From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban gardening: nurturing health, hope, and community. This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned. Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, too: in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership. Grafting contemporary experience and concerns onto every historical chapter, Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid past and present, archive and experience, showing how down–to–earth gardeners can reap abundant harvests while fostering mutual aid and political engagement.
"In pre-automotive days, what happened to the excess of horse manure on streets? In Paris, residents used it to fertilize small urban gardens that ended up feeding 2 million residents. Today, urban gardening is again blooming, feeding families and communities around the globe. Author Brown profiles this trend, with examples from the 18th to the 21st centuries, in this informative and entertaining audiobook. Brown is a professor of the history of science, and this audiobook comes across as an informative series of lectures for laypeople. Teri Schnaubelt offers up an accessible and easy-on-the-ears narration. Her conversational tone and even pace make it easy for listeners to follow along.
Brown offers a vision of the transformative potential of gardening and urban life."
