Column If you commit to “grow food not lawns,” you’re not just committing to better food security, you’re committing to a better community.

“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” ― Masanobu Fukuoka, The One-Straw Revolution

I’ve been thinking about space lately; how much of it we have, what we use it for. In particular I have been thinking about all the space that goes unused, both inside and out. In a world where our numbers are growing, and our space is diminishing this isn’t just something we should think about, it’s something we have to think about.

When it comes to food, my mind turns to lawns. Maybe it’s because I live in a small apartment, with only enough space for a handful of balcony plants, leaving me dreaming of raised beds and the chance to build a trellis to grow runner beans, but whenever I see a bright green lawn, I see wasted space (not to mention the wasted water). A space that hasn’t had the chance to thrive.

There’s a growing movement of people who think the same. Founded in 1999, the Food Not Lawns, also referred to as Grow Food Not Lawns, movement grew out of the Food Not Bombs movement. The idea behind it all being that we could maximize on space and replace urban lawns with urban farms, in turn providing the surrounding community with better food security.

When it comes to growing food, often we are intimidated by the space issue; we’re intimidated by the fact that we don’t have enough. But every small act counts. I was reminded of this while visiting a friend’s home in Boulder, Colorado. It was a simple town house, facing a big street on one side and a large parking lot on the backside. There was no spacious garden, or expansive lawn. But there was a little patch of concrete out back, and my friend had taken it upon himself to get rid of the lifeless concrete and replace it with dirt instead. He was restoring the area with life.

“I’ve got tomato plants ready to put in,” he said. “Then I am going to put a sign outside that says “free” and the homeless guys can come and eat them.”

I thought about how some might see this gesture as small – tomatoes won’t keep someone fully fed – and yet at the same time, how big the impact would be. Imagine if everyone grew a few vegetables that they offered up to others to eat?

This wasn’t someone with an enormous amount of space to grow food on. But it was someone who knew that he could at least get a few plants going, and that was better than nothing. He would maximize on what he had, and his community would be better for it.

What if we all grew a few plants?

As it turns out, we don’t need to all turn into full-scale farmers, but even just using a little bit of our space for growing food would provide great returns. In the United States, for the 85 million households with a private lawn, the average lawn size is about one-fifth of an acre. That amount of space can actually provide a fair amount of food, and imagine if you got only a handful of lawns production more food. If we grow food not lawns, the results can be bountiful. In Milwaukee, a 3-acre farm manages to feed 10,000 people a year. Some people say you can grow most of what you need on as little as one-tenth of an acre.

So why do we choose lawns instead of food? Because gardening takes time. Because Western culture has instructed us that a perfectly manicured green lawn is the sign of success. But in an era where we are more and more threatened by things like drought, rethinking our outdoor spaces and how we put them to use is of the utmost importance.

Taking part in the Food Not Lawns movement is not just about gardening or food; it’s about building communities and being a part of the solution instead of the problem. Quite frankly, I think we would all be better off if we lived in a world of gardens instead of lawns. Have a little green space? Plant something. Turn a dull lawn into a lush garden, where you can pick your own produce, smell glorious flowers, and bring back a little wildlife. It’s all about cultivating something, both in the ground and within ourselves and our communities.

Related on EcoSalon

5 Tips to Start Your Own Urban Garden

17 Clever Repurposed Garden Planters to Add More Plants to Your Space

Growing Your Own: Foodie Underground

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Curandera Vision

The post What If We Committed to Grow Food, Not Lawns? Foodie Underground appeared first on EcoSalon.

For millions of Americans who find themselves in food deserts, getting their daily apple is tougher than usual.

The USDA defines a food desert as an impoverished region of the country where thousands of people can’t regularly access healthy, affordable, and organic foods due to lack of grocery stores, farmers’ markets, and personal transportation. And the constant availability of fast food restaurants in these food deserts certainly doesn’t help America’s rampant obesity epidemic.

U.S. cities lacking in fresh fruits and veggies aren’t limited to the big city expanses of Los Angeles, Oakland, Detroit, or Chicago; in fact many small towns in the heart of the nation suffer just as much from lack of fresh greens.

Here are some big ideas for providing resources to help food desert dwellers around the nation enjoy the taste and benefits of farm-fresh produce.

