rethinking how land is used

Landshare - Connecting Growers to People with Land to Share - is a community movement that rethinks how land is owned and used.

Seems to me the future of cities is inevitably more people living more closely together. So the challenge is how to share the land and ensure there are still green spaces for food and the nurturing quality of green natural spaces.

One way is for workplaces to allocate green space and make land available to workers to grow stuff in their breaks and after work. A good way of enhancing staff morale, communication and sharing. Preferable, I think, to the current usual boring lawn and shrubs look. Schools increasingly have gardens, so it is a matter of extending the idea throughout the community.

One workplace that did this is the New Internationalist office in Oxford, England. A tarmac drive was transformed into a bee and bird-friendly border, incorporating herbs and vegetables. When the weather permits the space is used for meetings, formal and informal.

For people who are lucky enough to have a backyard, the Landshare philosophy and website offers the opportunity to share it with others. I know lots of people who have downsized and moved to apartments because they could no longer manage the garden. Landshare offers another alternative. Here is an example of an 'ad' on the website:

Hi - we live in Shepperton and have a very long back garden. It is laid mainly to lawn with some shrubs and then three quarters of the way down there is a pond. Beyond the pond, there is a patch of land in front of two sheds where we'd love someone to care for and hopefully grow some fruit / veg we could share. We have a baby and although we like to potter in the garden, we don't really have the skills or knowledge on how to grow vegetables. There is nothing there at the moment so you would have a blank canvas to work with! We also have most basic garden tools which you would be able to use plus some storage space. I look forward to hearing from someone who is interested. The area is really suited to one person to work on, not a group.

Hmm ... food / land for thought ...?