Kate Brown Lecture | "Tiny Gardens Everywhere"
Thursday, October 23, 2025 4:15–6:00 PM
Description
From pre-Industrial England to modern-day Washington and Amsterdam, ordinary people, working with each other, with plants and microbes, cultivated life in the unlikeliest of places. Tiny Gardens Everywhere explores how urban gardeners reactivated commons in European and North American cities in the long 20th century. Using the deluge of nutrients that flow into cities, working class gardeners regenerated wasteland, built the first garden city communities, and engaged in the most productive agriculture in recorded human history. Following the plants and microbes, urban gardeners also built mutual aid societies that advocated for equity, social welfare and rights—rights not to liberty and the pursuit of happiness (who can eat that?) but to food, fuel and shelter; for well-being for all.Guest lecturer Kate Brown is a professor of science, technology and society at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Co-sponsored by History, Environmental Studies, Geography, and Sociology and Anthropology