1. 100 Yards of Harvest After having to sack its football program due to low enrollment, Paul Quinn College, a small liberal arts college near Dallas, Texas, transformed their vestigial football field into a huge farm. Today, staff and students (and in collaboration with PepsiCo Inc.) at Paul Quinn cultivate the WE Over ME Farm, growing collard greens, heirloom tomatoes, swiss chard, mustard greens, and more. The cornucopia of food harvested from the farm is then distributed to local charities, grocery stores, community markets in surrounding Dallas, and the college students, who get to enjoy the fruits of their hard work.

2. Mobile Markets  Some 550,000 Detroit residents suffer from an imbalance of healthy food options  — grocery stores are few and far between compared to fast food restaurants. Mobile food co-ops that bring the farm to the city, like Detroit’s Peaches & Greens, go the extra mile in ensuring people get the foods they need at affordable prices. And in California’s rural valleys, California’s Second Harvest Food Bank exists to travel 63 sites throughout San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

3. Urban Aggies It’s not “Green Acres” on 5th Avenue, but it’s close. Urban farming initiatives are on the rise, educating and empowering big-city communities to grow their own produce. City Slicker Farms of West Oakland organizes and encourages folks like Abeni Ramsey to start up independent urban farming enterprises of their own. And in Chicago’s South Side, Iron Street Farm provides seven acres of farmland to the community. – J. Scott Donahue

This article appears courtesy of Sierra Magazine

Related on EcoSalon

How To Save Money and Support The Sharing Economy During The Holidays
5 Reasons To Kick Your Shrimp Recipes To The Curb
11 Food Trucks That Would Make a Killing: Foodie Underground

Image: urbanists

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Windowfarms founder, Britta Riley, is turning a complex question, ‘How can city dwellers can grow their own food,’ into a social enterprise. With help of more than 12,000 individuals, Windowfarms has perfected the vertical farming for everyone to grow a farm in their window.

It’s easy to dream about growing your own food.  Anyone who has had fresh local produce likely can relate to the superior quality, both in taste and nutrition. What’s more appealing than growing that food yourself?  How can people caught up in the digital age of the Internet and instant gratification get back to nature? (And what if, like me, you have a black thumb?)  Vertical farming and automated, hydroponic gardens that simply hang in your window fuel the simplicity of the revolutionary product. Meet the Windowfarm.

The ingenious business model evolved out of founder Britta Riley’s itch for more green space while living in her tiny fifth-floor walkup in Brooklyn. She started by rounding up some plastic water bottles and plumbing supplies to create a jerry-rigged vertical hydroponic garden. After uploading the design onto a community web platform, she asked members to build and improve on the initial design.

After months of tinkering, Riley patented the perfected (stylish) design of the Windowfarm, consisting of a wire frame that fits four light grey units standing in a column complete with a quiet pump for circulating nutrient-filled water to the planters.  The water gentle trickles down throughout the soil-less medium of clay pellets and coir (coconut husks), depositing the unused water back into the base.

Delivering year-round produce like – kale, chives, salad greens, cilantro, strawberries, peppers and a dozen more options—the Windowfarm takes advantage of sunlight from your window and your home’s indoor climate control.  You can garnish your chicken with fresh rosemary or make pesto from your window-grown basil. Yum.

One kit doesn’t produce enough food to feed a family (or really even one person), but the Windowfarm isn’t about sustaining yourself only on what you produce. It’s about the inherent education, patience and the shear satisfaction of eating something you grew. The indoor vertical farming system is a simple solution to a complex problem, and every citydweller-seeking-nature’s dream come true.  I’d say, welcome to the future of food, where space (and time) might not be an issue.

Don’t miss Windowfarm’s display at the American Museum of Natural History’s “Our Global Kitchen” exhibit going on now through August 11.

images: Windowfarms

The post Vertical Farming For The Urbanites Soul: Meet the Windowfarm appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnAdventures in urban composting.

“The worm compost bin is getting delivered next week, we can finally get the worms going again!”

“Finally!”

This is what we call a romantic Foodie Underground conversation.

Let me take a few steps back. No wait, let me start from the beginning.

As an only child that lived in the country, I spent a lot of time outside plotting my own adventures. One of my favorite summer activities was to dig through the dirt in the garden and collect earthworms in recycled yogurt containers that my mother used to plant seedlings. I would put a few in the yogurt container, and walk around with them, taking great care to look after my little soil dwellers. I called it worm babysitting. Yeah, country girl, I know.

