home to the tallest Dawn Redwood tree in Manhattan - a true testament to the fact that the actions of a few dedicated individuals really can change things for the better. Since Liz’s pioneering garden, GG and the building of community gardens has spread around the world. Richard Reynold’s guerrillagardening.org is a great site to learn more and connect with other gardeners throughout the UK. But there’s another project - again pioneered in America - which is highly relevant to Doncaster. Ron Finley is from South Central, Los Angeles, an area blighted by economic decline and a bad rep. Think Donny with guns. Ron described the situation perfectly in a
healthy food, if every time you walk out your door you see the ill effects that the present food system has on your neighborhood? … So I figured that the problem is the solution. Food is the problem and food is the solution.” Despite being a semi-rural area where people are surrounded by arable land, Doncaster too is a ‘food desert’ where it is often easier to get pizza and kebabs than it is to get potatoes and kale. So what’s the answer? “I planted a food forest in front of my house. It was on a strip of land that we call a parkway. It’s 150 feet by 10 feet. Thing is, it’s owned by the city. But you have to maintain it. … So me
2013 TED Talk:
and my group, LA Green Grounds, we
“I live in a food desert, South Central,
my food forest - fruit trees, you know,
Los Angeles, home of the drive-thru and the drive-by. Funny thing is, the drive-thrus are killing more people than the drive-bys. People are dying from curable diseases in South Central, Los Angeles … I got tired of seeing this happening. And I was wondering, how would you feel if you had no access to Photography ©PermaFuture, 2013
got together and we started planting the whole nine, vegetables ... And the garden, it was beautiful. And then somebody complained. The city came down on me, and basically gave me a citation saying that I had to remove my garden ... And I’m like, “Come on, really? A warrant for
planting food on a piece of land that you could care less about?” ... LA Times got a hold of it. Steve Lopez did a story on it and talked to the councilman, and one of the Green Grounds members put up a petition on Change.org, and with 900 signatures, we were a success. We had a victory on our hands.... LA leads the United States in vacant lots that the city actually owns. They own 26 square miles of vacant lots. That’s 20 Central Parks. That’s enough space to plant 725 million tomato plants. Why in the hell would they not okay this? Growing one plant will give you 1,000, 10,000 seeds, when one dollar’s worth of green beans will give you 75 dollars’ worth of produce. It’s my gospel, when I’m telling people: grow your own food. Growing your own food is like printing your own money. See, I’m an artist. Gardening is my graffiti. I grow my art. Just like a graffiti artist, where they beautify walls, me, I beautify lawns, parkways. I use the garden, the soil, like it’s a piece of cloth, and the plants and the trees, that’s my embellishment for that cloth.
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