Food Not Lawns... How to Turn Your Yard Into a Garden and Your Neighborhood Into a Community

Gardens of gratitude is a community event to plant vegetable gardens all over the Los Angeles Region to inspire people to take out their lawns, plant organic food gardens. Reducing their footprint, water usage, etc. Just like the "victory gardens" of the WWI & WWII the current effort is to inspire people to grow their own food. Yet today there is not a "war effort" to support, nor is the effort being initiated by the national government... personal gardens are no less important.

I just planted my own garden with one of my neighbors in a plot of dirt next to my apartment building last weekend - tomatoes, squash, kale, rasberries, herbs. A true pleasure - brought neighbors together to have a pleasant afternoon - and even inspired some other residents of my building to start a garden of their own on a different part of the property where there are just weeds.

What fun!

From their website: "Everyone can have a garden. Grow herbs in your kitchen, a potted garden on your balcony, a fruit tree in the front yard, or replace your whole lawn with an edible food forest. Growing food can also help you cut your water usage dramatically, very important in our Mediterranean climate. Our resource page is full of guides to help you plan edible estates big and small. We can even help supply volunteer labor and the know how. It is the responsibility of the homeowner to come up with the design and materials for the garden (subsidized gardens are available for low income projects). Help us meet our challenge by signing up your site today!"

If you're in the LA Region (or not) start your own garden next weekend and plant for our collective victory!

If you like to read - I suggest you check out "Food Not Lawns International" a blog connected to the book of the same title as this blog post published by Chelsea Green Publishing.

I like the quote on the Chelsea Green Website for the book :'"Food Not Lawns is radical (rooted), subversive (underground), and seeded throughout with treasures that will sprout into savory, beautiful flowers. Don't just buy this book: Read it. Don't just read this book: Do it. Grow a garden. And let the weeds grow; they're good medicine."—Susun Weed, Wise Woman Herbal Series

S0 - bottom line. Don't bother with the book, just rip out grass and plant a vegetable garden!

Image from Wikipedia commons

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