Great question posed recently at Own the Sidewalk regarding VGs:
The Victory Garden was once a symbol of national pride and cooperation. How do we bring that back? How do we convince people that vegetable gardens aren’t just for farmers and hippies? [emphasis mine]To be honest, I've been wondering the same. As is often the case with so many good ideas that need a push to take hold, the VG resurgence owes props in part to bright fringe-y types (bless 'em) who've been trying to tell all of us for years that gardening in urban and suburban settings is radical and subversive. And I guess that is true...to some extent...especially if you are into guerrilla gardening or raising marijuana or maybe even just letting weeds come up in your gated community all devil-may-care like.
But ever since the Garden of Eden spat out Adam and Eve, we humans have been trying to bring plants and soil and water and rain under our control...which, for me, is the exact opposite of a rebellious act.
Just sayin'.
At the same time, while I've been pondering the above, I've been revisiting the notion of the third place, a terrific term coined by sociologist Ray Oldenburg in his book, The Great, Good Place (His follow-up book, Celebrating the Third Place, is good, too). Briefly, the term refers to a social meeting place that is neither the home nor the workplace; a spot where social bonds are nurtured and blossom and a powerful sense of community is established.
This concept definitely and obviously applies to community plots. I first encountered community gardens in Austin in the '80s, while in college. But it wasn't until I visited Europe and England, where they use the term allotments instead, that I became captivated by this form of group gardening for the masses. On my first trip through Europe, as much as I was taken with the artwork and cathedrals (I was in grad school at the time, studying art history), I was more enchanted with the scenes that played out along the train tracks: families enjoying wine and a hearty lunch under a pergola laden with grapes; rows of sunflowers; rain barrels and other evidence of all manner of organic gardening; the quaint garden sheds; and the mingling of young and old people working their little slivers of paradise. As someone who grew up around gardens and gardeners, I thought I'd never seen anything quite so vibrant, so seemingly democratic and inclusive.
And yet...now that I'm older and see...I recognize that I had in fact seen similar things...in home gardens. Indeed, all of my life, there have seen interesting activities happening in and around my family's gardens. I'd just never recognized what was happening as a sign of culture, a cultivated point of intersection between people, art, spirituality and so forth. It took seeing those allotments...and years of gardening and engaging in community-building initiatives myself...to look at my earlier experiences differently.
Although my parents are both Anglos, they are very different-minded people. I don't mean they were both divergent thinkers, either. Let me clarify by example: in the '60s, my mom found hippies interesting; my dad (then in the Marine Reserves) helped chase hippies out of a Houston park. On the whole, however, I think both of them would fall largely right-of-center on the political spectrum, at least while I was growing up. In other words, ours was a typical, middle-class, middle-American garden...nothing fringe-y about it.
My dad wasn't too interested in gardening per se when I was growing up, but he did like to build things. My mother loved to garden...and still would if she could. (Me? I mowed.) The strange alchemy of my parent's odd, mismatched union led to me and to pretty yards and flowers. This in turn yielded to some interesting moments worth noting now. When I was a child, a neighbor's daughter's shotgun wedding was held in the large gazebo that my father built from scratch with no plans. When I was a pre-teen, there was the artist who asked to take photographs in my parents' yard and then made watercolors that sold for un-godly sums. When I was in high school, my mother went out of her way to ensure that the yard was in all its glory to greet my rag-tag group of friends at prom and on graduation night--the aforementioned gazebo looked like something out of Country Living magazine, draped as it was with vintage quilts in the moonlight.
Later, after my husband and I bought our first house, we began indulging our green thumbs under the watchful and supportive eye of a good neighbor. We tinkered with all manner of plants and, by our first Spring, we quickly discovered that people wanted to be in our yard, even complete strangers. Once, while opening the door to leave the house on a walk, I startled two elderly Russian sisters who were admiring my flowers. Every night one summer, a lovely Indian woman would walk the neighborhood in a colorful, ornate sari; she always made a point to tell me what a good job we were doing. We had a man ask if he could make a photograph of his young daughter beside a giant sunflower near our curb. We entertained a family of five on two Easter weekends with fantastic egg hunts and bubble-blowing activities. One of the greatest, sweetest moments of my life was the night that their little boy showed up at my doorstep while I made dinner. He told my husband that he "want[ed] to see the lady with the flowers"...he wanted me to pluck a bouquet for him to give to his mother. I obliged, of course.
In Louisiana, where we transformed an interesting house into a great house with fantastic courtyards and beds, we had people remark upon our efforts, too. I had a woman once ask me if she could have a few stems of flowers for a dinner party. Again, I obliged--to not share the bounty seemed selfish.
Now, having moved back to Texas, we live in a newish subdivision. Plants are harder to take hold here than at either of our other houses. The sun is hot, the soil is poor. But we've made a dent and the grounds are beginning to shine. We now receive the odd positive remark or two, especially about the front bed, which I describe as a "Central Texas Cottage Garden" because it contains native and friendly non-native species that are especially well-suited to this environment. In and around the front garden, it isn't unusual to have the neighbor's wee daughter tugging on the low-hanging windchimes, to watch my son try to reach for the orange ceramic bell in the small oak tree, to have neighbor kids making marks with chalk on the sodewalk, or for me to spend a few moments with a visitor to find the new toad hole or spot the green lizards that call that particular bed home.
Children and adults love gardens. They gravitate toward them.
Just a few months ago, our tiny front lawn hosted a semi-impromptu, pre-Halloween party with hors d'oeuvres and small children in costumes, running around with tiny, battery-powered lanterns and flashlights. In the mix there were all several different points of view, life experiences, religious denominations...it was a small but richly diverse group.
But there we all were, in the garden, sharing fellowship, fun and food.
Technically, my family was at home for this event...but our guests were not...they were in a third place, one that we built by our own sweat equity, drawing upon the lessons learned from previous gardening efforts and plant-savvy relatives. Our neighbors know we're left-leaning, but they don't seem to care. Or at least they don't make a fuss about it. And as I think back on that night, watching my toddler crunching (store-bought, conventionally grown) cauliflower bits and listening to the nice conversations, I see that what we've created here is not unlike those European allotments that I admired all those years ago--our front yard became a place for real democracy (i.e., social equality) to bloom.
Recently, I've had the opportunity to share my VG with some of those same revelers. And they're fascinated with the process and progress that we've had. Late last week, my new neighbors and some other friends assembled here for the stereotypical weekly playdate, but it came as no surprise to me that the diverse group of moms and kids largely gravitated to our wide backporch, the VG and our meditation garden both in plain view.
There is just something about gardens that bring people together. Pure and simple. Nothin' subversive or radical about that. Not at all. Now if we can just sell the rest of America on that fact and get them to create their own third places, planting them in harmony with the area's micro-climate so that a sense of connection with the natural world is palpable, too. In time, through the combination of cultivating community and power of place in our everyday lives, the larger challenges (like climate change) that we all face would seem...conquerable, I think.
For Further Exploration:
• American Community Gardening Association aims to "increase" and "enhance" community gardening in both US and Canada. They've partnered with Local Harvest to create a handy-dandy map which you can use to find a community garden in your area.
• Read more about English allotments at the aptly titled Allotment Growing.
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