Fast forward a couple of decades.

Earlier this year I moved into a small, no, wait… tiny apartment in a huge city (it’s Paris in case you were wondering). Funny how in some of the world’s most expansive metropolises the housing is quite the opposite. It has been an adventure in accommodating my favorite activities to fit the space. Cooking and baking is a careful dance between slicing, chopping and mixing and doing dishes in between so as to keep enough counter space open. Dinner parties are capped at six people, because more would be hard to fit around the table. But somehow, with enough effort and desire, it all works.

It was into this space that the worms would work and the resulting compost would be put to good use.

If you get excited about food, it’s easy to get excited about growing it yourself, no matter where you live. This is not backyard homesteading with raised beds and a chicken coop, this is working around obstacles like space and creating an urban sanctuary that includes some greenery and fresh herbs to cook with. I’ll be damned if I let minimal square footage get in the way of gardening and cooking.

The worms had been on hiatus and were waiting for a new home, hence the need for a new bin. When the first round of vermicompost was ready, we pulled terracotta planters into the tiny dining room and sat on the floor, mixing compost and fresh dirt and replanted basil, mint, parsley and chives. I prepped two containers for kale seeds that would be arriving the following week (kale is, after all, quite difficult to find in Paris).

There is something about putting your hands in the dirt. There is something even better about putting your hands in compost. Call me a dirty hippie – you won’t be the first – but to be able to create your own fertilizer to grow plants from your own food waste is in fact an incredible thing. Don’t believe me? Try it.

The compost bins sit under the kitchen sink. When you open up the top one, you can feel the warmth that the breakdown of organic material (or in our case, 97 percent coffee grounds) generates. A reminder that you don’t need to live in the country to take part in the natural cycle of things.

The kale arrived and it was planted immediately; we’ll see which one of the two varieties do best. Some baby basil and cilantro seeds are doing well in the kitchen, and all of the terracotta pots hang off of the window guard rail, creating our own little Hanging Gardens of Babylon, four floors up in the Parisian courtyard.

It’s not just about eating good food, it’s about being part of the process, no matter where you are. It’s not a farm, or a raised bed with seven varieties of heirloom tomatoes, but it’s something; a mini-contribution to being a part of growing what we eat. To top it all off, next week a friend is passing on a kombucha baby. Compost, kale and kombucha… and you thought Paris was only for croissants and fromage.

At least you know that those tiny six-person dinner parties will consist of kale appetizers and kombucha cocktails, and we’ll be composting the leftovers of course. I promise not to show off the worms.

This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Images: Anna Brones

The post Foodie Underground: Growing Your Own appeared first on EcoSalon.

image: Percita

Interest in urban farming has generated creative uses of space, with many rooftops turning into skyscraping gardens. And another trend is filling in green building tops: sod roofs.

While a food-producing rooftop’s payoff is pretty obvious (and delicious!), what are the benefits to one covered in grass, shrubs and flowers? Quite a few, according to Chelsea Green. “The temperature moderating effect caused by 5 to 6 inches of earth on the roof helps keep a house cooler in summer and warmer in winter, especially in extreme climates; 14 inches of decomposing straw will have the same effect while adding some insulation for a while. Such roofs are therefore a prime choice for cold-climate houses built with a high degree of insulation for maximum comfort.” There’s also the benefit of wind and noise protection: “A city house built with bales and covered with an organic roof will become a peaceful retreat at any time of day, even in areas with dense traffic. On particularly windy sites, such a roof anchors the house to the ground physically as well as visually.”

image: roger 4336

And while an edible rooftop or urban garden is more expensive and requires constant maintenance, a sod-covered roof can be particularly affordable and self-regulating. It can also extend the life of the roof and help mitigate storm runoff damage.

Sod roofs attract birds, who can help to keep pests away and, of course, bring you many moments of beautiful contemplation. Green rooftops can clean the air, which benefits you and your neighbors.

image: pnwra

Almost 10 percent of all of Germany’s rooftops are green and regulations in Tokyo, Toronto and Switzerland require specific sized roofs to be green. And here in the U.S., reports World Changing, Chicago has begun planning and installing more than 200 green roofs throughout the city.

