Happy Earth Day, “Urban Garden”

Urban gardening usually involves neighbors who know each other, frequently encountering one another in the garden. As neighbors, we greet each other. Though some gardeners, sometimes, communing with nature, prefer not to converse.

Something about urban or town dwelling, combined with farming, can politicize people. We gardeners may decide we should organize ourselves beyond gardening around some worthy cause. Some of us may feel inclined toward organizing the garden and gardeners. (In this post, the term "urban garden" and "community garden" are often used interchangeably, and the term "garden" can refer to a collection of many participants' rented plots or one individual's own plot or plots.)

There are different philosophies of gardening, different temperaments. A listserv, with its online activity, could produce another level or setting of interaction, or drama. Farmers can be protective or possessive: famously instigating the U.S. War of Independence, in Lexington and Concord, were Emerson’s “embattled farmers”.

Robert Bly said, “Making a garden. . .means attention to boundaries,” horticultural, interpersonal, jurisdictional. Everyone involved in a community garden – except perhaps the wildlife – can become aware of boundaries.

In managing the urban garden, it is good to keep in mind its goals. If these are to help individuals eat healthful food, meditate, exercise, support the water, soil, and wildlife, and beautify the neighborhood, much togetherness among gardeners may not be required. Depending on the size of the community garden, gardeners may gather once or twice a growing season to work together toting and distributing wood chips. I was asked to be the assistant manager of a community garden. I accepted most of the role, without the title. The task can be as demanding as managing a community theater, religious group, or civic association.

Two of my undergraduate professional writing students chose to create gardening manuals for their community gardeners. In one of the successful projects, the writer was surprised at the challenge of choosing her topics -- which included a comprehensive description of "good bugs" and "bad bugs" -- as well as the number of revisions involved. (You might check my photos of various garden insects -- pollinators, helpful predators, pests, which were visiting various gardens I maintained or observed -- at: https://tinyurl.com/insectgardenMDbyCKriesberg. The photos are intended to be viewed left to right and top to bottom, sorted by name, with a key to the insects at the end. You may also find a gallery of these garden insects at my Flickr photo album, https://tinyurl.com/gardeninsects-byCKriesberg. Do you recognize any of these insect inhabitants or visitors?)

My own growing of food crops has involved various attempts over the years. For examples, I have harvested, thus far, asparagus, carrots, chives, garlic, pumpkins, radish, strawberries, string beans, sunflower seeds, tomatoes, tomatillos, and wheat.

I succeeded in helping wild Monarch Butterflies. Recently, the International Union for Conservation of Nature has declared the migratory Monarch Butterflies, the type I seek to preserve, as endangered. Some observers report that these butterflies have thrived better in urban than rural settings. In my garden plot, I discovered evidence -- difficult to spot -- that a number of these revered butterflies had emerged from the chrysalis to winged adulthood.

I have learned of and observed three forms of governance and management for community gardens in Maryland, successively older and more decentralized. In College Park, a newly formed community garden was built by the gardeners and first garden manager, an employee of the city. Subsequent garden managers represented the garden to the busy Public Works, and supervised the garden directly, as part of their other municipal duties, often without any gardener as clear liaison; not all these managers had much experience gardening: experience with gardening is not essential to managing a community garden. In Silver Spring and adjacent towns, the National Capital Park and Planning has been affiliated with the management of a great many community gardens, and the manager I met was a hired certified gardener, who, with liaisons in various gardens, watched the gardens, calling many meetings. The gardeners might be chosen to mirror the demography of the town. (Or they might get chosen because they are friends or neighbors of current gardeners.) The gardening advocacy of First Lady Michelle Obama seemed to inspire women's participation. In both these gardening systems, the local government supplies water to the gardens. Finally, in Greenbelt, community gardening began as fundamental to the town, co-founded by President Franklin Roosevelt and First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. The "Victory Gardens" supported the World War II effort at home. The original street grid includes Garden Way, which still is lined with homeowners' gardens and ends in a community garden. But as the town grew, needing more land, the number of community gardens decreased, and the town became disengaged from the garden management. Only remnants of the original large garden areas remain, fenced clearings in forests. Because of the forest locations -- certainly not urban gardening -- these gardens might recall the concepts of sustainable agriculture adopted in "forest gardens," described as "Analog Forestry": www.analogforestry.org. For a while, Greenbelt purchased its wood-chips from College Park; today, many Greenbelt gardeners attempt making their own compost, and community gardeners carry and store water, as needed. They elect their own managers for the gardens. Some gardeners have tilled and harvested in their community garden plots peacefully for 30 years.

I have reminisced about my two favorite community garden managers. They both liked fixing things, with carpentry and plumbing, though did not know much about gardening or horticulture. They never told gardeners what to plant and what not to plant, nor attempted to educate gardeners about gardening. They didn't mention "the rules". They had superb people skills, but did not publicize any conflicts nor the resolution to them (they had no patience for drama); they encouraged the gardeners to rely on each other. Both men were local government employees, hence accountable to the government for their policies in garden work, and both were supported by financial and logistical resources from the local government supplying the community garden.

The gardening experience, particularly as it gets farther from the urban locales, is not without its risk. Getting one's "hands dirty" can produce fungus in fingernails, a condition that, while harmless, could be cosmetically unsightly and difficult to reverse. More importantly, ticks can be a problem. They call for preventative applications of deet and permecian to skin or clothing. I found an attached possible wood tick in College Park, probably from the garden, and a lone star tick and deer tick in Greenbelt. Receiving antibiotics early, I haven't yet had any medical reaction to the ticks.

Community gardening is perhaps inevitably a test of the communal experience, and some gardeners are more interested in socializing (and email gossip) than harvesting. The experience and rights of the solitary gardener remain an ideal for some. Whether the experience is viewed communally or individually, one aspiration of the garden experience could be safety, including among people, as biblically described (Micah 4:4): "Everyone will sit under their own vine and under their own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid". The poets and lovers of poetry have commented much on gardens and gardening.  Recent Nobel Prize winner for literature, Louise Glück, writing about gardening, appeals to nature and exclaims, “I am responsible for these vines”.  Visiting the community garden, seemingly far from human discord, I am reminded of the inscription (attributed to Dorothy Frances Gurney) in many a garden: “the kiss of the sun for pardon, the song of the birds for mirth, one is nearer G-d’s heart in a garden than anywhere else on earth”.

(And here is a video of me visiting the urban garden, interviewed and filmed

by Mark Mendez for his website, "Real Life" .)

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/ee302a_8edf925f701440059c867d675bb5c5bc/1080p/mp4/file.mp4