Monthly Conversation Experiment #15

How does your garden grow?

By LAURIE STUART
Posted 8/10/21

Ask anyone, they’ll tell you: I love to talk about my garden. Most gardeners do. “It’s a lifestyle,” I’ve come to say. “Kind of like owning a boat.”

My …

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Monthly Conversation Experiment #15

How does your garden grow?

Posted

Ask anyone, they’ll tell you: I love to talk about my garden. Most gardeners do. “It’s a lifestyle,” I’ve come to say. “Kind of like owning a boat.”

My garden has been a growing thing (quite literally) for decades now. The original garden, established by the owners who bought the property around 1902, has been extended several times. Once laterally and then doubling that space again.

Some 25 years ago, after fighting with insidious grass that took over my garden every summer, I designed a space that had raised beds that came off a diamond-shaped bed in the middle. My thought was the beds would be more easily weed-controlled (I’m a mulcher myself. Wet newspaper layers, covered with straw or other material). I pictured myself leisurely strolling through carefully-tended spaces, collecting my thoughts, letting go of the cares of the day, reflecting on the growing plants and learning the lessons of being intimately connected to an outdoor living space.

That garden exists today. It provides a space for reflection, and a great space to grow food.

Gardens are special. We maintain those spaces in a mutually beneficial manner, unlike some of the other ways that we use the earth . We are intimately connected to the elements, both positive and negative, that also live within that space. Gardens have the capacity to help us reimage our relationship to our natural environments. They are both built and natural at the same time. They are satisfying. The vegetables are truly amazing and different from those in many stores.

So, let’s talk about gardens and gardening. What gifts does it give us? What heartaches does it bring? What stories do you have?

Send pictures, short reflections, artwork, poetry, stern letters to the varmints and bugs that destroy your crops, etc. (We welcome notes on changes in the growing season, etc. as well.)

Tell us: How does your garden grow?

Send to copyeditor@riverreporter.com by Friday, August 27 at 3 p.m.

Monthly Conversation Experiment, garden

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