"If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need."

When I moved to Oakland, I knew I wanted to have a garden. In Charlotte, I kept herbs on my porch and so knew the convenience of being able to pick fresh produce rather than buy it.

My mom has a a beautiful orchard in Santa Barbara: lemon, lime, apple, avocado and orange trees; blueberry and strawberry bushes; grape vines; sprawling tomato plants and vegetables of all kinds. She came to visit our house in Oakland last September and we went to Berkeley Horticulture, a great nursery in north Berkeley. She helped me pick out a bunch of baby vegetable plants, herbs, and young trees. We spent the weekend mixing soil and planting a variety of vegetables...and then I began to wait. A few weeks later, the veggies started to pop (with a Tucker photobomb):

From left: Herbs in the box and snap peas (back row); bok choy, 2 kinds of broccoli, 2 kinds of kale, spinach, green onions, and arugula (front row)

As the weeks went by, I couldn't believe how well the garden was doing. Maybe it was the earthworm casings we mixed in with the soil, maybe we just had great seedlings, but either way, the produce was plentiful. I have absolutely LOVED having this garden in my yard. I go out nearly every day and cut some arugula or spinach for salads. The broccoli had some trouble growing, but I learned that you can cook the leaves and they taste just like broccoli. We used bok choy instead of celery during the winter in soups, and it was delicious. The snap pea plants are now completely taking over the garden -- this picture was taken a few weeks ago, and if you can imagine, the snap peas now completely cover that siding and reach high above the fence (again, Tucker just had to be in the picture): 

I mean, come on! So beautiful!

I've also been able to tie this hobby into my academic work by studying community and school gardens' effect on health. So many communities in the Bay Area are food insecure, and community gardens can offer access to fresh produce for low-income families.

Alice Waters, the superhero behind The Edible Schoolyard and Chez Panisse, is somewhat of a controversial character in the East Bay in that she seems to ignore the issue of access regarding school gardens. While her Edible Schoolyard in Berkeley gets a large sum of money from donors each year (I've heard it's around $400k), many Oakland schools operate on a much smaller budget (again, I've heard this is about $15k per school). While it may not be the taxpayer's responsibility to enhance the garden budgets for these schools, there is plenty of evidence linking gardens and access to fresh food with better performance in schools: investing in school gardens is investing in the academic success of kids. I don't want to take any sort of political stance on this issue, but I DO believe that every kid and family has the right to access healthy, fresh food and that it will ultimately improve their chance for success later in life!!

Okay, I'm off my soapbox.

"But if each man could have his own house, a large garden to cultivate and healthy surroundings - then, I thought, there will be for them a better opportunity of a happy family life."