As a garden designer and consultant, I see the amazing progress that can be made when gardeners get together and get things done. Here are some small stories about how something has been achieved through cooperation.
I was involved with one project earlier driven by two twelve-year-olds living in a small northern England town. To do something good for the environment, the two girls desired to grow their own food in some deserted land. So the pair spoke to their teacher about using a small abandoned space next to their school's parking lot. The teacher reached me for advice and together we determined who owned the space. The owner agreed to rent the space and the kids were able to raise money to pay the rent and start growing food on the site.
Another motivating story was about one enterprising gardener in Illinois who decided to speak with his neighbors about using their grass-filled front yards to grow food. This gardener did have his own garden but he wanted to do more. So he offered to tend his neighbors' front yards in return for the use of these underutilized(未充分利用的) spaces to grow food everyone would share. To his surprise, all of his neighbors adopted this front-yard farming idea, and even one neighbor joined him and helped grow the food to learn more about the process. Everyone gained a lot at last.
The final story was that of three women in a neighborhood in Vermont. Struggling to find the time to look after their kids and grow their own food, they found a solution. The mothers together raised children and plants, selling produce and young plants to other gardeners in the area to cover basic costs. They took turns on the daycare duty for a handful of children and tended the garden around their part-time jobs.
These stories show just what can be achieved when people work together to make their own lives and the lives of those around them just a little bit better.
