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The paper problematizes public housing privatization. It compares the trajectory of tenure change in two garden communities – Garbatella, Rome and Sunnyside Gardens, New York City – which privileged public and private ownership, respectively. The cases are currently dealing with tenure change. Sunnyside experienced the enclosure of gardens and citizens’ attempt to reclaim what was held in common in order to bring back the communal spaces. Garbatella is a place where growth over time of rights, powers, immunities, and privileges is manifested in long-lasting processes of appropriation of public housing goods. Despite their different stories, Sunnyside helps to problematize the process of public housing privatization in Garbatella which is further complicated by tenure complexity, State-induced rent gap and institutional displacement. The analysis of tenure change, done by using the ‘incidents of ownership’ notion developed by Marcuse, contributes to the understanding of what public housing privatization means in social and spatial terms. Housing privatization leads to an erosion of the in-between space where individual and collective aspiration meet as a precondition for the reproduction of what is held in common: spatial goods such as open spaces and housing – a fundamental aspect of our citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Monarch butterflies (Danaus plexippus) have undergone large scale population declines leading to multiple conservation organizations encouraging the creation of monarch butterfly habitat. Monarch Watch encourages volunteers to create and register monarch habitat as Monarch Waystations.During registration waystations can be named. Names reflect personal meanings, community attachments, and cultural insights and waystation names in particular can provide insights into what ideas and concepts volunteers associate with a habitat creation program.A total of 37,916 registered waystation names were examined to determine most commonly used names, words and word themes. The most common types of waystations were medium‐sized suburban gardens in the United States.The most common waystation names referenced yard placement with My Backyard the most frequently used. Place‐themed words were the most used followed by animal‐themed words. Within animal‐themed words, insect words were the most used followed by mammals and birds.Theological/mortality themed words were present with memorial the most common word, implying a permanence of waystations.The most common familial terms included mom and grandma suggesting inter‐generational gardening is occurring, which is known to strengthen communities and build well‐being.The frequency of positive emotion/feeling words implies that participating in habitat creation programs is a positive experience and participation may reduce conservation apathy.Further research into habitat creation programs and the longevity of habitat created as well as the motivations and demographics of participants can help tailor habitat volunteer programs to desired audiences and increase overall participation. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. Read the free Plain Language Summary for this article on the Journal blog. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the ways that farmworkers, many of whom come from a culture deeply rooted in food and agricultural practices, cope with food insecurity by utilizing their agricultural and nutritional knowledge. Food assistance providers in the USA often treat farmworkers' inability to afford healthy food as a lack of knowledge about healthy eating, reinforcing racialized assumptions that people of color don't know 'good' food. I argue that in contrast to food banks and low-income nutrition programs, home and community gardens provide spaces for retaining and highlighting agricultural, cultural, and dietary practices and knowledge. This paper investigates the linkages between workers' place in the food system as both producers and consumers, simultaneously exploited for their labor, and creating coping strategies utilizing agrarian and culinary knowledge. I argue that food security and healthy eating, rather than being a matter of consumers making healthy 'choices', is a matter of class-based and racial differences in the food system. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The time required to recover from cold exposure (chill coma recovery time) may represent an important metric of performance and has been linked to geographic distributions of diverse species. Chill coma recovery time (CCRT) has rarely been measured in bumble bees (genus Bombus) but may provide insights regarding recent changes in their distributions. We measured CCRT of Bombus vosnesenskii workers reared in common garden laboratory conditions from queens collected across altitude and latitude in the Western United States. We also compared CCRTs of male and female bumble bees because males are often overlooked in studies of bumble bee ecology and physiology and may differ in their ability to respond to cold temperatures. We found no relationship between CCRT and local climate at the queen collection sites, but CCRT varied significantly with sex and body mass. Because differences in the ability to recover from cold temperatures have been shown in wild-caught Bombus, we predict that variability in CCRT may be strongly influenced by plasticity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we evaluate urban agriculture trends in 55 cities in the Southern United States. Our research is important for three reasons. First, as the geographic scope of urban agriculture research is limited mostly to Northeast and West Coast cities, we focus on the South, the fastest-growing U.S. Census region. Second, despite rapid growth, this region has also experienced the highest rate of poverty and food insecurity. Third, we surveyed urban planners who regulate and monitor urban agriculture sites, develop urban agriculture policies and programs, and advise local decision-makers. The study documents Southern urban agriculture changes between 2000 and 2010. It also considers types of projects, implementation barriers, and strategies used to promote urban agriculture. A survey questionnaire was mailed to planning officials in 153 Southern cities; 55 cities responded. Among respondents, 87% reported the existence of urban agriculture in their jurisdiction. Most Southern cities reporting urban agriculture experienced urban agriculture growth (69%), 21% reported decline, and 10% did not report a change. The most common projects included neighborhood gardens, school gardens, and community supported and entrepreneurial agriculture. Irrespective of urban agriculture growth or decline, the responding cities relied on the same types of regulatory and policy approaches. Only cities reporting growth in urban agriculture implemented programs to promote urban agriculture, including land acquisition, trusts, and interjurisdictional coordination. Land conversion and lack of economic sustainability were cited as main barriers to urban agriculture. The findings suggest the need to further explore the impact of external factors on the effectiveness of urban agriculture regulations, policies and programs, and solutions to urban agriculture barriers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

