{"id":1758,"date":"2010-06-16T17:52:18","date_gmt":"2010-06-16T17:52:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/?p=1758"},"modified":"2026-03-23T14:20:55","modified_gmt":"2026-03-23T18:20:55","slug":"if-my-grandmother-can-garden-in-her-town","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/2010\/06\/if-my-grandmother-can-garden-in-her-town\/","title":{"rendered":"If my grandmother can garden in her town&#8230;."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">On a recent trip for my aunt\u2019s wedding, I had a chance to stop by my grandparent\u2019s place in a small town in CT. One of the first things I noticed, being who I am, is that the community open space was either play space or community garden space. My grandmother, of course, has a small plot where she can grow flowers and some veggies and generally keep active in a town where there isn\u2019t much else to do \u2013 especially for seniors (or kids, for that matter).\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think we can overstate how important connections to nature and food are and how community gardens, playgrounds, and open space bring people together and promote health, well-being, happiness, etc.\u00a0 The <a title=\"ACGA Site\" href=\"https:\/\/www.communitygarden.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">American Community Gardening Association<\/a> has summarized the benefits well:<\/p>\n<h2>Benefits of Community Gardens:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Improves the quality of life for people in the garden<\/li>\n<li>Provides a catalyst for neighborhood and community development<\/li>\n<li>Stimulates Social Interaction<\/li>\n<li>Encourages Self-Reliance<\/li>\n<li>Beautifies Neighborhoods<\/li>\n<li>Produces Nutritious Food<\/li>\n<li>Reduces Family Food Budgets<\/li>\n<li>Conserves Resources<\/li>\n<li>Creates opportunity for recreation, exercise, therapy, and education<\/li>\n<li>Reduces Crime<\/li>\n<li>Preserves Green Space<\/li>\n<li>Creates income opportunities and economic development<\/li>\n<li>Reduces city heat from streets and parking lots<\/li>\n<li>Provides opportunities for intergenerational and cross-cultural connections<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>But, even without space for community gardens (as with most infill, gray-field projects), we can still benefit from creating our own little Edenic plots.\u00a0 A number of urban gardening stories have come across my desk\/mailbox\/computer recently; two that I&#8217;ll pontificate on here.<\/p>\n<p>Wired magazine had an interesting story on creating gardens at various scales \u2013 from balcony to suburban lot. What was key to each of the scales was maximizing productivity (and luring nerds into the green-geek world of botanical names, grafting techniques, soil science, etc. of gardening). One aspect that didn\u2019t escape my attention was the fact that virtually all the scenarios involved keeping animals of one kind or another, which is generally verboten in most of our denser residential and mixed-use zones. Is there tolerance to change this? Maybe step by step: bees, chickens, rabbits, goats\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_1759\" style=\"width: 461px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"http:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/ff_domestic_terraforming3b_f.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1759\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1759\" title=\"Domestic Terraforming Rowhouse Lot\" src=\"http:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/ff_domestic_terraforming3b_f.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"451\" height=\"357\" srcset=\"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/ff_domestic_terraforming3b_f.jpg 1000w, https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/ff_domestic_terraforming3b_f-300x237.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 451px) 100vw, 451px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-1759\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">20&#8242; x 30&#8242; garden plot example from Wired<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Which brings me to a <a title=\"Urban Farming Video\" href=\"http:\/\/vimeo.com\/7673203\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">video<\/a> I came across on an intensive farm created on an abandoned lot in Oakland, CA. In this case, the admitted state of anarchy in the area has allowed the gardener to be left to her own devices \u2013 the cops have better things to do. But, as the example shows, if the garden is technically illegal, doesn\u2019t the fact that it co-exists peaceably, and may even be fostering some community bonds tell us something about our squeamishness regarding farming in urban areas? Many cultures live in and around their food sources. We generally don\u2019t \u2013 our landscapes are aesthetically focused. It\u2019s a shame we haven\u2019t yet integrated the productive values of landscapes (ecologically, socially, nutritionally, economically) with our typically English pleasure garden aesthetic. Again, step by step: corn in the front yard, espaliered trees along fences rather than evergreen hedges, strawberries in our container plantings\u2026..<br \/>\nI\u2019m looking forward to keeping this conversation going during our zoning rewrite process and I\u2019ll be interested to know what our tolerance really is. Can we put our farms where our mouth is?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p class=\"lead\">On a recent trip for my aunt\u2019s wedding, I had a chance to stop by my grandparent\u2019s place in a small town in CT. One of the first things I noticed, being who I am, is that the community open space was either play space or community garden space. My grandmother, of course, has a small plot where she can grow flowers and some veggies and generally keep active in a town where there isn\u2019t much else to do \u2013 especially for seniors (or kids, for that matter).\u00a0 I don&#8217;t think we can overstate how important connections to nature and food are and how community gardens, playgrounds, and open space bring people together and promote health, well-being, happiness, etc.\u00a0 &#8230; <a href=\"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/2010\/06\/if-my-grandmother-can-garden-in-her-town\/\" class=\"read-more\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[105,152,10,36,489],"class_list":["post-1758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-design","tag-farming","tag-gardening","tag-landscape","tag-sustainability","tag-zoning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1758"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11175,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1758\/revisions\/11175"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montgomeryplanning.org\/blog-design\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}