Urban living does not always allow space or conditions for gardening. But more and more people are finding ways to use limited resources to grow vegetables and even raise chickens. In this National Geographic video you can follow some urban gardeners in Washington, D.C., and meet a garden designer who helps them make the best with what's available.
Self-study activity:
Watch the video and say whether the statements below are true or false.
The activity is suitable for intermediate 2 students.
1 Lots of cities have access to big open fields.
2 A lot of people have vivid memories of growing up in a garden.
3 Most of the people interested in growing their own food don't have direct experience with it.
4 Some people grow food on their roof tops.
5 The food the kids don't eat in the morning is used as compost for the garden.
6 Most families who grow food in their garden are self-sufficient as far as food is concerned.
It's difficult to grow food in the city, but more and more people are trying to. We usually don't get access to the big open fields. What we get are the scraps, we get the tiny side yards, we get the little scrap of lawn between the sidewalk and the street. My job is to re-engineer those pieces of land into edible spaces that are producing food for the families that live around them.
Most people's great-grandparents and probably their grandparents have had a garden or grew up with a garden, I hear that a lot from people, who they say, oh my grandmother had this, this huge garden, it was so beautiful, I want to recreate that for my kids. But there's a gap there where it seems like a whole generation of people just completely missed out on what it is to grow your own food.
There is enormous value in putting the food system in the community as opposed to making it some abstract thing where tomatoes come in cellophane. Tomatoes come off a vine, and they can come off a vine in your own backyard. And that is an extraordinarily empowering thing for people, in addition to being delicious.
This is about as urban as it gets, it's very busy and very noise and crowded. But this garden is sort of a secret on our roof. Coming up here and finding the new growth every day is just, it’s a huge surprise and it just brings me so much joy. It's hard to explain.
A vegetable garden has, has rich soil, there's flowers, there's natives, and it fosters a healthy ecosystem.
If the kids are raising out the door first thing in the morning and they've, you know, not finished all of their food, I can take those leftovers out to the hens. They're getting a good breakfast, there's not a whole lot of waste. They get our leftovers, the lay eggs, we eat the eggs. We're all kind of having this nutrient cycle that's pretty, pretty wonderful and pretty remarkable.
You might not be able to feed your whole family growing in your backyard, but you can produce a whole lot in a small little space. And the food that comes out there is going to be more nutritious and tastier than anything you can buy in the store.
Key:
1F 2T 3T 4T 5F 6F
