The Zen of Gardening

an agricultural revolution

Chris Godsey

Vegetable and flower gardens sustain minds, bodies, and souls throughout northern Minnesota and Wisconsin, including those who take part in the Duluth Community Garden Program (DCGP). The DCGP “will always be focused on helping low-income people grow food,” says its executive director, 36-year-old Carrie
Slater-Duffy. “It can make a huge difference to some people in terms of what they eat.”

A DCGP brochure says the program’s mission “is to strengthen the Duluth area community and foster self-suffi ciency by providing access for all to food production and preservation resources and promoting sustainable gardening practices.” Volunteers and a small paid staff provide education, seeds and transplant stock, cultivation and preservation tools, and many services.

“We’d really like to connect churches, businesses, and civic organizations with individual DCGP sites,” Slater-Duffy says. “Maybe get financial help putting up rain barrels and fences. Last summer, deer and drought decimated a lot of plots. We also want to expand—we need more sites in West Duluth.” Giving help to garden sites, Slater-Duffy says, helps people who are trying to help themselves.

“Being handed a plate of food might fill your belly, but it does nothing for your self-esteem. If you plant the seeds, weed, weed, weed, and weed some more, then harvest a crop, that food is yours in more ways than one. You’re developing self-esteem through a sense of accomplishment. You’re outside, working your body, and experiencing connections between working to produce your food, what you put into your body, and how
you feel.”

“Gardening is a tie to the universal,” says DCGP participant Jeff Stark. “By growing something, I get to get out of my isolated life and see what’s going on that’s bigger than me.” Stark started by growing flowers. “I grew some zinnias,” he says. “They were so pretty. I gave one to a friend. That’sbeen my big gardening experience.” He also had a bumper crop of zucchini last summer at his DCGP plot at The College of St. Scholastica.

“Jeff was eating zucchini for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Slater-Duffy says with a laugh. “He gave a bunch to the food shelf, too.” Stark says he appreciates the DCGP’s philosophy: “They go after the victory garden idea of World War II — growing your own food even if you’re in a city.” War-time victory gardens, many credible sources agree, produced almost 40 percent of the nation’s food supply, bolstered a senses of community, morale, and empowerment, and took pressure off of desperately needed national resources.

Through gardening, Stark says, “You don’t just sit down and eat without thinking about it. You work for it. You wind up with more knowledge of and appreciation for the process.” DCGP Program Director Katie Hanson, who’s 29, became passionate about gardening just after college while working as a canoe guide for an outfit at the end of the Gunflint Trail. “Somehow I wound up being the food service person,” she says. “Most of our food came from far away. It was an unsustainable way to live, to be dependent on a food-production system so far from where we lived.”

She did her best to grow food and buy it locally, and since then she’s tried to learn as much as possible about where her food comes from and what resources it requires. She’s also begun to see flowers “as more and more integral to vegetable gardening.” “I’m trying to understand the advantages and different functions of certain flowers,” she says. “Some attract pollinators to vegetables, some have deep taproots that draw nutrients to the other plants around them. Each plant has multiple uses beyond its beauty.”

AND SHE ENJOYS DIRT
“It’s a nice contrast. As a society in general, we’re moving toward a non-place — like the Internet , which isn’t connected to any one place. If I didn’t have ground to connect to … it
makes me feel like I’m more part of a place.” DCGP gardener Tom Beery knows his own version of what
Hanson is talking about.

“There’s something essential about being in physical contact with the Earth,” he says. “I can experience the natural environment as a paddler and skier but gardening is different — keeping track of and trying to promote growth, thinking about weather in a completely different way, getting to know what birds and insects are hanging out in my plot.” Beery is also equally dedicated to flowers and vegetables. One of his gardening goals is to have self-grown, fresh-cut fl owers in his house from May till October.

“Being in the garden, enjoying the colors and textures and other experiences is one thing,” Beery says. “Bringing flowers in the house is another thing; it’s like bringing in a pile of tomatoes or garlic —bringing it into the rest of our lives, and not just leaving it out there.

 

Want to work in the dirt?

SOME LOCAL COMMUNITY GARDENS AND GARDEN CLUBS:

LAKE SUPERIOR MASTER GARDENERS
Work on the gardens at the Fairlawn Mansion and the Douglas County Historical Society or clean up properties for Paint the Town.
MEETS: Second Monday of the month at 6:30pm
CONTACT: Chris Watten, 394-5090

GITCHEE GUMEE GARDEN CLUB
Listen to guest speakers and work on the community garden at 61st Avenue and London Road.
MEETS: Third Wednesday of the month at 6:30pm
CONTACT: Kim Cusick, 525-4910

OATMEAL HILL GARDEN CLUB
Work on the community garden at Woodland and Arrowhead or support the Memorial Day plant sale at the Rose Garden.
MEETS: Third Tuesday of the month at 7pm
CONTACT: Lydia Walters, 724–4663

TISCHER CREEK GARDEN CLUB
Visit greenhouses, flower shops and gardens, participate in a seminar, or work on the community garden near the Glen Avon hockey rink.
MEETS: Second Tuesday of the month at 6:30pm
CONTACT: Shelley Breyen, 724-3378