Urban-Knights. The young, hip 20-40 year olds who live in big cities and small cities, houses and apartments all across America. It is the biggest growing army of young gardeners today.
These ‘urban knights’ are planting shrubs, flowers, edibles and pop-up gardens on balconies, in alley ways, and on street parklets – even in abandoned buildings and walk-in shipping containers. Anywhere they can find a spot or a pot, they are planting something.
These gardens have a new twist to them. The "new garden" is certainly beautiful flower and vegetable and herbs designed with a flair. It is also gardens mixed with with wind turbines and reclaimed materials, water saving plants and going vertical in small and large cities.
These new Urban Knights have picked up the mantel to save our cities and bring back a healthy lifestyle. They are farming, raising chickens, breeding plants and taking up horticulture as a profession, like Travis Murray from Biltmore and Dr. Kate Santos from Costa Farms. Gardening is part of that lifestyle for this back to the earth, stay local generation.
Gardening is a gateway to the virtues of nurturing, patience and caring, virtues lost during the "me me" years of 1990-2007. As we watch the trends reflected in the garden, we see people really getting the fact that we are Mother Nature's caretakers, and gardening is one of our tasks.
Whether you are planting herbs in a windowsill or landscaping a rooftop, we all have moved from not merely decorating but actually gardening with a purpose, gardening for a "new good life".
Suzi
