community gardens

Ask Umbra on healthy soil for urban and suburban farmers and gardeners

A reader wants to know if urban dirt is safe for growing food. Is there lead in that urban farm salad? Umbra investigates and gives some savvy tips.

Saving a community garden in D.C.

I never thought I’d be involved in a fight to save a city park, but here I am. The Marines are progressing with plans to move and expand their facility in Washington, D.C. They are looking at one option of taking over Virginia Avenue Park where I happen to participate in a community garden. A […]

Are you a farmer at heart? Start a ‘Crop Mob’

Carbon sequestration: Crop Mob stalwarts Rob Jones, left, and Chris Rumbley create a hügelkultur bed at “the Bog” co-housing community in Carrboro, N.C., summer 2009. Photo: Tom PhilpottA growing number of young people are finishing college and resisting the pressure to plunk down in a cube behind a computer. Others skip college altogether–given the spiraling […]

Thoughts on The Atlantic’s attack on school gardens

Hands-on education at Berkeley’s Edible Schoolyard. Photo: Edible SchoolyardFor several years starting in the early ’90s, I worked as a remedial math and writing teacher at Austin Community College. At that time–and, for all I know, now–the Texas public education system was mercilessly stratified: high-income districts lavished resources on schools, while their counterparts in low-income […]

No to Obama’s agrichemical industry man, yes to Bed-Stuy Farm

This post marks the launch of “Plate Tectonics,” a new feature that highlights ways that citizen action can move the food system in more sustainable directions. —————– How do we stop this thing?Like many people, I applauded when Michelle Obama broke ground on her organic garden–and jeered when Croplife America, the pesticide industry’s main lobby […]

Fighting for the right to grow food in L.A.

South Central Farm activist Kati Lopez with armload of fresh corn leaves.Black Valley FilmsJust how much trouble can one community garden start? For starters, three years of court proceedings, two eviction notices, one assault charge, countless allegations of corruption, and $16 million worth of fundraising. Even with all the legal crap, the gardeners still had […]

Alice Waters' move into the political sphere is hitting some bumps

I'm hesitant to step in the middle of any debate over Alice Waters' contributions to food policy. But suffice it to say that, as she moves more and more aggressively into politics, she is taking some hits. Ezra Klein sums up the Alice Waters paradox this way:

Good food -- the sort Waters features at her restaurant -- is considered a luxury of the rich rather than a social justice issue. As Waters frequently argues, no one is worse served by our current food policy than a low-income family using food stamps to purchase rotted produce at the marked-up convenience store. Her vision is classically populist: It democratizes the concrete advantages -- health, pleasure, nutrition -- that our current food system gives mainly to the wealthy. But her language is suffused with the values and the symbols of, well, the sort of people who already eat at Waters' restaurant. Thus, in promoting an agenda that benefits poor people with little access to fresh food, Waters tends to communicate mainly with rich people interested in fine dining.

She's been fighting the elitist tag for some time -- as well as a reputation for being a bit, well, overbearing. According to a recent article in Gourmet, she overwhelmed even former President Clinton years ago with her passion over a White House vegetable garden. After receiving a letter from the Clintons suggesting that a front-lawn vegetable garden wasn't in keeping with the formal landscaping of the White House, Waters couldn't restrain herself:

[S]he fired off another letter. Apologizing for "being so insistent," she begged to differ, reminding him that "L'Enfant's original plan for the capital city was inspired by the layout of Versailles, and at Versailles the royal kitchen garden is itself a national monument: historically accurate, productive, and breathtakingly beautiful throughout the year."

It was the end of their correspondence.

Ouch. And the Obamas, while unfailingly polite in person, have so far resisted Waters' attempts to be pulled into their circle of informal advisors. Having nothing to do with Waters, it's well-known that hobnobbing with aesthetes can be dangerous to your electoral prospects and the fact remains that Waters is, at heart, just that.