Two years ago, we broke ground on the Canal Community Garden. Dr. Daphne Miller stopped by to see what’s taken root.


Walking into the popular Picante eatery in San Rafael, California, I found lunch patrons clustered in the corner of the dining room, intently watching the scene unfolding before them. Had they been enjoying a football playoff or a soccer match, this would have been nothing out of the ordinary. But there was no television screen, only a plate- glass window—and the action captivating these diners was taking place outside in the lot next door. There, oblivious to their audience, gardeners of all ages


and ethnicities were digging, chatting, laughing, and fer- rying seedlings and soil in all directions. This was planting day for Canal Community Garden, and members were kicking off their winter season with record attendance. “This is so great,” restaurant patron Kathleen Walker told me, peering out the window. The last time she ate at Picante, the lot had been a litter-strewn eyesore. “Watching this would definitely make me want to come back here,” she said. Her teenage daughter nodded in agreement.


What could be so mesmerizing about a group of people tending garden beds? Salmon tacos in hand, I found 54 · LAND&PEOPLE · SPRING/SUMMER 2014


the last free table with a garden view and settled in to reflect on the morning I had just spent on the other side of the glass.


VITAL SIGNS: GREEN Earlier that day, using a cell phone to plan my route to the garden, I’d been struck by how easy it was to spot the gray expanse of the Canal neighborhood against the mostly green map of the rest of Marin—a county consistently ranked as one of the healthiest and wealthiest in America. As a practicing family physician, I have come to believe


that these bird’s-eye assessments of the landscape are as important as the tests I run on patients in my exam room. In fact, given the mountain of data demonstrating a cor- relation between greater neighborhood “greenness” and a range of positive health outcomes—from reduced rates of depression to longer life expectancies—I now believe that maps outperform my stethoscope and blood pressure cuff as a piece of diagnostic equipment. I also believe that public health depends as much on the community environ- ment as it does on doctors dispensing pills or convincing


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