‘Green Community’ Is Changing the U.S. Landscape

As the reality of climate change is felt across the globe with warmer weather, rising sea levels, and stronger weather disturbances, many communities in the U.S. are working together to create a "green community."

The desire to create a green community is more evident in the City of Chicago as many residents there spend their free time tending their "global gardens."

One of them is Jenny McMillan. While some residents of Chicago are busy with their urban pursuits, like watching movies, riding around in cars or eating in their favourite restaurants, McMillan can be seen busy tending her vegetable garden that she grows in her backyard, using brown soil from her neighborhood in Albany Park.

The 45-year-old stay-at-home mother of two is a member of a local community and part of a much larger growing back-to-nature trend that is catching up in most U.S. cities.

McMillan, who calls herself an urban gardener, is proud of produce. "They are fresh, have better quality that most of the vegetables sold in supermarkets and they are more affordable. And if anybody asks me where do I get my vegetables, I often tell them that they come straight from the seeds in the kitchen," McMillan said.

But McMillan is not alone in her urban gardening. A community group called Global Garden, located at Lawrence and Sacramento avenues, in the 2900 block of West Lawrence Avenue, is a growing organisation with over 3,600 community gardeners.

Global Garden prides itself as being organic and pesticide-free garden. It is funded by non-profit organisation Peterson Garden Project, which operates eight community gardens in Chicago from as far north as Howard St and Ashland Ave, and as far south as the Field Museum.

The community gardening trend is growing across the U.S. Indeed, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the White House, and First Lady Michelle Obama are all big advocates of community gardening. The White House even has its own kitchen garden that is tended by the First Lady herself, White House staff and even visitors of the First Couple.

Elsewhere in the U.S., legislators in the City of Pomona, in the San Gabriel Valley, Southern California, have approved an ordinance extending the moratorium on the establishment and expansion of recycling and waste-related activities for 10 months and 15 days.

The Pomona City Council gave a preliminary approval of the proposed bill on July 28 and is expected to approve the ordinance on Monday. In June, the council adopted a 45-day interim urgency ordinance for the moratorium.

Damiana Aldana, a member of the board of directors of Clean and Green Pomona who is also community outreach chairwoman of the Associated Pomona Teachers, commented, "It is very appropriate that the task force consists mainly of Pomona residents who go to school, and work and play here in Pomona."

Last week, Aldana welcomed the decision of the city council to create a committee composed of a majority of Pomona residents.

Indeed, the global community must all work together to create a green community to mitigate the effects of global warming and learn to produce what we eat.

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