For University of Washington professor Sally Brown, it’s always been about food in cities.

She got her start as a chef in New York City, then ran a wholesale vegetable business selling only locally grown vegetables in the New York area. Brown then went to graduate school to learn how city waste could be used to enrich soils on nearby farms.

Now a research associate professor in the UW’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, Brown and collaborators have published the most extensive compilation to date explaining how to grow urban agriculture, and how doing so could save American cities.

The compilation, titled “Sowing Seeds in the City,” includes articles by academics, journalists, avid gardeners — and even a former White House pastry chef who helped plant the vegetable garden on the White House lawn. The two-book series was published by Springer in April, with co-editors Elizabeth Hodges Snyder of the University of Alaska Anchorage and Kristen McIvor with Harvest Pierce County.