School gardens and garden-based learning continue to gain great popularity in the United States, and their pedagogical potential, and ability to impact students' fruit and vegetable consumption and activity levels have been well-documented. Less examined is their potential to be agents of food system reskilling and transformation. Though producer and consumer are inextricably linked in the food system, and deskilling of one directly influences the other, theorists often focus on production-centered and consumption-centered deskilling separately. However, in a school garden, the production/consumption disconnect is erased, by virtue of the design of the site itself and how it is utilized by the actors within it. School gardens provide the critical component of education in alternative food networks, and contribute to the producer/consumer reskilling that is a necessary part of food system transformation. We conducted a case study of an established school garden program during its transition from autonomous non-profit to official, district-funded program of a rural school district in the Midwest. By participating in the full "seed to plate" life cycle of a garden crop, students in the garden were actively involved in the reconnection of producer and consumer, while educators were fostering in students an appreciation for fresh, healthy foods and actively challenging the "McDonaldization" of both students' diets and education. Based upon these findings, we argue that school gardens in rural areas could leverage the dominant role of rural America in developing and shifting food system paradigms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article discusses the impact that Vauxhall Gardens, or pleasure gardens, in London, England had on the development of rural gardens for leisure in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania during the late 18th century, including Gray's Gardens and Harrowgate in Philadelphia. The role that Philadelphia's pleasure gardens played in providing public entertainment events for city residents is discussed.

The article features Liu Fang Yuan, the Garden of Flowing Fragrance, a non-private Chinese garden in California, which is part of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino.

The embrace of modern architecture by American institutions was historically coincident with many communities’ migration from city centers to suburban environments. This geographic shift, accelerating after World War II, reflected changes in widely held attitudes toward landscape as well as toward architecture. Jewish American groups were especially active in this transition. A useful case study is a design for Baltimore’s Chizuk Amuno congregation, which in 1954 began planning a suburban campus with New York architect Daniel Schwartzman. Among the congregation’s initial requests was a proposal for a “Hebrew Culture Garden,” inspired by Cleveland’s ensemble of public ethnic-cultural gardens dating to the 1920s. Chizuk Amuno’s garden project was never realized, but its design and development throughout the planning process illustrate changing sensibilities about public space, cultural consumption, and the balance between religious and secular identities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The article features the nonprofit organization, Seed Savers Exchange(SSE). The organization has 24,000 old varieties of flowers and vegetables, though outedged by hybrid varieties which dominates the market today, are still valued by gardeners for diversity and taste as well as part of cultural heritage. SSE had saved these open pollinated varieties of vegetables and flowers in order to fulfill its aim which is to save and preserve garden heritage for ghenerations to come. The organization's web site is

Since the end of the Vietnam War, thousands of Laotian Hmong have immigrated to the United States, many ultimately resettling in the Central Valley of California. In the innercity environment of Sacramento, the Hmong continue their agrarian traditions by creating urban gardens where they grow traditional plants. In this study, we document 59 Hmong garden species grown at a site in South Sacramento. Most of these species are documented in the Southeast Asian botanical literature as either food or medicinal plants. Uses of the plants are discussed as is the importance of urban gardens in maintaining Hmong cultural identity and practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a psychoanalysis of a garden on a valley in Alabama resulting in a stratified, geological history of the marks left behind. Historical background of the garden; Views of Michael Foucault on markings found on the garden; Notion of Manuel De Landa on social stratification; Metaphor between the garden and Sigmund Freud's Rome in 'Civilizations and Its Discontents.'

ABSTRACT. New York City community gardens have been the subject of political contestation over the course of their thirty-year existence. In 1999, 114 gardens were slated for public auction and redevelopment. This article examines the controversy over the garden auction as a politics of scale in which garden advocates successively raised the scope of the controversy beyond the scale of individual gardens, and ultimately beyond that of the city. Analysis of this land-use conflict highlights the significance of politics of scale for grassroots organizations within a market-centric, neoliberal economic framework. Keywords: community gardens, grassroots activism, neoliberalism, New York City, politics of scale. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the impact of climate change in agriculture and in the environment and how this phenomenon have changed the way gardeners manages their gardens. Several experiments were offered, such as the consideration of horticulture as a way to experiment with strategies to adapt to changes in the climate. According to Scott Aker, horticulturist at the U.S. National Arboretum, the plants that to be put up in the gardens 20 years from now are going to withstand extremes of temperature and drought. He added that pest and pathogens could also affect horticulture, aside from climate changes. It concluded that new approach in the climate-adapted garden is rambunctious, diverse and more like wild spaces.