Avant Gardening: Ecological Struggle in the City & the World

by Bill Weinberg

This collection of writings, assembled at a time of crisis for NYC community gardens, imagines the radical possibilities of urban gardening. Bringing together NYC history, political analysis, utopian schemes, poetic accounts of what gardening can create, and investigations into the dynamics of sustainability, community, high and low technologies, and power, this book challenges the “Supermarket to the World” ideologies of global capital. Includes work by Sarah Ferguson, Jack Collom, Carmelo Ruiz, the editors, and others.

Genres: Food, Gardening

176 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

Reviews

[Marcella · Rating 5 out of 5]

essay by Lyx Ish is particularly great

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

Random slice of 1998 guerilla urban gardening, essays calling for a Lower East Side Autonomous Zone, reporting on specific garden sites histories and fight back against Giuliani's redevelopment auctions, and broader takes on biotech, horticulture vs agriculture, and more from NYC and Madison WI. Eerily relevant in strange and mixed ways, the editor is concretely-and-earthly dismissive of a friend who "recently told me he was devoting himself to fighting fascism on the internet".

[Sarah · Rating 4 out of 5]

Worth finding for the intro essay by Peter Lambourn Wilson, who explains why gardening is a subversive act. Other contributors also talk about the intersection of politics and gardening, especially the history of gardening in NYC East Village. There are a lot of specifics about this or that NYC community garden but I will keep this book around because where else are you going to find that kind of super-local information?

[Daniel Burton-Rose · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm partial to Cleo's Urban Wilds because it gives greater voice to a wider demographic of gardeners, but the more books the merrier on this crucial topic.

[Samuel]

Histories and battle hymns for the gardens of Loisaida.