G-Ardeners

In early 2009, a trio of women, Keri del Tufo, Toby Ridings, and Shelley Robyn set out to change the landscape of Arden. I have already mentioned that Arden, as a Tree City USA, boasts a near 75% canopy. That is a lot of trees. Great for drinking lemonade in the shade. Not so great for vegetable gardening. The three-woman task force decided to make a community garden available for all those who don't have enough sun to ripen a pepper. The Ardens are very supportive of gardeners. One of its gilds is the Gardening Gild, though it is a separate entity from the community garden. With lots of help, the three managed to turn an old, fenced-in playground that was no longer in use, into raised garden beds and pathways. They incorporated  some of the old playground equipment into the design. A jungle gym became trellis for runaway tomato plants. The monkey bars became an arbor.

The garden was in full swing, but still new enough that the gardeners were enthusiastic, when we visited Arden for the first time in May of 2009. During that initial visit, Mark and I, with map in hand, explored all areas of the Ardens.  At the time, I had been a square-foot gardener for many years. I had maintained a cook's garden, exclusively using raised beds, since the early 1990's. Some years I got very creative, like the year I grew only purple vegetables and plants. More vegetables come in purple varieties than you would think. As somewhat of a playful gardener, I was really intrigued when we came across the community garden/playground while we were out walking.

We engaged the two women who were working in the garden, who told us that they had started the garden. I have no way of knowing which two out of the three we were talking to, but if I had to guess I would say that we spoke to Keri and Toby. Little did Keri know that she was enticing the future buyers of her house to make Arden their home. Keri was still in the honeymoon stage of her house and probably would have cringed at the thought she would sell it one day. Mark and I were in awe of the community spirit and the friendliness of all those we encountered on our walks around the Ardens. Just another hammer blow planting the SOLD sign that would be in our future. I told this story to another gardener at the kick-off night for this year's crop of G-Ardeners. He was excited to hear a first-hand account of how the garden actually grew "community" as a crop. It is true that the garden supplied some of the attraction that eventually brought us here.

This will be my second year with the group. We moved into Arden in late June of 2013, too late to join. My plot is 4x5 which is just perfect for me. Next to my house, I grow herbs in colorful pots that sit on a huge tree stump. It works better for me when my herbs are accessible to my kitchen, and I have just enough sunlight to grown them. I will grow only vegetables in my 20-square-foot plot.  With the way the woodland animals like to nosh on vegetables, it is better that my vegetables are behind a fence. The community garden is a quarter mile from my home. I usually walk Eli over to the garden once a day. He sits, smiling and panting, outside the garden under a large tree while I tend the plants. If I let him come inside the fence, he would just pee on everything. That's a male dog for you. I've started planning out this year's offerings. I think I will give up on eggplants--which saddens me. Not only are they my favorite vegetable, but they are the last vestiges of my purple garden year.  They just didn't produce much last year. I will also cut down on my hot pepper varieties to three: jalapeño, poblano, and cherry hots. Though I love to have a huge variety of the hots, we just can't eat them fast enough.

I do want to experiment with cucumbers, beans, and peas--vegetables I haven't grown in my gardens for a long time. This means going vertical which means making a new trellis like the one Mark and I built years ago from a tutorial in a Martha Stewart magazine. I am excited to share this process with my neighbors. We have a fresh lot of gardeners coming in this year. New blood always makes things more fun. Toby talked of community parcels that will have things like herbs for all of us to share. I hope we have a communal zucchini patch as well since squash takes up too much space for me to consider growing them. We had a great spread of them last year in the common area. I remember taking four flowers off the vines and bringing them home, stuffing them with ricotta cheese, batter dipping the whole lot and frying them up. With a few cherry tomatoes, it was the lunch of the gods. And of course, everyone in Arden is anticipating Alex Rudzinski's G-Arden fundraiser Caprese Salads with homemade focaccia, mozzarella, and pesto as a springboard for the still-warm-from-the-sun tomatoes. Those salads are crack! I bought four for my family last year and then proceeded to eat all of them myself.

Spring is here. While it may take a few weeks for nature to reflect that fact and for the gardens to produce the first peas and spring onions, the enthusiasm we G-Ardeners feel is already ripe for the picking. Get me to a greenhouse!