Gardening is my solace. Watching new stuff happen in the garden is a metaphor for life. Everything happens in a garden. Let’s all get out and plant some shit!l ~ Ron Finley

Fashion designer and “gangsta gardener” Ron Finley has a vision for how communities should live and work together. Ron’s do-it-yourself remedy for his South Central L. A. food prison, where, by design, residents have to escape in order to find healthy food, was to plant fruit trees and vegetables on the parkway outside his house, and share his harvest with neighbors. In violation of the city’s parkway ordinance, Finley was cited and fined. His 2013 TEDTalk about urban gardening, with 2 million views and still rising, made him an international star.

Ron has spoken recently at symposia in Copenhagen and in Sheffield, England, and has just been named a “Good Food Champion of Los Angeles.” Ron’s relentless efforts have helped reshape Los Angeles’s parkway ordinance and, most recently, a proposal for an urban farming plan. His poetic vision has seized popular imagination and has, as one Orange County developer puts it, ‘changed land use laws.’ Ron talks in his backyard garden and nursery about his ideas and plans.

In Sheffield, England. “It’s about wonderment, beauty, creativity.” Photo courtesy Sheffield Telegraph.

More links:

For more information about Ron and his projects, go to http://ronfinley.com/

To view Ron’s TED Talk, visit: http://www.ted.com/speakers/ron_finley

Tags: Ron Finley, Parkway Ordinance, Urban Agriculture, Sunflowers, Gardening, Food Deserts, Gangsta Gardener, Guerilla Gardening, Ron Finley Project, Eat Forum, Urban Progress

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