Forms of Energy #11

This is the story of a small parcel of land (about one hectare) that a good project and a courageous local government saved from being transformed into a cement parking lot, ensuring its original function. Located next to the walls of the medieval Tuscan town of Santa Fiora, the field—after having been farmed for generations, passed on from father to son—risked the fate that befalls so many family-run farms. After their owners age and pass away, the land dies along with them because increasingly the next generation is not interested and does not know how to care for the land. This particular small preserve of material and cultural heritage and beauty—a south-facing garden in close contact with an inhabited area, with orderly areas delimited by simple rows of raised earth, hedges and vegetation barriers, planted with different kinds of traditional plants reproduced locally from year to year—was slated to become a new parking lot upon the death of its owner.

As luck would have it, during a site visit for the town's landscape restoration project, the designers (the practice 2TR Architettura) looked upon that very field where an old farmer observed the results of his day's work: he had finished preparing the ground where the next day, like every year at that time, he would be planting onions. Asked about the fate of his garden, the farmer, whose name was Fedro, complained bitterly that his children would not assume the care for it, and that the field would have to be abandoned or converted. Suddenly interested, they endeavoured to include the farm in the larger project for the town's environmental rehabilitation that had already been initiated. Since 2005, with the support of Santa Fiora's mayor and his staff, the project had implemented the recovery of numerous local landmarks that suffered years of neglect and indifference, including three monumental buildings, a mill, a church, monastery gardens, a nineteenth-century aqueduct and a ditch bed of the alluvial basins with its historic hydraulic works and water jacks.

As the designers recount, "In this context, the project entitled "Fedro's Gardens—Biodiversity for Sustainable Agriculture," wanted to return the peri-urban agricultural land to its traditional role, creating an instrument for participatory and sustainable local development. Intensive work in 2008 freed the area from the brambles that had overcome it, rediscovering excavated terraces and bringing to light historic water channels.

Guidelines for participatory management of the area were proposed to the municipality, inspired by basic themes including protection of biodiversity, promotion of regional agricultural genetic resources, production of quality food on local land and dissemination of organic farming principles. In this way, Fedro's Gardens has become an area for the in situ conservation of the genetic resources of the territory's vegetation with the active involvement of the local community."

"Fedro's heirs"—identified through a competition organized by the municipality assigning to each winner an 900 sq-meter plot within the field—will thus guarantee the reproduction and survival of the area's vegetative resources over time. To this end, space is provided for the storage, cleaning and germination of seeds from year to year. According to the competition's rules, farmers commit to maintaining hedges and areas of natural vegetation, to avoiding the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides and to caring for rotations and intercropping, maximizing the diversity of wild and domesticated species in order to ensure system stability and durability. Every plot includes a wooden shed to store gear and water connections. Thus the community gardeners become the keepers of Tuscan agrobiodiversity.

Over the course of the twentieth century, the American government has at times supported and financed the creation of community gardens in times of crisis and for the sustenance of society's weaker sectors[1], in Great Britain, Sweden, Germany and Holland, under different names and policies, community gardens are now well-established and important phenomena. They are not only central to localized food supply, but are also functional new forms of urban green space, providing active management by citizens, educational opportunities, and the demonstration of ancient and modern environmentally friendly practices.

In New York, for example, Green Thumb, an association sponsored by the Parks Department, transforms degraded areas into urban gardens that supply the city's organic markets. In Paris, "jardins partagés" (a legacy of previous "workers' gardens") are united within the municipal "Charte Main Verte" network; through a basic agreement between citizens and administration, the municipality commits to providing water and fertile soil while the association commits to opening the garden to the public for at least two half days a week. Again, in London, "Capital growth" calls on citizens to participate in the redevelopment of areas of the city, in light of the 2012 Olympics, through the implementation of projects regarding the cultivation of fruits and vegetables for local consumption. The program offers technical assistance, financial support, and training to associations involved in implementing and managing collective gardens.

From the Tuscan countryside to the dizzying London skyline, these projects set examples of attainable utopia: small-scale, sustainable agricultural production returning to reclaim space and value in the urban landscape, giving it new shape and energy.

[1] The first organized program designed to transform derelict land into community gardens, in response to a crisis, was Potato Patches (1894–1917) developed by the Mayor of Detroit and then repeated in other large cities like Chicago, New York and Philadelphia. World War I brought the Victory Gardens program (1917–1920), which encouraged the creation of patriotic orchards to produce fruits, vegetables and preserves. Between 1930-1939, the Relief Gardens were established as a response to the Great Depression and during the World War II (1941–1945) the Victory Gardens program invited American citizens to cultivate "Food for Freedom." Finally, since the 1970s, the American Community Garden Association has promoted the cultivation and care of shared green areas.