Livininthehood #4 #warongardens

As is usual I find myself wondering many odd things in the course of the day. @JeninCanada wondered how much trouble she'd get into if she turned her front yard into a vegetable garden instead of leaving it as grass. It's a question I've wondered too - not that I have a yard right now, front or back since we live in a rental complex that has shared green space - yet it's something I've wondered in the hypothetical.

Why IS it such a crime to take time and resource consuming lawn and turn it into something more useful, less wasteful and often more visually appealing? Everyone bombards us with instructions to eat better, get healthier, lose weight, feed our kids more fruits and vegetables, avoid pesticides, etc. Government is always telling us that north America is suffering a plague of obesity and poor health.

Then doesn't it make sense to allow people greater access to fresh produce instead of restricting it? To allow people to grow fresh fruits and vegetables in their own yards and to increase the number and availability of community gardens. Especially in less well off neighbourhoods where people often have least access to affordable healthy foods.

I know it's a pet peeve of mine that there isn't a community garden within walking distance of here, and I do still believe that our 'Hood is one that could seriously benefit from having its own community garden if we could find a space for it.

Seems to me that the so called war on garden ( #warongardens) has a lot more to do with power, control and conformity than it has to do with vegetables. Maybe my sense of logic is just skewed, but wouldn't we all be better off if there were more vegetable gardens and less lawn? Like a re-designing of the Victory Garden campaign? Wouldn't we all be better off, and healthier, if more people were allowed to plant up gardens and eat and share their produce? One neighbour has too many tomatoes, so swaps them with another who has a surplus of onions, say. What is wrong with that? OTHER than taking control out of the hands of government and putting it back into the hands of the people? (The people who government is supposed to be working for, FYI.)

Instead apparently there is a war on gardens in many places just now, we won't even mention the chickens ;) Is it any wonder that Guerilla Gardening is taking off in more and more places? There shouldn't be a need for it but there is - as the saying goes, it is often easier to get forgiveness afterwards than to request permission beforehand.

Meanwhile the powers that be continue to tell us to be healthier, while at the same time denying us the opportunity to do it for ourselves. As long as it is about power and control instead of about people and food, there will continue to be a need for guerilla gardeners and for those who dare defy convention and turn their lawn into vegetables. Just a thought.