'This Little Square of Dirt'

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Authors
Preston, Bryan R
Advisor
Issue Date
2011-12-15
Keyword
Muncie
urban gardening
Degree
Department
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Abstract

Linda and Robert are urban gardeners extraordinaire. They have eliminated all of the grass in their yard (front and back) in order to grow food for their, and others’, consumption. But this film is not their biography, nor is it a gardening how-to demo, though Robert and Linda would be excellent contributors to such a program. Rather, through their words and their yard the film shows gardening as a social and spatial practice intimately tied to multiple scales of economic activity, from the local (sharing between neighbors) to the global (gardening for war, Ball canning jar industry). Histories and possible futures of Muncie, Indiana – their and my home, long ago labeled “Middletown, USA” – are bound up in gardening.