Fighting for your right to have an urban garden

Does Detroit need a Food and Flowers Freedom Act? That’s the question I’m left with after reading this story in today’s Washington Post.

While the story focuses on a particularly determined urban gardener/entrepreneur in Los Angeles, there may be some lessons here for Detroit’s ongoing efforts to promote urban farming as the urban planner’s version of Miracle Grow for busting blight, generating much-needed tax revenue for the city, and yes, producing fresh food.

Tara Kolla, the gardener/entrepreneur profiled in the piece, believes that feeding her “fellow urbanites homegrown tomatoes, fresh eggs and sweet corn will change the world one backyard at a time.” Trouble is, upset neighbors and stifling local zoning rules stood in Kolla’s way.

Specifically, a zoning ordinance written in the 1940s allowed residential farmers to grow (and sell) veggies, but not fruit, nuts or flowers.

The tomato, of course, is technically a fruit, and broccoli is actually a flower.

The story goes on to note that several big cities — among them New York and Seattle — are beginning to adopt zoning laws that allow for beekeeping and raising goats. Detroit, of course, also figures into the new pro-urban farming zeitgeist. From the article:

In Detroit, where zoning laws ban growing crops and raising livestock for profit, city planner Kathryn Lynch Underwood is part of a work group rewriting the regulations and defining what kinds of urban farms might need more oversight.

“The city has not been treating it as an illegal use or a nuisance because it has been a good thing,” Underwood said.

She is hopeful that urban agriculture and the city’s nearly 1,000 community gardens will create good jobs in a city that desperately needs them and put vacant lots to use in blighted neighborhoods.