Slicing tomatoes and yellow bell peppers growing on my rooftop garden of my Greensboro apartment.

 

Fresh radishes harvested from the rooftop in spring 2003.
     

Things really picked up when my husband and I moved to a ground floor townhouse with a front and backyard to serve as my garden canvas. We built two 12 by 3 feet raised beds which I quickly filled with an early spring crop of lettuce, kale, cabbage, and various herbs.

     

Here is the yard of our Greensboro townhouse—a blank canvas. In this picture, it was early March and my head was full of early spring planting plans and ideas.

 

Two 12 by 3 feet raised beds allowed me to amend the otherwise heavy, clay soil with very little organic matter.

     

Once boring Bermuda grass, my raised bed now yields lush, tasty kale, purple cabbage, green lettuce and sugar snap peas. I allowed some wild strawberries to remain in front of the bed as a ground cover and ornamental; the boxwood shrub to the left provides good shade.

  

This sloping area of the yard was an erosion disaster occupied by scraggly juniper bushes.

     

I transformed this eroding slope by building two terrace supports and adding a half-ton of composted cow manure. Growing here are yellow squashes, pest-repelling marigolds, and Edamame soybeans (top) and mint and tansy (bottom).
     

A rural village in Western Kenya is the latest phase in my ongoing project of transforming urban and rural spaces into sites of food production, while also improving existing soil and creating food and habitat for birds and insects. In this garden, I am focusing on incorporating principles of permaculture design. Particularly, I am using layering to develop shaded areas for cultivars that can’t tolerate the direct, intense equatorial sun.
     
 
Though green, this backyard features mostly weeds and invasive vines and grasses. The house has not been occupied for some time, and before my coming the yard served as a trash heap for neighboring teachers.
     

Replacing the trash pit with a banana tree and adding a fence enclosure to keep free-range chickens away from tender seedlings, this yard has quickly transformed into a food-producing plot. Melons line the fence (lower right corner) and soy beans provide shade for lettuce seedlings while fixing nitrogen and producing tasty legumes. The green leaved plants with a tall seed top in the lower left is a native, edible green—a relative of amaranth.

     

A tasty harvest of young Swiss chard, cherry tomatoes (volunteers from a previous resident), and juicy cucumbers.