About

As the Kitchen Gardener, Debra Hammond  has grown food gardens for families in their own backyards and blogs to help them eat well from their gardens; they build a virtual community garden of kitchen gardeners. This space lets all share their questions and best practices about:

  • getting started: who, what, where, when & how
  • the seasonality of fruits and vegetables
  • what to do with the amazing bounty from a garden: recipes, tips, preserving, donating to soup kitchens
  • vegetables, especially superfoods, that may be novel to your table
  • pausing in our busy lives to eat a sun-warmed strawberry

Debra Hammond, ChicagoDebra Hammond

For the past fifteen years, Debra has grown beautiful kitchen gardens on Chicago’s Southside. She brings her passion for good food and the pleasure of eating to all she grows. Debra’s masterful gardens have appeared on the web and local tv and in the Chicago Tribune and the Hyde Park Herald. Debra holds an MBA from the Booth School of Business, The University of Chicago, a Masters in Library Science from The University of Chicago and studied Classical Languages at Carleton College. She brings her book learning and her practical hands-on experience to growing healthy, organic and beautiful kitchen gardens in your backyard.

“The gardens that have graced this mortal Eden of ours are the best evidence of humanity’s reason for being on Earth. Where history unleashes its destructive and annihilating forces, we must, if we are to preserve our sanity, to say nothing of our humanity, work against and in spite of them. We must seek out healing or redemptive forces and allow them to grow in us. That is what it means to tend our garden.” – Gardens: an essay on the human condition. Robert Pogue Harrison. 2008.

“To work elegantly, intensely, gracefully and incredibly efficiently.” — Edward Tufte