Garden Talk

Now that winter is on its last legs, I'm thrilled to start thinking about our garden - and gardening, in general - once again. Although we'll be using the raised beds we built last year to grow our veggies, over the last few months I've come across a few inspiring TED Talks that show interesting, innovative and truly admirable ways that people have found to add a little green to their lives regardless of the space they have or their situation; not only that, but they've created thriving communities around their ideas.

These are the kinds of stories that truly fill my heart with joy and pride to be contributing - even in my own small way - to such a worthy cause: the health of our world and of ourselves. I hope that, if you take a few minutes to watch each of these videos, you'll enjoy and get inspired by them just as much as I did.

Britta Riley: A garden in my apartment // This video is all about hydroponics - a dirt-free, small-space-friendly way to grow some veggies - and the idea of empowering ourselves to find solutions to our problems (instead of waiting for the experts to present them to us!) through collaboration.

Stephen Ritz: A teacher growing green in the South Bronx // This is probably the most entertaining and fast-paced talk I've ever watched, but the work that this speaker (and teacher!) is doing with kids contributes to a brighter future both for them and for our planet and is so inspiring that it makes me want to get off my chair immediately and just plant something.

Pam Warhurst: How we can eat our landscapes // In this talk, there are such beautiful examples of people turning unused land all around their cities into vegetable gardens that benefit the entire local communities; it's incredible to me how quickly an idea like this can turn into a movement in our time, and it's so awe-inspiring when that idea is such a positive and rewarding one.