Need some sod rooftop ideas? Here are a few favorites:

From Malung Hembygdsgård in Sweden.  

Norway has quite a few.

This site is full of gorgeous sod rooftops!

Apartment Therapy loves green roofs.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

The post Redefining Urban Gardens: Greening Roofs with Sod appeared first on EcoSalon.

Seven creative and inexpensive ways to improve your garden.

Whether you dapple with a few indoor plants, garden on the patio with containers or have a full-fledged backyard mini-farm, you’re probably looking for creative ways to save money, time and resources. Luckily for you, incorporating recycled and reused materials can actually make your gardening projects cheaper, easier and less time consuming – not to mention far less wasteful! Last year, we gave you seven reused items to boost your garden. This year, we rounded up seven more.

Reuse Germination

If you’re starting plants from seeds this year, don’t waste your hard-earned cash on tiny planters from the garden center. Save a few bucks – and get a little more use out of your throw-aways – by making your own seed-starters from recycled materials!

To make your own biodegradable mini-planter (that’s right, no transplanting!), you will need scissors and a toilet paper or paper towel roll.

How to make it:

1. Using scissors, cut six to eight small slits in the end of your toilet paper roll (if using a paper towel roll, cut the roll into three pieces before beginning this step).

2. Fold the strips down so they overlap.

3. Fill carefully with wet soil, and set in a baking sheet.

4. Plant one seed per roll. After germination, just plant the whole thing in your garden!

If you don’t mind transplanting your seedlings, you can use all kinds of recyclables for germination: Takeout containers, plastic cups, soda bottles and shoe boxes – just to name a few.

Unfortunately, most takeout containers – including mixed-material takeout cups and foam clam shells – are notoriously difficult to recycle. So, if you have a few boxes, cups and clam shells left over from eating out, why not reuse them as planters to boost your gardening projects?

Take Out Container Planters

Just wash out the container, fill with wet soil and plant your seedling as usual.

For best results, stick with plants that require little root space, such as single herb plants or succulents like cacti and aloe.

Not sure how planting in takeout boxes will match your garden decor? Think creatively and opt for decorative containers, such as Chinese takeout boxes and colorful to-go cups, to add a whimsical touch to your garden display – whether it’s in your backyard or your living room.

Popsicle Stick Garden Markers

If the kids are starting to chow down on ice pops for the summer, why not save those sticks for reuse in your garden?

To use your throw-aways to make customized markers for your garden or seedlings, you’ll need Popsicle sticks, a permanent marker and a reusable cloth.
How to make it:
1. Apply a few drops of rubbing alcohol or a solution of warm water and sea salt to the ends of your ice pop sticks. Use the reusable cloth to rub off any remaining stickiness.

2. Let the sticks dry in the sun for at least an hour.

3. Label your sticks with permanent marker, and use them to mark crops in your herb garden or veggie plot.

If you’re feeling ambitious, you can also make your own customized garden markers from old milk jugs using this simple tutorial from TLC.

Plastic Bottle Irrigation

Remembering to water your container veggies and potted flowers can be tough. But you could save loads of time and water by setting up a self-irrigation system in your container plants.

Sounds tricky, right? It actually couldn’t be simpler. All you’ll need is scissors, a plastic bottle, a hand shovel and about five minutes to get the job done.

How to make it:
1. Using scissors, carefully cut the bottom out of your plastic bottle. Remove bottle cap and set aside for recycling.

2. Use a hand shovel to dig a 6-inch-deep hole in the potted plant of your choice, as far away from the plant as possible to avoid damaging roots.

3. Place your plastic bottle in the hole, bottleneck end down. Use your hands to pack soil around the bottle so it stands upright.

4. Fill the bottle with water as needed, and watch it slowly seep into the soil – saving you time and nurturing your thirsty plants.

For a more advanced self-watering container, check out this tutorial from the University of Maryland Extension.

Light Bulb Terrariums

Not sure what to do with all those old incandescent light bulbs? Sure, you can recycle them. But why not find a clever way to reuse them first?

Once the electrical components are removed, light bulbs make perfect homes for air plants and water-saving succulents.

If you’re a seasoned crafter and have hollowed out a light bulb before, this project will be a walk in the park. But if you’ve never tinkered with a light bulb, consult a tutorial, like these from Instructables and Apartment Therapy, before getting started.

