Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Vernal Equinox
Saturday, March 21, 2015
Golden petals salute pedestrians in splendid isolation: crocuses are in bloom! Smiles the size of Kansas are on everyone’s faces. Happiness greets this signal sign of spring. Urban gardeners drop their seed catalogs and search outdoors for snowdrops and Lenten roses, spring is shy. We crave more and listen. Cardinals begin their courtship song as the sun rises in conjunction with the vernal equinox. The Earth and Moon harmoniously revolve and celebrate with a solar eclipse. Heaven and Earth pull us together. We cross into longer days and shorter nights. Tight buds loosen, green sprouts emerge at margins, torrential streams run full, huge tides reveal coastlines hidden most of the year. The Earth tilts sunwards, all aboard, it tilts for us. We’re ready.
Winter’s long goodbye
Some traditions are fallen by the wayside, no peas sown this St. Patrick’s day. Our cold frames are ever more useful, clever and ambitious gardeners use cold frames, cloches, and Quonset hut type row covers to advance spring. We search for snow free grounds and check for frost in the soil. Ever hopeful, there is no question everyone desires fresh green growth, cheerful blooms, the chance to put on gloves and work the soil. Not for us over heated apartments and monitored interiors. Old boots and clothes for the yard are somewhere beneath the hats, gloves and scarves. Soon we’ll put away winter gear until next autumn.
GET THE LATEST BREAKING NEWS HERE -- SIGN UP FOR GOLOCAL FREE DAILY EBLASTBulbs emerge
Last fall’s bulbs are emerging, green spikes hint at the daffodils and tulips eager to rise and shine. Old timers and new-comers alike migrate into garden centers as workers un-wrap palettes of fertilizer, peat, dried manure, and pelletized limestone. Containers of every size and description accommodate any ambition. Seminars, workshops and clubs sponsor symposia and unravel the mysteries of composting, seed selection, and best practices. Spring is an active season and we step up to the compost heap with renewed confidence. Welcome sunshine, welcome warmer air, hurrah to all. Soon, peep frogs will chirp, willows unfurl, countryside foragers seek fiddlehead ferns, life will shake out of winter slumber and grow. Green watercress defies cold water and green patches reclaim waterways.
Prepare the way
Urban gardeners have prepared the way. Are you discouraged in re-purposed mill building lofts? Does the lack of a garden space put your green thumb into the not now, maybe never but perhaps for later file? Seek out your local community garden. A beacon of hope in our post- industrial cities guides us towards abandoned city lots. Many municipal governments respond to our needs for fresh, home grown foods. The urge to plant, nurture, and cultivate is strong. Strongly voiced, spaces once cluttered with the detritus of urban life, old vehicles and appliances, the midnight dumpers who insult our senses, are showing signs of new life. Our governments often offer vacant lots to neighborhood gardens. Associations buy up lots at tax sales. Squatters create pop up gardens. Strong under- currents swirl in our urban spaces.
Best aspects
One of the best aspects of urban living is the discovery of opportune spaces amid once thriving industrial or blighted neighborhoods. Municipalities are hauling away debris, testing soils for pollution, and open the lots to gardeners. Be proactive, contact your local government and request councils to not only clear away the old trash. Community gardens are win- win opportunities that raise the quality of life for local voters and taxpayers. Sometimes, as in my hometown’s Southside Community Garden, umbrella organizations provide guidance to establish new community gardens and support those already in existence.
Looks like what?
What does a community garden look like? Paradise comes to mind, no two are alike although all share common features. Each garden plot reflects the gardener’s interests, their cultural heritage and needs. Harmony reconciles differences. Commonly laid out in raised beds and distributed to those expressing desire, spring is the period of highest demand. Yet experienced gardeners understand growing seasons start soon after winter snows melt away and many familiar vegetables, such as kale, broccoli, Brussel’s sprouts and salad greens are successfully grown far into the cold weather. Search for your neighborhood garden and sign up as soon as possible. Don’t be discouraged if there is a waiting list, some will falter, others move, and vacancies appear.
Civic composting
Lots of communities have civic composting programs and community gardens often benefit from low cost or free compost delivered by dump-truck loads to the community garden. My local community garden has raised plank plant beds as well as a covered shelter with built in tables for the myriads of garden tasks best done standing. Others have sheds for storing tools; some established gardens have shovels, rakes, and accessories such as stakes and wire trellis materials in the sheds or under simple lock and key. Donate unused or surplus tools to community gardens. Urban gardeners with limited living and storage space just don’t have room for extra pots or tools. I donate extra pots to my former community garden as a friendly gesture common to all gardeners.
