HOW REVOLUTIONARY ARE WE FEELING at the moment? If not sufficiently so to occupy Wall Street or another downtown, then what about to occupy our front yards (and side yards and backyards and decks and balconies) with food gardens? In this talk at the TED-Dirigo conference (dirigo is the state motto of Maine, where the conference was held, and means, appropriately, “I lead”), Kitchen Gardeners International founder Roger Doiron proposes we help solve the earth’s biggest problem–food supply–one subversive plot at a time. Are you in?
FROM THE WEEKLY PODCAST
how conservation starts in your yard, with doug tallamy
‘NATURE’S BEST HOPE’ is the title of University of Delaware professor Doug Tallamy’s new book, and the subtitle reads like this: “A New Approach to Conservation That Starts in Your Yard.” In other words, you and I are nature’s best hope. Our actions count, and they add up to counteract a fragmented landscape and other challenges to the survival of so many critically important native creatures and the greater environment we all share.
Doug Tallamy’s 2007 book, “Bringing Nature Home,” has been for many of us a wake-up call into the entire subject of the unbreakable link between native plant species and native wildlife, and now with more than a decade of additional research insights, he goes further.
(Stream it below, read the illustrated transcript or subscribe free.)
Great video. You are an urban subversive Margaret. Well done.
Keep on spreading the news.
This was my second season gardening (I’m new to owning dirt and oh so happy for it). Front yard edibles-I broke it slowly to my neighborhood, yams (beautiful leaves), various peppers, snap peas , a few basil and one Mortgage Lifter tomato. Next year, who knows…….
I am so in!
Yes, I’m in!
I don’t understand why so many people go to work all day to pay the grocery bills, when they can stay at home a little more of the time and grow their own groceries.
Thanks for exposure to the video. Our front yard produces asparagus, strawberries,
peas, sweet potatos, radishes, lettuce….all tucked in amongst our perennials, trees and shrubs. It’s quiet subversion, with a giant metal chicken sculpture. My attempt of spreading the word includes always bringing a very “Martha” basket of fresh homegrown veggies, backyard eggs, pickles, etc as a gift to whomever we are visiting. The ogles and awes fill me with pride and everyone just lights up. Sharing something so viscerally good inspires everyone.
Spread the word, and love, and magic, of growing and giving away real food.
Happy Thanksgiving,
Greg
I’m all in. This year the peppers grew in pots in front, with the rest of the veggies in raised beds in both side yards. Each year I appropriate a little more space for veggies. I’m doing it gradually to help make it a less painful to my husband, a/k/a The Lawn Man. Lucky for him it’s too shady for veggies in the back yard. :)
I’m in! (And I’m already a member of Kitchen Gardens International… yay Roger Doiron!)
Please count me in! One garden plot at a time.
Good food for thought.
Yesssss!!!! Thank you for sharing this. BTW: Terrific blog — I have learned so much here.
Happy that you like it, Kristine. A very kind reader of A Way to Garden alerted me to it, so that was the tipoff, which I was grateful for myself.