From Soil to Soul: Rewilding Ourselves Through Community Gardening

Today, in corners of cities and on the edges of towns, community gardens are blossoming again. It is more than vegetables, it's revival!

Community gardens have been around since the 1890s in America, originating in Detroit. During the recession at that time with many unemployed and struggling, the local municipality funded urban gardening programs. If you were out of work, then you could get a vacant lot, the tools, seeds, and instructions on how to grow. Let us reflect on this for a moment . . . struggling citizens were supported by their local government to help with a food crisis.

Community gardens seem to flourish every time there is economic hardship, environmental awareness shifting, or in times of crisis, such as the unusual year of Covid, which saw more people turning to the soil not only to grow food, herbs, and flowers but for well-being.

Garden plots are places where hands meet soil, and strangers become friends. In a world that is moving too fast and chaotic, places to gather and garden offer something radical: a slower, steadier rhythm. A living relationship with the land and a connectedness to the community.

Permaculture, unlike large industrial farming, honors the earth as a teacher and a collaborative way of working with the land. It brings us gently back to the cycle of compost and regeneration, of giving and receiving. Community gardening is not just a resurgence it's a movement of consciousness. Of self-sovereignty, of building community in an often lonely world, and hopefully, reverence for that which we are inextricably connected, Nature.

We're not just growing our food again, we're learning to value this deeply connected relationship between us and soil. Of growing organic veggies to put on our table, of creating a support system for ourselves, our family, and our community. This is not optional. In the face of a growing climate crisis, soil degradation, and cultural disconnection, the return to simpler, community-centered, land-based living is a necessity. We move into a reciprocity, which is back to the timeless and sacred dance between us and the Earth.

Join me next week as I focus on a local community garden here in Texas that is putting down firm roots for growth in new and exciting ways!

Grounded in gratitude,

Christina