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""It's wonderfully soul-nourishing to read a book that's all about impossibilities made possible, and how to plant your dreams and watch them grow."" -- Globe & Mail

City Farmer celebrates the new ways that urban dwellers are getting closer to their food. Not only are backyard vegetable plots popping up in places long reserved for lawns, but some renegades are even planting their front yards with food. People in apartments are filling their balconies with pots of tomatoes, beans, and basil, while others are gazing skyward and ""greening"" their rooftops with food plants. Still others are colonizing public spaces, staking out territory in parks for community gardens and orchards, or convincing school boards to turn asphalt school grounds into ""growing"" grounds.

Woven through the book are the stories of guerrilla urban farmers in various cities of North America who are tapping city trees for syrup, gleaning fruit from parks, foraging for greens in abandoned lots, planting heritage vegetables on the boulevard, and otherwise placing food production at the centre of the urban community. Additional stories describe the history of urban food production in North America, revealing the roots of our current hunger for more connection with our food, and the visionaries who have directed that hunger into action.

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Throughout the book, sidebars offer practical tips for how to compost, how to convert a lawn into a vegetable bed, and what edible plants are easy to grow with children, among other topics.

""If you are just breaking into the vegetable growing game, you...want to dig into Lorraine Johnson's friendly, smart handbook for the city farmer."" -- Tyee.ca

""City Farmer plants the seeds of reimagining our cities as deliberate sources of sustenance."" -- Canadian Geographic

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After three decades of gardeningand almost as long writing about itLorraine Johnson still gets excited (and unrealistic!) every spring about the amount of space she has in her small city frontyard and backyard. So she regularly scrounges space from others: in community gardens, at family members houses, even city parks Her interests are mainly in the ways that growing plants (for food, for environmental benefits) nurtures the good in ourselves and the world. She views gardening as a deep and meaningful conversation with the planet. Johnson was the president of the North American Native Plant Society and is the author of numerous books on gardening and environmental issues, including The New Ontario Naturalized Garden, The Gardeners Manifesto, and City Farmer: Adventures in Urban Food Growing. Lorraine is much-in-demand throughout North America as a garden speaker on native plants. She currently lives in Toronto.

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