Looking for Nature in Urban Gardens

• In Event: Searching for Nature in the City: Three Perspectives on Urban Ecology

Abstract

In the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, many Westerners sought an antidote to decades of industrialization which had left them disconnected from the natural world. For city dwellers, the concrete that surrounded them was a daily reminder of their alienation from nature, and their pre-packaged food from a grocery store cooler a potent illustration of their condition.

While enjoying the material comforts of a modern, urban world, many nevertheless sought to cross temporal boundaries to a simpler time, in which they might reconnect with the natural world. The rise of the local food movement, farmers markets, community gardens, and do it yourself vegetable patches in the midst of cities and suburbs was an expression of this yearning.

This paper will explore the motivations that led to this gardening renaissance. Was it to obtain healthy, non- industrial food? To feel connected to nature? To make daily existence less urban? To rebuild community in a globalized world? In addition, the paper will ask how much food was actually produced in such plots and to what extent did this gardening use the tools of modern agriculture, such as pesticides and fertilizers?

The paper will highlight gardens in modern American cities and also look at mainstream attitudes toward such endeavors in mass media and popular culture.

Author

• Michelle Mart, Penn State University