Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy

Urban Farm DB summary

This is a review of Illène Pevec's book Growing a Life: Teen Gardeners Harvest Food, Health, and Joy (New Village Press, 2016, 407 pages), which presents the experiences of youth — typically low-income and ethnically diverse — participating in a dozen gardening programs across four US states: Colorado, New York, California and New Mexico. Examples cited include youth in New York helping plant green walls and youth in New Mexico learning to grow traditional Native American foods. The review characterizes the book as research-based evidence documenting the effects of school gardening programs on adolescent development and well-being.