The frantic rush of spring is past and we sit back to enjoy the beauty of our labors. While you're admiring your special piece of earth, think about sharing your bounty with others. Two ways come to mind.

First, photograph your garden and enter our second Gardening in Small Spaces Contest. The rules and an entry form are on Page 10. Last year, we traveled from Frankfort to Mundelein to find our winners and photograph their gardens for our January/February issue. We hope we can visit you this summer and that your garden will grace the January/February, 1997, issue.

Second, consider sharing your extra vegetables and fruit with the less fortunate. Contact a food pantry in your neighborhood to see if they will accept fresh produce or call the Greater Chicago Food Depository at 312-247-3663 to see where you can take donations.

The impetus behind this program, Plant A Row for the Hungry, is the Garden Writers Association of America and this program works remarkably well in many cities. In San Jose, for instance, articles in the newspaper led to 75 tons

(as in TONS) of food being donated to local pantries. That may be a drop in the proverbial bucket for these organizations that coordinate food pantries, but consider the quality: fresh, vitamin-rich, home-grown vegetables and fruits.

As the regions of the former Yugoslavia lurch toward peace, one of the first things the residents of the war-torn towns such as Sarajevo did this spring was turn over the ground to plant vegetable gardens. Indeed, a study done for the United Nations reports that a significant amount of the world's food is being produced in urban gardens and that the trend is increasing. Ninety percent of the vegetables consumed in China are raised in cities, according to the Urban Agriculture Network. Nutrition studies in poor countries found children who had access to fresh produce were as healthy as children in more developed countries. In three years, malnutrition among rural children in one Philippine island dropped from 40 percent to 25 percent when locally produced food was available. The report also said urban agriculture and aquaculture (raising fish commercially) aided in the recycling of refuse including sewage.

Getting back to the Garden Writers Association of America, we would like to extend congratulations to managing editor Carolyn Ulrich for winning a Quill & Trowel Award from the group. The article she entered was on the Chicago Botanic Garden and appeared in Horticulture magazine last year. For us, Carolyn writes in this issue about a tiny garden in the Sheffield neighborhood beginning on page 39 and visits one of the great ethnic garden clubs in the area-the Czech Garden Club on page 44.

An obit in the paper recently informed us that Brother Charles Reckamp had died at the age of 91. Brother Charles had a profound effect on the breeding of plants for the Chicago area, from the Techny arborvitae that is a standard in the shrub world to the many varieties of daylilies that he developed and partnered with Roy Klehm to bring into the market. I'll always remember interviewing him some years ago and the question he asked me: "Do you garden?" He didn't want to talk to someone who didn't understand the passion that is gardening.