"Growing your own tomatoes in a pot," says Spring Gillard, "or having a worm bin on your balcony is a political act, as much as a symbol of independence as Gandhi's spinning wheel." As editor of Compost Hotline News, an advice service that started on the City Farmer website in 1996, Spring Gillard gathered her diary entries with essays on city farming for Diary of a Compost Hotline Operator (New Society $22.95), complete with a cast of characters crazed by the gardening bug. She lives in Vancouver, having graduated from the University of Victoria with a major in French and linguistics. 0-86571-492-4

[BCBW 2003] "Gardening"