Once your bulb is cleaned out, all you’ll need is some succulent potting soil and small potting pebbles (and your plants, of course!).

How to make it:
1. Add a layer of potting pebbles to your light bulb as a foundation.

2. Add a layer of succulent potting soil, along with decorative moss if desired.

3. Gently place your succulent inside the bulb. Succulents don’t need much water. For best results, allow the soil to dry out a bit before watering.

Bucket Gardening

If you live in an apartment or don’t have a yard,container gardening is a great small-space solution for growing your own produce at home.

Garden retailers offer vast displays of jumbo terra cotta pots, plastic planters and wooden boxes – often priced at $50 or more. But why spend more when a recycled option could actually yield better results?

Five gallons of soil is optimal for most container veggies, including large plants like tomatoes, eggplant and squash. Larger containers tend to require more water, while smaller containers won’t provide enough root space.

Since they’re the perfect size, why not break out all those old 5-gallon buckets from pet food and potting soil and reuse them as planters for your container garden?

Just remember to wash each container well before filling with soil. Also, since you want to grow healthy food, avoid choosing containers that were used to hold toxic substances – even after they have been washed.

For best results, cut at least four 1/4-inch holes at the bottom of your buckets for draining excess water.

Wine Bottle Edging

Looking to add a touch of pizzazz to your garden or backyard landscaping? Rescue a few wine and beer bottles from your recycling bin to assemble a playful border that’s sure to turn heads.

Use this handy tutorial from ReadyMade or this video how-to from A Gardener’s Notebook to transform your recyclable glass into a piece of reuse art that’s perfect for the garden.

In the interest of full disclosure, you’ll need more than a few bottles for this.

So, if you don’t think your drinking habits can keep up, ask local restaurants, taverns and wineries if you can pick up some of their leftover bottles on a weekly basis until you’ve gathered enough to complete the project. Most will be happy to oblige.

-By Mary Mazzoni

More from Earth911:

PHOTOS: Rad Reused Planter Ideas

8 Things You Probably Aren’t Doing in Your Garden

PHOTOS: Stylish Recycled Decor for the Backyard

Images: girlingearstudio, MeganEHansen, jstuppy, sa_ku_ra, iEEEj, rfarmer, Tobyotter

The post 7 Items You Can Reuse to Improve Your Garden appeared first on EcoSalon.

Terra Plant Pot sends its tree shooting upwards out of a textured rubber volcano.

The natural look is perfected in this earthy cone-shaped planter, which has a tree growing from its apex, with all the messy stuff hidden away under a textured cover.

Made by a 200-year-old Italian, family-run design company called Serralunga, (which still has its own factory in Italy and uses mostly recyclable polypropylene), the Terra Plant Pot’s outside bits are made from reused inner tire tubes – a new material that is 92% recycled – with a steel shell inside. The roots and earth are tidily tucked away inside.

The exterior is textured to make it look like soil, hence the name. Inside out – metal covered with “earth.”

Photos: Serralunga

The post Indoor Eruption: The Terra Plant Pot appeared first on EcoSalon.

A round-up of what we’re reading right now. 

We might be able to grow tropical fruits in urban northern climates after all. And make it look good. Say hello to bananas in Paris. [Via GOOD]

You can accomplish a lot simply by being more optimistic. [Via Inc.]

Summer camp isn’t all kayaking and making lanyards. From culinary arts to military training, check out these interesting camps around the world. [Via TakePart]

Another reason to take time to unplug: exposure to dim light (i.e. your computer and television) at night may lead to depression. [Via CNN]

Ever thought about launching a food truck? First you will need a name. Don’t worry, there’s a generator for that. [Via McSweeney’s]

Americans wash their hair almost twice as much as Europeans in a week. How much is too much? [Via Organic Authority]

Choose your reading list carefully, because your bookshelf can say a lot to a potential partner. [Via How About We]

Image: twicepix

The post Link Love: Urban Bananas, Why You Should Be More Optimistic, and How Unplugging Can Save You From Depression appeared first on EcoSalon.

Wherein Gary and Elaine experiment with the faux-garden. 

Although Gary and Elaine were pleased to be conserving water with their new artificial lawn, they regretted the side effect of it attracting artificial wildlife.

