In Western Colorado, we always say that you can have all four season in a day; just last week, the day started with snow, got to about 75 and sunny by noon, and ended with a nice, cool rainstorm, reminiscent of both spring and fall. Because of this variability, it’s hard to know when the last frost will come and when it’s safe to start planting your indoor gardens. My mom always tells me that Mother’s Day weekend is always a safe bet, so I suppose now is the time!

My guess is that my mom has it right because growing up, my parents always had a vibrant vegetable garden. By the end of the summer, we were grilling freshly picked corn, snacking on cherry tomatoes, and getting the cucumbers ready for their winter of pickling. When I left for university, my college had a fruitful community garden, plenty of green spaces, and its location a mile off the coast of California wasn’t too bad either. But when I moved to New York, I found myself longing to tend to some gardens and spend some time outdoors. At this time, I was getting my masters in climate science and policy, and in my studies, I was increasingly interested in how home gardening and community gardens could be an asset in climate mitigation. As it turns out, urban designers and engineers are experimenting with how home gardens can serve as a possible adaptation to climate changes.

Not too terribly long ago, societies relied on home or community gardening to provide food for the table. While there were things like spices, coffee, and rare produce traded over long distances, most people relied on themselves to produce their own food. But as the population, technology, and transportation grew, the world seemed to grow smaller, allowing for farming to centralize into valleys and plains and ship produce anywhere around the world. Now, it’s not unlikely that your food has traveled more than you have, that your bananas are from Central America, your fish is from the coast, and your meat from a farm in Nebraska, no matter where you are currently.

But as climate change impacts every corner of the world, the idea of bringing farming back home is growing – this is urban agriculture.

Urban agriculture is rooted in green infrastructure, a concept that promotes the growth of green spaces within urban limits. On an individual level, this infrastructure can increase quality of life, both physically and mentally. On an environmental level, green spaces can improve stormwater absorption, flood prevention, decrease greenhouse gasses, and decrease the urban heat island effect (Gardening in the City, CBC).

Within green infrastructure is urban agriculture, which is the idea that we could decentralize farming and bring it back to the community level, either through home gardens or community gardens. This system can help improve air and water quality issues, depollute stormwater runoff, and increase ecological biodiversity. Not to mention that growing food closer to where it will be consumed also reduces the impacts of the large-scale food system that we are currently using, which relies on extensive transportation and packaging systems. Urban agriculture also opens the opportunity to turn vacant and underutilized areas throughout the city into vibrant, productive spaces. And, since these gardens are a community effort, everyone could be granted more equitable access to healthy foods (UPenn, CBC). 

Community gardens can foster a sense of belonging and inclusion and promote environmental education. Experts also believe that urban agriculture may be an important tool in helping cities mitigate the impacts of climate change as global food systems are increasingly threatened (CBC). Decentralizing our agriculture and protecting our food systems is a priority for every society, so we need to start looking into implementing these mitigation strategies before our food systems collapse. And when a possible solution provides fresher foods, boosts our mental health, and brings people together, what are we waiting for?