We Need to Care About The Community

In our interview/podcats series for “cities as biospheres” – an art-driven innovation lab to reduce carbon emissions and other materials harmful to the environment in our cities – I’ve spoken with Regina Cohen. Regina is a Shaman based in New York City and Rio de Janeiro. She hast started community gardens in Brooklyn in 2015, brought the initiative to Manhattan and has only recently experimented with a vegetable garden on her terrace in midtown Manhatten.

It is a very good example of what ONE person can achieve. If you start, you can do it! Don’t wait!

I’ve asked her the following questions:

• When did you start the community garden project?
• What is your major learning from the experiment?
• What happened to air quality on the terrace?
• What was the most amazing / surprising thing during the experiment?
• How will you spread the word of your successes?
• Do we need laws to green our cities?
• How much space do you need?

Listen what she had to say. Below I’ve summarized her main statements.

Regina’s main statements:

1. [00:50] Importance of being connected with earth.
2. [01:30] Start of community gardens and what they do for community and environment
3. [02:40] If you want to do it, you CAN do it! >>> your own garden
4. [05:00] main learning from the experiment >>> more oxygen, better health, cleaner air
5. [06:40] 100% of the seeds will grow!
6. [08:10] Knowledge sharing and help people to understand are the tolls to drive this forward!
7. [09:20] Each community needs to influence their own governor to act on laws!
8. [10:00] We in our society are followers! We need to become doers and influencers!
9. [11:40] You need little space (1×1 m) to start the food you need.
10. [12:20] We need to go back into our communities. Don’t go global! local=community
11. [13:50] It’s the time of WE, it is about US ! Not one person can change it, but WE all together can!

A Recommendation

If you want to start your own little garden, this book provides all you need to get it going.

Survival Gardens by Richard Marshall.

Complete, easy-to-follow, step-by-step instructions for planning and growing your 3 foot self-sufficient survival garden so you never have to rely on an outside food source.

You must have in your garden based on:

• Easiest crops to grow
• Most calorie-dense crops to grow,
• Most nutrient-dense crops to grow
• The essential tools and materials needed to plan and layout the survival garden
• The “three musts” of successful survival gardening planting, watering and nutrition.
• The best techniques to consistently plant, grow and store your survival food seasonally and
• how to identify and handle plant pests and crop damage to keep your garden healthy and producing