The gardeners of these "patches of Eden" include children and elders, immigrants, and "low-income and no-income people." And their gardens are overflowing with healthy food and beautiful flowers -- dramatic evidence of an entirely new kind of ecological devotion, one expressed not in expeditions to the wilderness but in the transformation of blighted lots into green sanctuaries. A Patch of Eden celebrates the achievements of the inner-city gardeners, relating in detail the stories of community gardens in Harlem, San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Chicago.