husband and I were hiking th
rough the rain forest there and came upon local St. Lucian's gardening, and gathering indigenous "public" bananas. It was a cultural eye-opener and I loved it. What I loved even more was when this barefoot man, carrying a bucket and bananas on his head, walking through the rain forest received a call (and answered)
This philosophy instantly conjured up memories from my trip to St. Lucia. The open land in St. Lucia is public land,
so any citizen can pick a sunny hill on the side of the road and plant their garden. My husband and I were hiking th
rough the rain forest there and came upon local St. Lucian's gardening, and gathering indigenous "public" bananas. It was a cultural eye-opener and I loved it. What I loved even more was when this barefoot man, carrying a bucket and bananas on his head, walking through the rain forest received a call (and answered)
HIS CELL PHONE! You have got to love the millennium???
For American community garden links look here: http://www.communitygarden.org/
For an elementary school garden link look here: http://aggie-horticulture.tamu.edu/kinder/sgardens.htmlDo your part and litter some seeds about.
~Sarah
I was just searching for something else online and I came across the You Grow Girl website. Did you know there's a website, too? Pretty neat!
ReplyDeletewww.yougrowgirl.com
Molly, thanks for the link~ I'm going to check it out.
ReplyDeleteSarah, I LOVE this book, it made me stop feeling like a grandma for gardening, and see that it can be hip to be seen in gardening gloves and to love your plants.
For those of us that are attention challenged, it has a ton of pictures and drawings, keeping it interesting. It is packed full of information, ideas, and crafts.
I especially love the templates in the back of the book. I have already made the seed packets, a few of my friends wanted to share some of my heirloom seeds. I was able to send the seeds in cool homemade packets. I will be posting about it sometime soon.
I pledge to litter some seeds about!