City Bountiful A Century of Community Gardening in America [Paperback]

Since the 1890s, providing places for people to garden has been an inventive strategy to improve American urban conditions. There have been vacant-lot gardens, school gardens, Depression-era relief gardens, victory gardens, and community gardenseach representing a consistent impulse to return to gardening during times of social and economic change. In this critical history of community gardening in America, the most comprehensive review of the greening of urban communities to date, Laura J. Lawson documents the evolution of urban garden programs in the United States. Her vibrant narrative focuses on the values associated with gardening, the ebb and flow of campaigns during times of social and economic crisis, organizational strategies of these primarily volunteer campaigns, and the sustainability of current programs.

Laura J. Lawsonis Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her knowledge of community gardens has developed from academic interest as well as personal experience as coordinator of Berkeley Youth Alternatives' Community Garden Patch.

The social history of American cities would not be complete without a full account of the rise of community open spaces. Lawson does exactly this by providing a compelling and poetic account of the history and making of urban gardens. Combining solid scholarship with engaging images of the gardens and stories of their makers, this book sheds new light on the value of urban open space. More important, it explains why community gardens need to stand alongside city parks as permanent open spaces. Essential reading for community developers and landscape architects as well as anyone who ventures outside, enthusiasm and shovel in hand, to improve their local environment.Mark Francis, author ofUrban Open Space and Village Homes

The definitive history of the past hundred years of America's experience with community gardens. A lsß