Table Of ContentL
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r “A very important
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contribution to the food world.”
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anita stewart
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“Vibrant and aliVe. . .
a spirited journey to meet those who are rediscovering the
economic, social, and healing power of growing food in the city.”
Michael ableMan, author of Fields of Plenty
“infectious and MotiVating. . .
A manifesto on how city dwellers can be more engaged.”
gayla trail, author of Grow Great Grub
C
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City farmer celebrates the new ways that urban dwellers across t
y
North America are reimagining cities as places of food produc-
f
tion. From homeowners planting their front yards with vegetables
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to guerrilla gardeners scattering seeds in neglected urban corners, r
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gardening guru Lorraine Johnson chronicles the increasing popularity
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of innovative urban food growing. r
n e J o h nson
lorraine johnson is the author of eight previous books, includ- Lor r a i
ing 100 Easy-to-Grow Native Plants. A frequent speaker at conferences
and garden shows across the United States and Canada, she lives in
Toronto, where she shares her backyard with three chickens.
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$19.95
d&m publishers inc.
Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley
www.greystonebooks.com
Cover design by Naomi MacDougall
City illustration © csa Snapstock Illustration/Veer
Printed and bound in Canada
Printed on forest-friendly paper
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West
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C i t y f a r m er
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A d v e n t u r es i n
u r b A n food gr ow i ng
d&m publishers inc.
Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley
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A d v e n t u r es i n
u r b A n food gr ow i ng
Lor r a i n e J o hnson
d&m publishers inc.
Vancouver/Toronto/Berkeley
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For Michael Levenston, Canada’s unofficial
minister of urban agriculture for more than thirty years
· · · · ·
Copyright © 2010 by Lorraine Johnson
First U.S. edition 2011
10 11 12 13 14 5 4 3 2 1
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without
the prior written consent of the publisher or a license from The
Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency (Access Copyright). For a copyright
license, visit www.accesscopyright.ca or call toll free to 1-800-893-5777.
Greystone Books
An imprint of D&M Publishers Inc.
2323 Quebec Street, Suite 201
Vancouver bc Canada v5t 4s7
www.greystonebooks.com
Cataloging data available from Library and Archives Canada
isbn 978-1-55365-519-0 (pbk.)
isbn 978-1-55365-628-9 (ebook)
Editing by Susan Folkins
Cover and text design by Naomi MacDougall
Cover city illustration © csa Snapstock Illustration/Veer
Printed and bound in Canada by Friesens
Text printed on acid-free, fsc-certified paper that is forest friendly
(100% post-consumer recycled paper) and has been processed chlorine free
Distributed in the U.S. by Publishers Group West
We gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Canada Council
for the Arts, the British Columbia Arts Council, the Province of British
Columbia through the Book Publishing Tax Credit, and the Government of Canada
through the Canada Book Fund for our publishing activities.
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Contents
· · ·
introduction: Bringing Dinner Home · 1
1 Sowing the City, Reaping the Benefits · 9
2 Embracing a Food-growing Ethic · 31
3 Productive Possibility · 47
4 Harvesting Space · 67
5 Rethinking Convention: Finding Soil and Sites · 91
6 Lessons of Care: Food Gardens as Nurturing Hubs · 119
7 People Power: Growing Together in Community Gardens · 131
8 Rogues on a Mission: Guerrilla Gardening and Foraging · 155
9 What the Cluck?: Backyard Chickens · 179
10 The Edible City · 203
epilogue: Adventures in Possibility · 215
resources
A Selected List of Urban Farms and
Edible Demonstration Gardens · 221
A Selected List of Urban Agriculture
and Food-related Organizations · 229
A Selected List of Books · 233
acknowledgments · 243
index · 245
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Introduction
• • •
bringing dinner Home
my nephew christopher, ten at the time, had never seen a
real live pea. Or even a recently alive pea. The weird pod-
thing I had in my hand, shelling as we talked, completely mystified
him. “What’s that?” he finally asked, with a bit of my-aunt-always-
does-strange-stuff in his voice. “It’s a pea!” I exclaimed, not
hiding my surprise. (As a non-parent, I didn’t get the memo about
1
feigning nonchalance at questions that shock.) He chewed over my
answer for a long time, and then said, full of satisfaction, “Ahh,
peas in a pod—now I get it.”
