Not all of the five gardens I contributed to this year are a source of joy or pride. The community garden is an eyesore. It's a tangled mess of cosmos, morning glory, and weeds. The garden was started last year by a neighbour and I was more than happy to pitch in. After an initial group effort by about five of us, the community gardeners all sort of went their own way. There were no further group efforts to weed or plant or plan this garden. It shows. Yuck.
I did a fair bit of weeding in spring and have planted purple coneflower, sage, liatris, hosta, yarrow and iris in the plot (impossible to tell from the picture right?). Plants alone won't make this community garden click. It needs people coming together to get the job done. Nobody has taken the initiative to get people involved since that first garden gathering. So maybe it's time to put up a poster for a Weeding Sunday or Bulb Planting Monday. When I first put the shovel into the dirt at the community garden I was so excited. That excitement has turned into disappointment. The only option is to do something about it because there is no way that a garden should be less valuable to a community than a patch of grass.
Not all of the five gardens I contributed to this year are a source of joy or pride. The community garden is an eyesore. It's a tangled mess of cosmos, morning glory, and weeds. The garden was started last year by a neighbour and I was more than happy to pitch in. After an initial group effort by about five of us, the community gardeners all sort of went their own way. There were no further group efforts to weed or plant or plan this garden. It shows. Yuck. 
I did a fair bit of weeding in spring and have planted purple coneflower, sage, liatris, hosta, yarrow and iris in the plot (impossible to tell from the picture right?). Plants alone won't make this community garden click. It needs people coming together to get the job done. Nobody has taken the initiative to get people involved since that first garden gathering. So maybe it's time to put up a poster for a Weeding Sunday or Bulb Planting Monday. When I first put the shovel into the dirt at the community garden I was so excited. That excitement has turned into disappointment. The only option is to do something about it because there is no way that a garden should be less valuable to a community than a patch of grass.
3 comments:
I'm so sorry to hear your community garden has been a disappointment! I remember your excitement when you started it......it was one of the first posts I read on your blog.
I agree you should do what you can to get it revived and get others involved again...it is such a worthwhile project.
Being an overly energetic organizer, I have learned that generally people have lots of enthusiasm but not always a lot of self initiation. Hopefully, with some constant reminders, a regular meeting time or something, you'll pull everyone together again!
Community gardens are tough without a plan for maintenance.
My garden tour gives out grants for various planting projects around town. It's hard to make my committee realize that the largest chunk of costs for putting up baskets on street poles is not the plants or the baskets, but the cost of keeping them watered by a service throughout the summer.
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