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With help from landscape architects and social scientists, the Family Gardens (Jardins Familiaux) of Ris-Orangis provide solace and sustenance to this apartment block suburb 14 miles south of Paris. Creating family gardens for the urban working class in France dates to Father Jules Auguste Lemire, an advocate of social Catholicism, who founded the French League of the Corner of Earth and Home in 1896, so that every worker could have his own “Corner of the Earth.” Ris-Orangis, home to many immigrants from around the world who have flocked to France in recent decades, built these family gardens in 1998, constructing triangular plots around a central path to promote encounters, dialogue, and an exchange of ideas and food. The plots, which are leased to residents for around thirty euros a year, became so popular the gardens have been expanded three times. There are now more than 300 of the roughly 1,000-square-foot plots, and the waiting list for one is around four years.

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With help from landscape architects and social scientists, the Family Gardens (Jardins Familiaux) of Ris-Orangis provide solace and sustenance to this apartment block suburb 14 miles south of Paris. Creating family gardens for the urban working class in France dates to Father Jules Auguste Lemire, an advocate of social Catholicism, who founded the French League of the Corner of Earth and Home in 1896, so that every worker could have his own “Corner of the Earth.” Ris-Orangis, home to many immigrants from around the world who have flocked to France in recent decades, built these family gardens in 1998, constructing triangular plots around a central path to promote encounters, dialogue, and an exchange of ideas and food. The plots, which are leased to residents for around thirty euros a year, became so popular the gardens have been expanded three times. There are now more than 300 of the roughly 1,000-square-foot plots, and the waiting list for one is around four years.

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