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Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City
From the eighteenth century to the twenty–first, the surprising history and inspiring contemporary panorama of urban nurturing health, hope, and community.
This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned.
Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership.
Grafting contemporary experience and concerns onto every historical chapter, Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid past and present, archive and experience, showing how down–to–earth gardeners can reap abundant harvests while fostering mutual aid and political engagement.
This manifesto for the next food revolution by acclaimed environmental historian Kate Brown speaks to nature lovers, food activists, social–justice warriors, urban planners, WOOFers, and the climate–concerned.
Ever since wage labor in cities replaced self–provisioning in the countryside, gardeners have reclaimed lost commons on urban lots. They composted garbage into topsoil, creating the most productive agriculture in recorded human history, without use of fossil fuels. The ecological diversity they fostered made room for human difference and built prosperity, in Nazi Berlin, working–class gardeners harbored dissidents and Jews; in Washington, DC, Black southern migrants built communities around gardens and orchards, the produce funding homeownership.
Grafting contemporary experience and concerns onto every historical chapter, Brown creates a mesmerizing hybrid past and present, archive and experience, showing how down–to–earth gardeners can reap abundant harvests while fostering mutual aid and political engagement.
- GenresHistoryNonfiction
336 pages, Hardcover
Published February 17, 2026
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
Review of advance copy
This book is more about agriculture than gardens. It should be called "Urban Planning in the United States".
About half the book is spent examining communities in 20th century USA and the specific racial politics and economics that motivate urban developments there. The more interesting sections are where the author explores the use and subsequent restriction of the commons e.g. in 17th century England, and community gardens in 19th century Berlin and Soviet Tallinn. Even then these are hardly global themes and urban gardens that aren't now in European or N American modern advanced economies are barely touched. Gardens that don't produce food are entirely ignored.
The book discusses pertinent topics that range from renewable soil science and environmental regeneration, to how growing your own food is a political action. I totally buy the argument that gardens can be an expression of individual and community liberty against bureaucratic and politicised higher powers. But we can't know if these are specific reactions to overbearing American or European municipal governments because the author pays no regard to gardens in other urbanised areas of the world. Do urban gardens exist in S America, Africa, Asia, or Oceania? Are they more tolerated or celebrated there than in the USA?
I came away sad that the book centres gardens principally as a form of Western food-growing resistance, instead of as a global or even occasional source of joy for their own sake.
About half the book is spent examining communities in 20th century USA and the specific racial politics and economics that motivate urban developments there. The more interesting sections are where the author explores the use and subsequent restriction of the commons e.g. in 17th century England, and community gardens in 19th century Berlin and Soviet Tallinn. Even then these are hardly global themes and urban gardens that aren't now in European or N American modern advanced economies are barely touched. Gardens that don't produce food are entirely ignored.
The book discusses pertinent topics that range from renewable soil science and environmental regeneration, to how growing your own food is a political action. I totally buy the argument that gardens can be an expression of individual and community liberty against bureaucratic and politicised higher powers. But we can't know if these are specific reactions to overbearing American or European municipal governments because the author pays no regard to gardens in other urbanised areas of the world. Do urban gardens exist in S America, Africa, Asia, or Oceania? Are they more tolerated or celebrated there than in the USA?
I came away sad that the book centres gardens principally as a form of Western food-growing resistance, instead of as a global or even occasional source of joy for their own sake.
Review of advance copy received from Netgalley
You don’t have to convince me of the power of a small garden, but this was still an interesting listen. Small gardens are powerful tools not just for food, but for community building, resistance to over-governance, supplemental income, health, and even disease resilience.
The author shares a subset of compelling stories of garden communities in the West ranging from Marshall Heights in Washington, DC, to the garden houses of Germany. Though these places are very different, their gardens served a similar purpose: supporting the people who lived there while challenging conventional ideas of what a “good” neighborhood looks like.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital ARC.
The author shares a subset of compelling stories of garden communities in the West ranging from Marshall Heights in Washington, DC, to the garden houses of Germany. Though these places are very different, their gardens served a similar purpose: supporting the people who lived there while challenging conventional ideas of what a “good” neighborhood looks like.
Thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for the digital ARC.
February 17, 2026
I obtained this audiobook ARC through NetGalley. I enjoyed listening to this audiobook! I worked for an urban farm for about a year in college and I liked learning more about the history of self-sustaining farming/gardening. I think anyone who is interested in gardening/food sustainability would enjoy listening to this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews