Design

Transforming lawns to a vibrant wildlife habitats, growing vegetables, and carefully tending 'our' patches of land are sustaining activities, ones that ground me in what I can do, and away from worrying about the difficult environmental times that face us. My work (as a garden educator) is also encouraging: I help folks learn how to be better stewards by being better gardeners, promoting native plants and restoring wildlife habitats, and am definitely an encouraging voice about growing more vegetables and fruits in the open spaces (lawn or not) that many Americans have access to, whether on their own 'property' or not. I love the idea of guerrilla gardening - planting plants where they should be, but aren't! These are the curbside planting areas, empty 'hell strips' between sidewalks and roads, and barren parking lot edges. Gardening and stewardship provides hope, for restoration of both native and created garden space. At least that's what true for m...

I've been reading an excellent, and beautifully written, collection of essays called Grassroots Gardening: Rituals for Sustaining Activism by Donna Schaper . It's about gardening and keeping grounded. I came across a mention of it in An Urban Plot , written by a gardener in North Carolina. I'm quite certain I wouldn't have come across it otherwise. So for a miniscule price + shipping, I've obtained this lovely book of meditations on gardening. Something I connected with, and why I bought a copy, was an prologue quote posted in An Urban Plot that "I garden to remind myself of my hope." And her next post about the book included: "I just love this image of growing hope and curing despair through the garden and the act of recreating (create again, renew) while recreating (activity done for enjoyment)! Yes indeed, good stuff happens in the garden, layers and layers of amazing stuff that one can not even begin to measure by any standardized means....