Community gardeners and city garden volunteers: Sustenance series
Some love for the people who make our cities and states greener and cleaner
Hello and welcome to this week’s edition of The Bell!
This is another installment of what I’m calling the “sustenance series,” about the spaces, people, and practices that lift us up, buoy us, give us life, and nourish us.
Today, as everything bursts into bloom in the northeast, we’re talking about shared green spaces and that wonderful thing which is a community garden: a plot for people who live in high-density areas to grow flowers and vegetables, and get the pleasure and satisfaction of digging in the dirt when otherwise surrounded by concrete.
My husband and I recently reminisced on how we both hated gardening as children. Probably because our involvement was limited to weeding (which not even adults like to do) as a chore on a Saturday morning list.
Who knows if I would have liked gardening better as a child in any scenario. It’s famously a hobby for retired people. But I do remember loving to pick raspberries from the semi-wild bushes that used to be in my parents’ backyard, and strawberries from the strawberry jars.
Now though, many years before retirement, I’m embracing retirement hobbies. I long to garden. Maybe it’s too many years spent living in an apartment without a private green space. Maybe it’s too little time spent barefoot lately. But I’m dying to get my hands on some seeds and a trowel!
Unfortunately I’ll have to be patient a little longer on the planting front. But for people like me who live in dense, urban areas, there are several options that are great for both a yard-less individual’s desire to garden, but also the quality of life for the residents of the neighborhood and city at large.
Community gardening
There’s a three-year waitlist for the community gardens in my neighborhood (even though there are many!) and I’m kicking myself for not putting my name on the list three years ago when we moved in. I guess, coming off a period of moving every six months for a few years, I never thought we’d stay here this long.
So, I don’t have a plot of my own to dig in this spring, but I have lots of appreciation for the community gardens in Boston’s South End and what they contribute to our community.
I can think of five or six community gardens in the neighborhood: one huge, one medium, and a few pretty tiny, the size of a quarter of a row house lot. On my near-daily walks around the neighborhood, I love stopping to peer over the fences and see what’s growing and blooming at different times of year. People seem to be more into flowers than veggies around here, but maybe that’s just what catches my eye from my vantage point of the sidewalk.
There’s one in particular that explodes with dahlias in the late summer, and stopping to appreciate their vibrant colors and dramatic shapes on my way to an appointment or errand is always such a joy.
I think it’s easier to appreciate community gardens when you spend your life on foot—you’re just moving slower past the view and you don’t have to jump out in traffic when you want to literally stop and smell the roses.
So the density—the thing that makes it hard to have a garden on your own property—is also the thing that makes gardens more of a public feature of the neighborhood and encourages walking, and thus appreciating them.
If you’re interested in getting a plot in a community garden in Boston, you pretty much have to walk there and call the phone number on the sign by the entrance.
But as a collective, they fall under the purview of a wide-ranging organization called The Trustees, which supports and protects trails, gardens, farms, and beaches all across Massachusetts. The Trustees promote seasonal events (currently it’s all about cherry blossoms and tulips!), activities, summer camps, and more. And tellingly, one of their highest membership levels is called “Sustaining.”
City gardening
There are also many green spaces in a city that need taken care of, and not always enough budget to staff full-time gardeners and lawn care.
I don’t know how the decision making happens at the city level, but Boston seems to have prioritized professional staff in the Public Garden, the first public botanical garden in America, designed by Frederick Law Olmsted, and the inspiration for the classic children’s book, Make Way for Ducklings. And to a lesser degree, in the Common, which is more of a park with less elaborate planting and landscaping than the Public Garden.
But the care of another massive green space in town, the Charles River Esplanade, is handled by a small staff and a large army of volunteers. The nonprofit Esplanade Association hosts, among other events, an annual cleanup of the 80 miles and 1,100 acres along the Charles to remove trash. There are also volunteers who work at the Esplanade year-round to make it a nice space for residents to gather, exercise, play, and get their dose of nature.
I’m sure most major cities have their versions of the Esplanade Association and The Trustees. I’ve inspired myself, and hopefully inspired you, to look up the groups making your local green spaces lovely and support them financially, with your time and energy, or both.
And take advantage of all they have to offer, whether that’s a short walk in the park or a local garden tour or a hike through nature. It’s the season to go outside!
Do you have a community garden plot? Do you, or have you ever considered, volunteering for the city in one of the municipal gardens, parks, or green spaces?
xx Jane
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The gardens and green space in Boston is all so lovely! I started to garden as a child, planting Petunias. I loved the candy stripe of Red and white. And the deep velvet purple. I can close my eyes and almost get a scent of the natural fragrance and freshness of Petunias. Then downsizing thru the years and gardened from a balcony - that was just as exciting! Lovely mix of herbs, strawberry plants, white impatiens, green English Ivy and white geraniums! In lovely old clay pots. 🫶you have your lovely gardens in the Paris countryside. Thank you for the lovely pics! XOXO