The phrase may have finally made sense to him, but the les-
son was incomplete without a taste. “Would you like to try one?” I
offered. “Umm, I don’t like peas,” he mumbled, echoing ten-year-
old boys everywhere. “Oh come on, just try it,” I said. And so he
popped it in his mouth to humor his odd aunt, and as he munched,
his face changed from anticipatory yuck to something approaching
pleasure. “It’s sweet, not mushy,” he enthused, “not like canned
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introduction
peas.” I offered him another. Pretty soon we were shelling at a
great rate, stuffing little peas in our faces, talking with our mouths
full. It felt like a minor triumph, winning this pea convert through
direct contact with something so recently attached to a stem.
Our day together had been full of such revelations. My nephew
Christopher and niece Deanna were visiting me in Toronto, from
their home in small-town Michigan. (“We live near Hell,” the
kids love to say, delighting in the license to swear that the name
of a neighboring town provides.) Their oak-wooded community,
bordering a small lake, is much like middle-class small towns
throughout North America. It has large but not ostentatious
homes with long driveways (some containing boats or snowmo-
biles). And almost every home has an acre-sized lawn with an
automatic sprinkler system, a flower bed tight to the wall, and
shrubs and trees dotted along the property lines.
When they come to see me in Toronto, my niece and nephew
must feel that they’ve come not just to another country but to
another planet. Everything about the big city delights, dazzles, and
intrigues them. I usually agonize over how to amuse my young rel-
atives (in fear of being boring and too adult), then quickly calm
down when I realize that just exploring the city is amusement
2
enough for two curious and engaged kids. We can sit for an hour
in the local Coffee Time and they’ll be happy with the parade of
urban surprises; it was the first place they saw a man dressed as a
woman.
For this visit, though, we decided to venture farther down the
road with a streetcar ride (their first) to Kensington Market—a
chaotic and historic outpost of multicultural urban liveliness in
the center of the city, where ramshackle buildings house vegetable
stands, fish shops, butchers, dry goods suppliers, and second-
hand clothing stores. My niece and nephew’s eyes got wider and
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Bringing Dinner Home
wider as we passed a derelict parked car—a Kensington Market
landmark—that the group Streets Are For People had turned into
a public art piece, planting the hood with herbs, the trunk with
trees, and the open roof with lawn grass. The bumper sticker read
“Parks not Parking” and the graffiti on the doors “Community
Vehicular Reclamation Project.” I doubt that the kids had ever seen
such a creative compost bin—the inside of a car.
We wove through sidewalks crowded with tattooed, pierced
punks and old market shopkeepers barking directions at deliv-
ery truck drivers. We dodged stalls overflowing with produce. We
ducked under dried fish hanging from rafters. We walked around
jumbled café chairs with buskers holding court. And with each
moment of increasing stimulation, my niece and nephew drank
it all in, the random and unpredictable aliveness of it all. “They’re
selling food on the sidewalk!” said my nephew with disbelief, no
doubt thinking of trips to the grocery store where everything edi-
ble comes securely wrapped in plastic.
This was food as they’d never seen it before. This was close
contact. Peas in a pod.
when exactly did we become so removed from the source of
3
our sustenance, a disconnect that reached an extreme expression
in my nephew’s bollixed reaction to fresh peas? For my generation
(a demographic cohort that entered the world in the 1960s, shaped
and solidified our habits and patterns in the ’70s, and stumbled
into independence in the ’80s), I blame the astronauts. Okay,
maybe not each one personally, but the whole space program.
This was the miraculous, mind-bending, perspective-exploding,
boundary-busting leap into the unknown that not only brought us
a new conception of our planet and our place, but also launched
Tang into popularity. Perhaps you remember the stuff? It was the
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