“Don’t be put off by people who know what is not possible. Do what needs to be done, and check to see if it was impossible only after you are done.” - Paul Hawken

When Times Are Hard, Eat Your Yard!

Posted: July 2nd, 2009 | Author: James Glave | Filed under: Agriculture, Cities, Culdesactivism, Food, top | Tags: , , |

Edible Garden TourI recently spent a few days in Seattle–one of my favorite American cities–and was amazed to discover how many homeowners have planted victory gardens in their front yards. In much of America, the front yard is the place for a few roses, maybe a rhodo or two. But in Seattle, especially the Ballard neighborhood where we stayed, “curb appeal” evidently means raspberries, onions, tomatoes, lettuce, and even the odd chicken or two.

Partly, it’s that the Emerald City is pretty green. But there’s also a city policy at work here. The City encourages residents to plant in the “parking strip”– the generous swath of city-owned property between a sidewalk and the street–and issues guidelines and advice on how to do it right. The city’s Department of Neighborhoods also oversees the P-Patch program, a network of community gardens.

Ballard Edible Garden Tour 2009Ballard Edible Garden Tour 2009

As luck would have it, my visit coincided with the Ballard 2009 Edible Garden Tour, a walking tour of 14 home food gardens and urban micro-farms organized in part by Sustainable Ballard. The tour—its zeitgeisty slogan is “When Times Are Hard, Eat Your Yard”–began in the Ballard P-Patch, a giant community garden that began in 1976.

Here, site coordinator Lindy Sheehan gives us an overview.

The garden also includes Giving Gardens, an area that grows organic, herbs, fruit and veg for area food banks. Here, Sheehan shows us how it works.

Next stop, the permaculture-style urban micro-farm of Ingela Wanerstrand, who keeps chickens and dairy goats, and maintains an ornamental edible garden.

We also met a gentleman with David Conners, who has 18 different apple trees from around the world, espaliered on a belgian fence, which has y-shaped trees. 45 degree angles are optimum for fruit production and growth.

It was an enthusiastic and inspiring crowd of neighbors, all working for the love of fresh, local, and organic food, and having fun at the same time. Go Ballard, and go Seattle! Now, how about it Bowen Island, and Vancouver, where are your edible garden tours?

7 Comments on “When Times Are Hard, Eat Your Yard!”

  1. 1 Kathy said at 4:29 pm on July 3rd, 2009:

    Hey James,

    Nice write up, and nice to meet you and your partner in-person. Sounds like you enjoyed your trip to Seattle.

    Your picture of my front garden makes it look lush and productive, rather than the uncompleted xxxxxx (yeah, I’m a perfectionist sometime). Would you be interested in doing a blog post about Sail Transport Company sometime? This is the sailboat-based CSA that Sustainable Ballard is informally partnered with.

    Thanks.
    Kathy

  2. 2 Matt said at 5:45 am on July 4th, 2009:

    Cool very cool.

    My parents and a few neighbours tried to do it in James Bay, Victoria, BC many years back but they were told “no” by the city. They did manage, however, to sneak in a couple apple trees that as far as I know are still there.

    People passing by like to snag one or two apples when they’re ripe, usually in September. Unfortunately they’ve never quite tasted as sweet as those from the apple tree in the yard. Probably always bitter because they knew they were rejected before birth by the higher authorities.

    Also see these guys for a slightly different version in San Fran:

    http://www.rebargroup.org/projects/parking/index.html

  3. 3 Robert said at 7:46 am on July 5th, 2009:

    Hey James - sounds like a fun bit of garden lust and touring. We’re in the process of ‘reclaiming’ lawn for garden space at our place in North Vancouver.

    Sun is a real challenge, and of course, our front yard has all the light. When I put in 4 fruit trees when we first moved in, one of my neighbours came over to complain, telling me it would attract ‘the bears’. Of course we do have black bears here in North Van, but anyone will let you, they ignore the fine organic fruit on my (small) trees and go, instead, for my neighbour’s garbage.

    It took me a long while, after moving here from Manitoba, to understand what Vancouverites meant when they said the word ‘garden’. Where I come from, that means vegetables. Here, it meant rhodos and roses. That’s changing of course, but I still get amazing surprised looks when people up the street find out I’m growing ‘veg’ in my ‘garden’. (a bit more about my Manitoba gardening here )

    The thing people should remember is that you don’t need heaps of land to do this. We’ve been eating lovely salads since May by stepping out our side-door and ‘trimming’ the 4 garden boxes next to the house. They’re each about 1 foot long by 8 inches wide and we can’t keep up with the amount of lettuce.

    I’ve also started producing another kind of crop. No, that kind. I”m producing a series of podcast on Urban Agriculture with Spring Gillard and David Tracey. You can here it on VanGoGreen. The first is with Ted Cathcart who’s got an amazing ‘victory garden’ on the roof of the Y in downtown Vancouver, and it supplies fresh food weekly to women on the downtown east side.

    As Seattle is showing, this isn’t hard - people love to do it, and my garden is a lot less work than my neighbour’s 18th Green style lawn. Our veg is organic and delicious. And I know exactly where it came from . ;-)

    Robert Ouimet
    North Vancouver

  4. 4 Seattle’s Urban Gardens | Van Go Green said at 7:54 am on July 5th, 2009:

    [...] Writer James Glave has an excellent first hand report on how residents of Seattle and Ballard in Washington State are getting into vegetable gardens, many with the help of their municipal governments The City encourages residents to plant in the “parking strip”– the generous swath of city-owned property between a sidewalk and the street–and issues guidelines and advice on how to do it right. The city’s Department of Neighborhoods also oversees the P-Patch program, a network of community gardens.  (from the article, Eat Your Yard) [...]

  5. 5 Go Garden | Van Go Green said at 5:18 pm on July 5th, 2009:

    [...] Glaves’ recent post When Times are Hard, Eat Your Yard , and a podcast I’m working on with David Tracey, about urban agriculture, have certainly [...]

  6. 6 Julia McCaig said at 1:12 pm on July 6th, 2009:

    Great article. So many good things coming out of these gardens…food for the hungry, empowerment of those able to produce their own produce and dairy products, cooperation from government for allowing use of the parking strip and most of all, a thriving community, sharing it’s resources and spending time with each other.

    This is the first year we’ve had a vegetable garden and we started small, but we’re already eyeing other locations on our property and the adjacent lot for sunny, vegetable bearing areas. It’s enjoyable, relatively inexpensive in terms of other sports and hobbies, and productive in a basic way.

    Now if I could just mend my back after a few too many days of digging and pick axing the soil…

  7. 7 Lindy Sheehan said at 12:13 pm on July 14th, 2009:

    Hi James,

    Thanks again for dropping by and touring our community garden. It was great to meet you!!! Thank you again for your book. I am in the process of reading it. Love the humor!!
    Our Giving Gardens are well underway. We have donated many lbs of beets, collards, chard, peas and more to the Ballard Food Bank so far this year.

    Keep up the good work and have a fabulous summer. Hope to see you again. Drop by anytime you are in Seattle.

    Lindy Sheehan
    Ballard P-Patch Site Coordinator

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