Friday, April 3, 2009

Urban Garden Share: A Verdant Light in the Urban Darkness

Seattlites like gardening. We also like density. This causes a bit of a conflict when a whole bunch of green thumbs crowd into a small space - where the hell do they all garden? If they're lucky, Seattlites can garden in their own yards. For apartment dwellers, there are fewer options. Sometimes they can fit some plants on their balcony or on the roof of their building, sometimes they can get a spot in P-Patches. However, with so many tiny studios, landlords reluctant to let tenants on the roof, and P-Patch waiting lists that are one or two years long, sometimes gardeners can't garden at all. And that's sad.


Amy Pennington, Gannon Curran, Jesse Dawson and Colin Saunders thought this was sad too. And they wanted to do something about it. So they created ... Urban Garden Share. I think of it as a Craig's List especially for garden-oriented. The idea is to match garden space with helpful and knowledgeable gardeners, thus creating a harmonious union between the homeowner bewildered by the size of their latest garden project and the apartment/condo dweller longing for a chance to dig in the dirt.

Mind you, I'm still holding out for container gardening in one of the abandoned corners of my apartment building and the coming of (keep your fingers crossed kids!) the John and Summit P-Patch in 2010. But UGS is so ingenious that I just might be persuaded to participate, you know, while I'm waiting for everything else to pan out.

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