The birth of a garden.

The Birth of a Garden

The Setting:

I live in a rooming house, see photo above, on a busy down town street in Peterborough, On. It’s an old two story Victorian red brick row house with a veranda all the way across the front. There is a green space between the veranda and the city side walk which extends the full width of the building, sixty feet and is about ten feet from veranda to sidewalk. This area is planted with flowering shrubs and evergreens, no grass. There is a thick border of tiger lilies along the edge of the city sidewalk. Near the centre of the building front is a walkway from the city sidewalk through the garden to the veranda. From the side walk to the road is a green space seven feet wide and sixty feet long filled with grass and weeds. No one wants to look after it.

The first seed planted, the idea.

This reminds me of the old joke where a man is on a rooftop during a flood and asked God to send him  a sign. You know the story, the boat comes and the helicopter, the man refuses help. After the man drowns he asks God why He didn't send a sign. God said I sent you a boat and a helicopter. Here is the same story in real life. During a conversation with Red, he suggested to me that I put in a garden. I can't remember vegetables being mentioned or food for that matter but I understood by 'garden' Red meant vegetable garden. I remembered the comment but did nothing about putting in a garden. I had already turned an unused gravel parking lot into a clearing among the trees. I’d planted native trees, birch, oak, sugar maple, cedar both red and white, white pine, spruce and scotch pine. We have a brick patio with fire place and bench seating all round. There are pathways and a BBQ patio but you feel like you are in the forest. I called that a garden and at the time it was enough.

Constructing the garden.

We did plant tomatoes and beans in the "flower beds". They would have done better in full light. At this point I am becoming conscious of finding a way to plant a vegetable garden. About that time I began to notice that people were planting flower beds on the median in front of there houses. I read in one of those "Conversations with God" books that God is in favour of using public space for gardens especially food gardens. Together these new thoughts and images, some of which I have mentioned, provided the fertile ground for the idea to develop. And develop it did.

Planning the first garden.

Two winters ago I decided, well, in looking back it's more like I remembered Red's comment about building a garden, that we could farm the median in front of the house, turn it into a vegetable garden. It's on the north side of an east west street and gets sun all day long. I was so inspired  by the idea, I promoted it to who ever would listen.  The listeners would be at the local pub and I already knew many of them from my frequent visits.

The meeting venue.

 At the Black Horse the topic of conversation that winter would often turn to that of a garden on city land, to be built without asking for a permit of any kind, without letting city know of the intent of gardening on their land.  It's not like the city would not know of the garden, we are only two blocks from City Hall. It just seemed wise to not ask someone to make a decision on behalf of the community when the community could pass judgment on their own. In the end we heard nothing from the city and the community was very positive on the whole. So, through the late winter and early spring I kept the discussion going.

The planning room.

We discussed, on different evenings, many many garden related topics. Among them were the legal ramifications of the project. None of us are or were lawyers but we each made a compelling case for whatever the point of view was at the time. We talked of weeding, companion planting, compost, hiding marijuana among the veggies, but the most frequent discussion involved how to deal with poachers. For me poachers were not a problem. I didn't care if someone took veggies to eat them. Vandalism was always a worry for me. I decided to just plant the garden and let the neighbours adjust to it as it developed. Most of my friends said it could not work because everyone would just take all the produce or vandalize the garden.  In the end I had several close friends come forward to help me. We kept a host of sceptics abreast of situation as it developed. My good friend Phil and I planned the detailed layout of the garden. We deliberately over planned because it was fun and it made us laugh a lot. We ended up with a plan that used the different vegetables as paints and the garden as a canvas. We came up with a design that was based on the formal gardens at the royal palace in Paris, France. Many geometrical shapes and wide curved lines each planted with a different vegetable. It was great fun.

Some of the participants.

Andrew and Lynn

Dick and Phil

Mike

Yvonne

Terry

Planting the garden.

Compost! After weeks of collecting data from all those willing to contribute I had reduced the plan to the basics. The first thing to do is prepare a seed bed. Here I followed Andrew's advice almost to the letter. It proved to be excellent advice. Get compost delivered by the city to your driveway. I got 7 cubic yards. It was a good deal it would cost almost that much for half as much compost. Have you ever seen 7 cubic yards of anything on your driveway? It's astonishing. I put a little more than half on the back garden, just layed it on the ground among the trees. The rest, it turned out, would take a little extra work. As per Andrew's instruction I began preparing the seed bed. First remove the sod to a depth of one shovel. So where do I put the sod? There is the road on one side and city sidewalk on the other. I piled the sod on the side walk. Several passers by took exception to this and told me so. Next step remove a layer of soil the depth of another shovel. Again where do you put the soil? I put it on parts of the garden that were not yet being transformed. Now put the sod in the trench so created and mix with liberal amounts of compost and cover with the extra soil that was removed also mixed with liberal amounts of compost. There now, that's nice. A good seed bed. Now there is only 59 feet more to go. Days later the bed was ready.

So on the twenty fourth of May weekend on the Sunday, I think, six or seven friends planted the whole garden in one afternoon. They got it done in spite of the fact that it was very hot 35 or something and there was not enough beer.. . They stayed with the project all the way through to harvest too. What a wonderful success it turned out to be. We planted, radishes, beets, beans, cucumbers grew up a utility pole in the garden, tomatoes, carrots, lettuce, onions, cabbages and broccoli. We also planted two apple trees, with four different kinds of apples on each tree, and a pear tree with five kinds of pears on the one tree. Then we hoped for the best. This is what we got.

go out and plant a garden