Community Gardens, Community Gardening

Update Below:
 Even though it's only January, it's hard not to start thinking about gardening. The weather's been fairly warm; lots of plants are starting to leaf out or push up out of the ground. The foxglove and the hydrangea seem particularly eager.

As I've mentioned before, I've gardened pretty much forever, beginning during WW II when my family had a Victory Garden. The local government set out a big area of land, plowed it and divided it into sections and anyone who wanted to take care of a section could do so. You planted what you wanted and you harvested it as you wanted. And you were happy to do it because it provided food cheaply and it provided food that was hard to get otherwise what with the war taking up a lot of the food commodities.

I think lots more people knew about how to grow things in those days. We were closer to the land, at least in places where there was land, I imagine, and that made it more natural. But that knowledge seems to me to have been lost in the in between decades to a substantial degree. Oh, there are still younger people (i.e., in their 20's and 30's) who are devoted gardeners, but it just doesn't seem as common now as it was when I was in my 20's and 30's. We've become more urbanized, of course, more estranged from the land.

I wonder whether in that Victory Garden of my childhood there were a lot of rules about how to conduct your garden? If so, I was probably not privy to them because the main rulegiver I knew was my father. The rules of the garden were his rules, as far as I knew. How to sow, how to weed, how to reap.

Increasingly, people are taking to Community Gardens,   I have recently discovered.  When we were out driving in the Richmond area the other day, we saw a lovely little community garden in a place called Terra Nova.  It had none of the look of my Victory Garden, but a lot of the look of the community gardens that I used to see in Venice, California, which involved quite small plots, but very exotically planted: some only with flowers, some only with tomatoes and a chair and an umbrella.  Whatever suited the gardener's individual feelings about the kind of garden he or she wanted to have.

Recently, there has been some movement here in Point Roberts to institute a community garden.  Such a venture is always a fragile one if it doesn't have some kind of institutional base behind it.  It's a lot easier to have it happen if the community is interested AND the local government or some NGO is prepared to provide some continuity for its initial organization.  Unfortunately, we are pretty fresh out of local government AND NGOs here in Point Roberts, so at present it is a few people looking to make some starting steps and hoping that a few other people will join them in the actual work (that would be the actual work that involves getting out onto the land) that is needed to make it happen.

So far, they've got a commitment of about five acres of land for community use, land that is reported to have excellent soil  (that could be said, I believe, about none of the one acre of soil that we have).  Water, and some south-side sun, too, are available, with actual sun presence being out of the control of the initiators of this project.

There are a lot of reasons that it would be a good project for the Point.  It would give people who have lost their place in the handed-down gardening knowledge network a place to get practical knowledge about practical gardening from those with more experience; it would allow people to obtain the quality of vegetables (primarily) that they would like to have for their family; it might be an important resource if the times ahead become as unfortunate as some fear.  It doesn't involve a lot of building or an enormous amount of funding.  It would fit with the kind of place that Point Roberts is, at least for its permanent residents.

There are a lot of reasons, as those who've tried to start things in Point Roberts previously can attest to, why it might not work.  But it surely won't work if no one ever tries it.  And the fact that Washington State actually has a state-wide web site for community gardens might be "an early clue to the new direction."  If you're interested, talk to George Wright, down at the Maple Tree Studio/Gallery on Gulf Road and see how your interests might help this project come to life.  Quickly, spring is on the way!

Update:   Meeting on Community Garden Development will be held
Wednesday, January 20th, 7 pm
1480 Gulf Rd, Suite 103, Point Roberts WA 98281
(‘round the back of the Blue Building on Gulf Road)