At least twice everyday for the last 10 years I have walked by the LIC Community Garden lovingly tended to and I used to think how beautiful!  This largely industrial area with light manufacturing businesses, warehouses and auto-body shops had welcomed a garden carved out of little more than an alley.  For a very modest fee of $20 you too could have access to plant and enjoy all year.  Recently, however, I've changed my tune.

While a flower garden at first seemed like a great idea because the area was a bit gray and needed the splash of color provided by the reds, greens, purples and pinks, it now seems like a luxury we cannot afford.  I think I just heard hearts plummeting all around me.  Humor me and think about it.  Isn't it possible that the price of oil, unwise investment in corn for ethanol, rapidly rising food prices and the federal government's lack of a sound energy policy can make you change your mind about the use of land for a community flower garden?

As I walked past the garden on my way home from work one day this week and with my mind needing a problem to solve I came up with a draft business plan.  I realized that with a farmer's market one block away, a neighborhood full of young children and the price of foreign grown food quickly inching upward this garden could easily serve a stronger and more useful community purpose.  Wouldn't it be wiser to use the majority of this garden to plant seeds that yield food?  The organizers of the garden working in conjunction with the local Public School could hold classes and summer workshops for the school children and others from the neighborhood.  The children could learn how to plant and grow seeds that produce the fruits and vegetables they often see at their dinner table and hopefully school cafeteria.  The food could be sold at the local farmers market held July though November and the proceeds could go back to the garden to help pay for the seeds, etc.  This would also be an opportunity for the school to abandon the unhealthy practice of bake sales to raise PTA funds substituting a fall youth market instead.  I don't know about you, but I would much sooner purchase a bunch of carrots from a young, rosy cheeked farmer than his/her mom whose pushing store bought cupcakes.  Sorry mom!

It is really time that instead of thinking about developing technology to resolve our problems that we start changing the way we live.  One way to do that is to turn flower gardens into food gardens or in other words to think of "food and not lawns."  America is full of smart people who have been on a 7-year vacation.   We need to start thinking for ourselves again.  

If these ideas have left you wanting to read more I recommend starting with the following:

Food Not Lawns by Heather C. Flores and New Urbanism and The Pratt Center for Community Development and Edible Estates