Gather together
Urban gardens bring people together. There is lots of comradery among gardeners. To grow, nurture, and care for living plants expresses human qualities that reach far beyond our particular backgrounds. The common interest in home grown nutritious foods is a strong bond. It is easy to meet people whose paths cross in the garden. Different heritages introduce crops and methods from across the globe. Varieties of plants unknown to one may be commonplace to others. We all benefit from one another’s experience and know how. It happens to me and will happen for you.
Kohl rabe meets Bok Choi
I first encountered kohl rabe when Czech neighbors raised a fine crop next door. Bok Choi flourished in a raised bed nearby. A gardener who combined aromatherapy and yoga not only had fragrant herbs and flowers but also moved gracefully from one yoga pose to another as she cultivated both garden and body. A delightful spirit pervades community gardens and friendships form. Many older gardens benefit from optimism: I met my first apricot in a community garden, the tree planted years before by someone who probably never tasted the delicious fruit. A thicket of asparagus filled a raised bed long after the planter moved on. In my hometown, lots of the community gardeners arrive on bicycles, often made at a nearby community bicycle center that repairs and designs crazy unique bicycles. Bags of potting soil, dried manure, peat moss and vermiculite arrive on handle bars. Intrepid Nate set up a collection route among his vegetarian friends. He picks up their kitchen scraps for his compost in a homemade trailer towed behind his bicycle. It was in a community garden that I encountered tithonia, the vigorous Mexican sunflower whose zinnia like blooms are red/orange. The seeds collected from that single prize plant have sustained years of successive plantings in subsequent gardens. Our friendship developed as we knelt and cultivated our plots. It endures, so far, we have too.
Find space
I was lucky to find a garden space and home in the city. Long before I found the just right homestead, I used my community plot as a nursery for a future garden. It was in the plot that I established raspberries, started hard wood cuttings from butterfly bush, and collected those perennial herbs such as beebalm and the mints that do best when lifted and divided. Many community gardens sponsor how to workshops. Our simple bulletin board with thumbtacked hand printed notices kept everyone and all up to speed on seed swaps, plant sales, lost pets and talks. Some gardeners found themselves speaking to local politicians for the first time in the community garden. It was in the garden that our ward councilman listened to concerns for the plugged up granite corner drain that formed a large puddle after every rainfall. A city crew arrived to remove decades of winter sand and branches. Just outside of the garden fence, the gardener’s reach extended beyond their plots.
One and all
Often, I was the only gardener present. This was especially true when the first flush of spring garden fever formed lines of earnest folk armed with forks and spoons. Peace is not confined to the solitary. Rather, we formed kinship from our common interest. Many evenings in our old Victorian neighborhood were spent under the only large tree, a copper beech that had somehow survived the fire that destroyed the house on the lot. Folks brought musical instruments and a chimera became the focal point for impromptu drumming as well as song, dance, and rapt guitar. No one really knew one another until the garden brought us together. Each plot assumes the personality of those who tend the plants. We cared for one another and watered plots for those who left town. My abundant crops were never plundered by others nor were animals let loose to run through lovingly tended beds. Territorial disputes just didn’t come up.
Magic is nearby
Does the first crocus enchant you? Does the street light illuminate your garden plot? Does hope triumph over experience and loving couples marry in your garden? All these happen in community gardens and I hope you’re searching right now for one that is close to your home. The only requirement for most gardens is willingness. The rest will fall into place with elbow grease. Most people find themselves at peace in their garden. If you doubt this, you haven’t given your community garden an honest try. Don’t have a community garden nearby? It’s time to start one! Our times are fraught with challenges. Life is difficult for all. Yet the oldest example of a garden is Eden, a paradise. Start one now.
Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.
Related Articles
- Leonard Moorehead the Urban Gardener: Hollies Forever Holidays
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Before and After
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Bless Garden Catalogs
- Leonard Moorehead the Urban Gardener: Gardener’s Wish List
- Leonard Moorehead the Urban Gardener: “Scent, First and Last”
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Fall Gardens Flush and Full
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Wreaths Go Full Circle
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Icy Grip? Pass the Salt
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Winter Blooms
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Hope Springs Eternal
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Patience is Virtuous
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: The Great Melt
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: All For Love
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Seeds in the Snowbed
- Leonard Moorehead, TheUrban Gardener: Snow is Good for Gardens
- Leonard Moorehead, the Urban Gardener: Spring’s Snowy Prelude
- Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: Let’s Go Green
