Community Gardening Quotes

I have my own orchard, and I also work with the Bloomington Community Orchard, which has been one of the best experiences of my life.

There is not going to be a "hydrogen economy," and no combination of alternative energy systems or fuels will allow us to continue the suburban pattern. It's finished. We will, however, desperately need to grow more of our food closer to home, and so the preservation of agricultural hinterlands is of great importance. But don't expect the fiesta of suburban construction to continue more than a few more years.

Odd as I am sure it will appear to some, I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. A person who is growing a garden, if he is growing it organically, is improving a piece of the world. He is producing something to eat, which makes him somewhat independent of the grocery business, but he is also enlarging, for himself, the meaning of food and the pleasure of eating.

I have a garden, and I collect different heirloom seeds from different neighbors.

The British have such an odd relationship with food - and the land. I want the public and the Soil Association to see that growing things in a garden is no different to growing things in a field.

Gardening is civil and social, but it wants the vigor and freedom of the forest and the outlaw.

In the autumn I gathered all my sorrows and buried them in my garden. And when April returned and spring came to wed the earth, there grew in my garden beautiful flowers unlike all other flowers. And my neighbors came to behold them, and they all said to me, "When autumn comes again, at seeding time, will you not give us of the seeds of these flowers that we may have them in our gardens?"

Urban farming is not only possible, it is crucial. But it can't be like the farming techniques of yore.

You don't plow under the corn because the seed was planted with a neighbor's shovel.

When I came to Detroit, if you threw a stone up in the air it would hit an autoworker on its way down. A few years after that, if you threw a stone in the air it'd hit an abandoned house or a vacant lot on its way down. And most people saw those vacant lots as blight. But meanwhile during World War II, blacks had moved from the South to the North. And they saw these vacant lots as places where you could grow food for the community. And so urban agriculture was born.

If you go to Italy and you drive from the airport to the town, there isn't 30 square feet that isn't planted by someone. Even next to the train tracks, they see the joy of the interaction with the planet as integral to the experience. The idea that you can get free arugula just by planting seeds... because it will regrow itself the next year. We've come a long way from foraging to now planting. The next step of that will be continuing that expansion of planting and really owning the crops.

I have been talking nonstop about the symbolism of an edible landscape at the White House. I think it says everything about stewardship of the land and about the nourishment of a nation.

Once you engage with the simple enough business of feeding yourself, of soil and water, weather, season and harvest, it becomes personal. It is about you, your family and friends. Food becomes an aspect of those relationships as well as your intimacy with your plot.

We don't sing about eating local produce or growing beards or anything like that. It's funny to find yourself in a position where people associate you with things that are completely arbitrary to your songs.

When you go for a walk, take seeds with you, poppies, rainbow chard, rocket. Plant them among the weeds in patches of wasteland. See what happens.

I really like the whole urban farming idea, because I grow my own produce in L.A., and I think it's great to teach people here in Manhattan so they can do the same.

I grew up in a house that might have had the only front-yard cornfield in all of Los Angeles.

The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world.

People in my neighborhood are so disconnected from the fresh food supply that kids don't know an eggplant from a sweet potato. We have to show them how to get grounded in the truest sense of the word.

The time has come to reclaim the stolen harvest and celebrate the growing and giving of good food as the highest gift and the most revolutionary act.

I probably grow half my food. It's a good way to keep perspective.

Create a garden; bring children to farms for field trips. I think it's important that parents and teachers get together to do one or two things they can accomplish well - a teaching garden, connecting with farms nearby, weave food into the curriculum.

I want to make the school-garden movement work.

The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.

It is my hope that our garden's story-and the stories of gardens across America-will inspire families, schools, and communities to try their own hand at gardening and enjoy all the gifts of health, discovery, and connection a garden can bring.