Professor Kate Brown talks about her new book, ‘Tiny Gardens Everywhere’

Give peas a chance (they could bring your community together)

By Vaibhavi Addala
The Tech
Mar. 5, 2026

Excerpt:

But where will the space for these gardens come from? Brown visualizes using abandoned or unused spots when possible, but argues that urban gardening can be done in the smallest of spaces — and that new technologies, such as vertical farming, are not needed to solve the crisis. Instead, she believes that people simply need to adapt traditional gardening methods for varying conditions; as an example, she referenced her winter garden box, which is very small but still feeds her throughout the winter. If people do so in community gardens, she says, they “would be healthier and less lonely and isolated,” and “we’d have greener, more comfortable, safer cities.”

While she does acknowledge the many hurdles facing this idea, including municipal regulations and aesthetic guidelines, Brown suggests that people try not to be deterred by red tape. She mentioned a (presumably unsanctioned) food forest that she planted around a school in Washington, D.C., which “people loved,” and suggests that residents “just start planting [in unused spaces]” without waiting for official permission. Often, she says, these gardens are not only accepted, but welcomed.

In fact, Brown believes that such practices can be directly applicable not only to our broader society, but even to the MIT community itself, where according to the 2023 Undergraduate Enrolled Student Survey, 13% of undergraduates go to bed hungry at least one night a week. To combat this, Brown suggested an increase in urban agriculture on MIT’s campus — using greenhouses or self-sustaining cold frames during the winter — to help solve the problem. As of now, she herself has begun building a greenhouse on campus, but hopes to expand to other empty spaces in the future. Doing so would build on several MIT community farming efforts, including MIT Farm, the East Campus Community Garden, and garden plots for Ashdown residents.

Brown and other researchers have shown that communal gardening is an innately Mens et Manus (et Cor) activity with innumerable benefits. Perhaps, as she believes, practicing it in our own home really could bring us closer together.

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