Also check out: Catalogue Living: The World of the People Living In Your Catalogues

Writer Molly Erdman is the creator of Catalog Living, a witty foray to the world of shelter catalogs as told through the fictional lives of characters Gary and Elaine. Each month, Erdman shares with us Gary and Elaine’s take on their sustainable lifestyles. Be sure to check out Catalog Living and Erdman’s book, Decorating Takes (Wicker) Balls.

Image: Anthropologie

The post Catalogue Living Presents…The Faux Eco Gnome appeared first on EcoSalon.

On getting your hands dirty.

Gardening is the purest of human pleasures. -Francis Bacon

No occupation is so delightful to me as the culture of the earth, and no culture comparable to that of the garden. -Thomas Jefferson

The single greatest lesson the garden teaches is that our relationship to the planet need not be zero-sum, and that as long as the sun still shines and people still can plan and plant, think and do, we can, if we bother to try, find ways to provide for ourselves without diminishing the world. -Michael Pollan

What is a weed? A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

It was such a pleasure to sink one’s hands into the warm earth, to feel at one’s fingertips the possibilities of the new season. -Kate Morton

How fair is a garden amid the trials and passions of existence. -Benjamin Disraeli

A society grows great when old men plant trees whose shade they know they shall never sit in. -Greek Proverb

Ol’ man Simon, planted a diamond. Grew hisself a garden the likes of none. Sprouts all growin’ comin’ up glowin’ Fruit of jewels all shinin’ in the sun. Colors of the rainbow. See the sun and the rain grow sapphires and rubies on ivory vines, Grapes of jade, just ripenin’ in the shade, just ready for the squeezin’ into green jade wine. -Shel Silverstein

I have never had so many good ideas day after day as when I worked in the garden. -John Erskine

Regardless of geographical region or culture gardening is perhaps the most common and shared experience of Nature. -S. Kelley Harrell

There are no gardening mistakes, only experiments. -Janet Kilburn Phillips

If you wish to make anything grow, you must understand it, and understand it in a very real sense. “Green fingers” are a fact, and a mystery only to the unpracticed. But green fingers are the extensions of a verdant heart. -Russell Page

Your first job is to prepare the soil. The best tool for this is your neighbor’s motorized garden tiller. If your neighbor does not own a garden tiller, suggest that he buy one. -Dave Barry

My garden is my most beautiful masterpiece. -Claude Monet

Kiss of the sun for pardon. Song of the birds for mirth. You’re closer to God’s heart in a garden than any place else on earth. -Dorothy Frances Gurney

Earth laughs in flowers. -Ralph Waldo Emerson

Gardening requires lots of water, most of it in the form of perspiration. -Lou Erickson

No ray of sunlight is ever lost, but the green it wakes into existence needs time to sprout, and it is not always granted to the sower to live to see the harvest. All work that is worth anything is done in faith. -Albert Schweitzer

The greatest fine art of the future will be the making of a comfortable living from a small piece of land. -Abraham Lincoln

Bread feeds the body, indeed, but flowers feed also the soul. -The Koran

When the world wearies and society fails to satisfy, there is always the garden. -Minnie Aumonier 

The love of gardening is a seed once sown that never dies. -Gertrude Jekyll

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating. -Wendell Berry

Flowers always make people better, happier, and more helpful: they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul. -Luther Burbank

It didn’t occur to me that… that gardening, like music, could demand practice, patience, a willingness to make mistakes. -Amy Stewart

The garden, historically, is the place where all the senses are exploited. Not just the eye, but the ear – with water, with birds. And there is texture, too, in plants you long to touch. -William Howard Adams

A garden should make you feel you’ve entered privileged space – a place not just set apart but reverberant – and it seems to me that, to achieve this, the gardener must put some kind of twist on the existing landscape, turn its prose into something nearer poetry. -Michael Pollan

Gardening simply does not allow one to be mentally old, because too many hopes and dreams are yet to be realized. -Allan Armitage

Gardening is akin to writing stories. No experience could have taught me more about grief or flowers, about achieving survival by going, your fingers in the ground, the limit of physical exhaustion. -Eudora Welty

All gardeners know better than other gardeners. -Chinese Proverb

Images: Irene Kightly [2], Jenny Downing

ALSO CHECK OUT:

30 Best Quotes About Nature

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Want to see more quotes? Go here.

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