The Las Vegas desert environment poses significant challenges to transforming a debris-strewn plot of land into a community garden. Beyond climate, the transient population attracted to Vegas casinos does not maintain a tradition of community gardening as in other US urban areas. Schafer alludes to these horticultural hurdles but, as a volunteer, observer, graduate student, and sociologist, he focuses on the urban, cultural, historical, sociological, and interpersonal factors impacting the implantation of the Vegas Roots Community Garden (VRCG) at the edge of historic West Las Vegas, a predominantly Black neighborhood. Grounded in carefully documented sociological theory and ethnographic methodology, this case study focuses a close lens on VRCG's 2011 implantation and its evolution to the present. A main force in the garden's creation and survival, its director steered the garden's focus from addressing local food insecurity to catering to a diet-conscious clientele. Although not a how-to manual, this study will provide food for thought to anyone involved with, studying, or interested in initiating community gardening. The detailed notes and solid bibliography encourage further investigation. A must read for anyone interested in urban agriculture. Highly recommended.

Choice Reviews

Against the neon and seemingly inhospitable arid backdrop of Las Vegas, Schafer offers a searching analysis of urban agriculture that centers the challenges of creating community and place. This nuanced book takes community gardening as a process of cultural production, and in so doing, makes the case for why tracing culture at a macro and micro level can attune us to the complexities of community.

Joshua Sbicca, Colorado State University, author of Food Justice Now!: Deepening the Roots of Social Struggle

Not many cities have a stronger image and identity than Las Vegas, where notions of impermanence and transience reign supreme in an otherwise inhospitable natural environment. But the bigger the perception, the more complicated the reality. In this compelling ethnography, Tyler Schafer analyzes a group of Las Vegans working against many of the popular ideas about their city by literally and figuratively putting down roots in its ground. These community gardens and gardeners offer insightful windows into understanding the complicated practices behind making place and culture in today's city. Weaving an array of stories against the backdrop Las Vegas and all its excess and waste, the book convincingly shows readers the simultaneous messiness and necessity of community.

Richard E. Ocejo, Associate Professor of Sociology, John Jay College and the Graduate Center, CUNY, Author of Masters of Craft: Old Jobs in the New Urban Economy

Located in the heart of the Mojave Desert and famous for the glitz and glamour of its central strip, Las Vegas is an unlikely place to fine a community garden. But not only does the Vegas Roots community garden exist, it provides fertile ground from which to explore the intersections of urban history, culture and social movements. With a deep and empathetic ethnographic eye and a keen understanding of social theory, Tyler Schafer reveals that the planting of roots in an urban landscape is about much more than the cultivation of vegetables. Ultimately, he tells a story about how individuals attempt to build community amidst the broader social forces that constrain their lives.

Alison Alkon, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of the Pacific