Outrageous Gardens!

…and produce 60-80% of the world’s food supply in Asia and Africa. Yet these same women–who also bear the children, tend the children, haul the water and wood and cook the food they grow–share few if any of the benefits and incentives their male counterparts receive. (more…)

World population, which is currently 6.5 billion, is growing at 76 million annually, with an expected peak at 9.5 billion by 2070.

For the first time, global population estimates this year show that more people live in cities than in rural areas. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations projects that almost all of the population growth between 2000-2030 will be urban.

By 2020, according to the International Resource Centre for Urban Agriculture and Forestry, some 75 percent of the world’s city dwellers will live in developing countries – many of them in poverty. Already in parts of sub-Saharan Africa, according to the UN, almost three-quarters of city residents live in rapidly growing slums. And this isn’t a migration of rural poor to the cities. These are groups impoverished by living conditions within the urban setting which prevents access to basic needs such as clean water, sewers, education and food production or the availability of fresh foods.

This is a scenario which will become more common I feel in days and months ahead. And living in the United States does not mean we are exempt. Residents of inner cities and marginal income areas have suffered from a lack of access to quality fresh foods for decades. It’s just that more of us may become aware of this problem in the months ahead.

One answer to over-crowding in our cities and to the wasted space atop business building, schools, hospitals and yes, parking garages (while we still have them) is to create garden oases.  And one of the quickest and most cost-effective ways to do that is with childrens’ wading pools. Back in the mid-1990’s, Dr. Job Ebenezer was then Director of Environmental Stewardship and Hunger Education for the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Chicago, Illinois. Dr. Job (as I refer to him) initiated an experiment in food growing on the rooftop of the church’s parking garage. Practical, compassionate, inventive and determined, Dr. Job is a true hero in service to his community.

The hope was that the roof top garden would serve as a role model for creative use of urban space throughout the country. Dr. Job proved the feasibility of growing vegetables in plastic wading pools, used tires and feed sacks. Urban gardeners at the ELCA offices in Chicago harvested nearly 1,000 pounds of vegetables from approximately 40 wading pools and a dozen of used tires and feed sacks. Here are his figures from those years: (more…)

We could end starvation on this planet if people learned how to plant beans! Do you know how easy it is to plant beans? 2″ apart, 2″ deep.It’s up to the people! (Jimmy Keyes, The Bronx)

Remember this old maxim, KISS?  Keep It Simple Stupid? Well, Jimmy Keyes understands how critical it is in moving out of hunger if you k.i.s.s. I’ve never met Jimmy Keyes but I like him.  And I found myself in love with most of the folks he knows.

Jimmy Keyes is one of the gardeners introduced to us in the “filmic journey” by Meryl Joseph entitled City Farmers, a deeply moving portrayal of what takes place in gardens of the inner city of New York.  K.I.S.S. are the words I prefer to live by, parent by, garden by, landscape by and promote here on this website. Not because people are inherently stupid (certain Presidents excepted) but because we, in this more technologically advanced society, tend to gravitate towards ideas or concepts or actions that are more complex, costly and difficult to attain. (Did I just define capitalism?) We believe that more is better–even if it isn’t. Which explains to me why so few organizations purporting to be humanitarian and at the same accruing millions of dollars to deal with the growing worldwide hunger issues, haven’t really been able to accomplish long-term changes. (more…)

The Global Oneness Project (www.globalonenessproject.org) amazes me. As they say on their website they’re “traveling the globe interviewing creative and courageous people who base their lives and work on the fundamental understanding that we are all connected and thus bear great responsibility for each other and our shared world.” The GOP (yes, that’s its acronym) collects all these inspiring and educational stories, interviews and short films and offers them up–free of charge.

It’s yet another piece of this movement in which I’ve registered myself and this website: true sustainability is about US, not about ME. I alone cannot sustain much. Sharing information and ideas–freely and easily–is, in my opinion, at the very core of this change called sustainability. Knowledge withheld or basic skills we teach at a premium price is not sustainability. It is within the collective of our skills and knowledge and experience that we create a safe, secure and nurturing environment. Here’s a video from the GOP on a community development initiative in South Africa. “In the inner-city of Johannesburg, The GreenHouse Project is turning one urban park into a seedbed for sustainable communities. The program takes a holistic approach to the city’s challenges, integrating green building and design, efficient and renewable energy, recycling, organic farming and nutrition.”

What if someone told you that they had solutions to world hunger, that these solutions would cost only pennies on the dollar not billions of dollars and that they were accessible to anyone right now? Presumptuous? Idealistic? Perhaps. Impractical? No! For these solutions are the heart and spirit of this website and they are working. Right now. Today. All over the world. I call all these recycled bits of plastic, cardboard, concrete and trash “Outrageous Gardens.”

Why “outrageous” gardens? Because for me it’s outrageous that over 900 million people in the world are malnourished and 177 million of them are children (according to Bread for the World.) It’s outrageous that one child DIES every 5 seconds from the consequences of hunger. It’s outrageous to me that enough food is being produced in the world today to feed every man, woman and child yet the hungry must wait for our handouts of grains–and other expensive to maintain and costly to transport foodstuffs–when a nutritious supply of basic vegetables and small fruits may be only a discarded tire, burlap sack or plastic bag away.

As a life-long gardener and former organic farmer, landscape restoration consultant here in Albuquerque, a freelance writer, activist, and armchair researcher on gardening for more than three decades, I have looked at the various methods of food production and food security from all over the world. While the crisis widens worldwide on a nearly daily basis, the “answers” to poverty and hunger seem to become more complicated, take longer to implement and more costly. Martin Plaut wrote in a BBC report on Ethiopia recently, “The current crisis in Ethiopia is being lost in a swirling mist of competing figures.” He’s referring to the discrepancies between the aid agencies and the politics of that country over just how many people are in desperate need and who is paying what and when which is not solely an issue in this one heart-wrenching situation. It’s a common dilemma.  As a pragmatic woman of minimal means, I keep asking the same question in these situations: why not look to the easiest, most direct and cheapest method of feeding people? That is the question this website hopes to answer.

Here on Outrageous Gardens, you will find an expanding collection of the most effective, extremely low-tech and inspiring templates for food production from many sources. These have been field-tested by various agencies and organizations for their ease of construction and immediate implementation. These gardens are constructed from any available or  recycled materials or trash. They utilize minimal nutrient inputs and minimal water, preferably grey water. And because of their lightweight materials, fast construction and compact sizes, many are also mobile so they could be thrown on wagons or moved to higher ground if necessary. Readers will quickly realize that the notion of the family garden needing long straight, tilled rows in a large square of soil is pretty much compost here. This is about bringing food production right to your doorstep, right on your doorstep, to your tent flap or on your rooftop. ‘Get a yield,’ as we learn in Permaculture. Get food growing quickly and successfully to nourish the gardener and the family, then expand into market growing later, as health and stamina increase. That’s what this process is all about.

“When you make a difference with what you have, it expands.” ~ Lynn Twist, Soul of Money Institute (www.soulofmoney.org)