Community Gardening: Online Videos

John Koehler, from the YouTube channel growingyourgreens.com, takes you on a tour of a community garden in Yonkers, New York.

The mission of the Peterson Garden Project in Chicago is to recruit and education a new generation of gardeners who wish to take control of their own food supply, grow organically, and make urban gardening the norm. Join LaManda Joy, founder of the Project, as she provides step-by-step instructions on how to plant your community garden plot. This is one of the Project's many short videos on basic gardening techniques. The series is available on YouTube and is called The Garden Minute.

A documentary trailer about a seed swap program started by Dr. Campbell, an anthropologist living in the Ozarks. The full documentary is also available on YouTube.

Online videos can be a mine of ideas and how-to information whether you are an experienced or beginning gardener.

Places to find videos online:

• A video-hosting site such as YouTube is a good place to start.  The videos cover a broad range of topics, offer step-by-step instructions when needed, and are often fun and entertaining.
• Many gardening websites have how-to videos.  Check out the National Gardening Association's videos, available on YouTube, on performing basic gardening tasks.
• TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design), is a series of conferences run by a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting "ideas worth spreading."  Over 1900 TED Talk videos are freely available online. Presenters include top innovators in science, technology, and culture. Topics include bees, botany, gardens, sustainability, and more.
• Use Google Search. When using Google Search, add the word "video" to your search string.

What should a community do with its unused land? Pam Warhurst, and a group of volunteers, from the small English market town of Todmorden, West Yorkshire, answer that question when they convert vacant plots of land into communal vegetable gardens and start a revolution.

The Hidden Beauty of Pollination
Filmmaker Louis Schwartzberg introduces us to the world of pollen and pollinators with clips from his film "Wings of Life."

A Teacher Growing Green in the South Bronx
Stephen Ritz, a teacher in the South Bronx, shows how a school gardening program produced both food and hope in a tough New York neighborhood.

Why We're Storing Billions of Seeds
The Millennium Seed Bank has stored over 3 billion seeds to date from essential plants.  Jonathan Drori explains why.