Community gardens grow plants to preserve food traditions

Gardens have long been a place where people save seeds, pass on heirloom varieties of plants, and preserve old-timey variations that might have fallen out of fashion in the garden catalogs. 

But there’s another type of preservation happening in these spaces. Many gardeners in New York City came from elsewhere, and the foods in many plots—like warty bitter melons, succulent Malabar spinach and leafy callaloo—speak to those places and their traditions.

Ena McPherson is a long-time gardener and community activist. She spoke with WNYC's Morning Edition hos Michael Hill about how community gardens are helping to preserve some of those cultural traditions.