My sister sent this adage to me this morning. I found it uplifting, especially on this overcast and chilly day. The image is of a new garden bed recently cleared of invasive weeds and waiting for its soil to be amended. In the center is a dormant peach tree, recently transplanted from the overcrowded orchard at work.
“Sorrow prepares you for joy. It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.”
Some of you may remember this post about the job I started this time last year. A quick refresher: I work for a state-funded psychiatric health agency called View Point Health. We have several behavioral/mental health programs across the state of Georgia and I run a therapeutic garden program for one of our adolescent units. It’s important to note that this is not horticultural therapy. Horticultural therapists have degrees in the field while my background is in Anthropology, Environmental Studies, and urban agriculture. Therefore, my groups, and the gardens themselves, are considered to be therapeutic.
We’ve accomplished a great deal in the past year. I designed the program to include several “garden habitats,” such as an orchard, muscadine vineyard and butterfly garden. Watch this short clip to orient yourself spatially (for my older sister, who is a visual learner):
Here are some photos that detail the development of the gardens near the entrance to the facility:
In the beginning. This scrubby field to the right of the main sidewalk had poor soil consisting of packed red clay.
This area to the left of the main sidewalk had worn areas where nothing would grow.
Amending the soil in this clay patch was a big challenge.
Work began during the 2011 fall season to amend the soil with compost.
These rows were prepared for the herb garden late in 2011.
I began to plant native tree species in the fall of 2011 to allow their roots to develop during the cooler months. The small supported twig is a baby Magnolia tripetala (Umbrella Magnolia).
After amending the soil on the right side of the main sidewalk, I did a late planting of collard greens and cabbage.
In the same plot that holds the Magnolia tripetala, I began to amend and add (a million wheelbarrowfuls) of compost in a curved pattern. It’s wintertime (2011) at this point.
To the right of the sidewalk is the vegetable garden, to the back left is the herb garden and to the front left is the prepared soil for the flower bed. I planted collard greens in between the herbs to add some color. Georgia had a very mild winter in 2011, so I was able to plant late into the season.
I use the cooler months as my time to mulch heavily in order to prevent weeds from overtaking our gardens in the summer. Cardboard is a great mulch (after you’ve removed the tape).
Spring 2012! Throughout the fall, I planted daffodil bulbs along the sidewalk in secret with the help of the kids. It was a great surprise for the staff. Make sure to allow daffodil leaves to die back naturally after the bloom fades. They’re storing energy for more blooms next year. You can see the new garden rows being added on to the right as well.
Daffodils beginning to bloom in the flower bed to the left of the main sidewalk. The green lawn consists of newly-sprouted crimson clover.
Remember that lifeless twig from the fall? This is Magnolia tripetala sprouting its first leaves of the season.
While the daffodils were blooming, I planted zinnia seeds with one of our clients. Late in the spring, the daffodil blooms faded and were replaced by red zinnias. This strategy of “planting ahead” is something I have not mastered completely.
I planted gladioli in between the vegetable rows to attract pollinators and to make such a highly-visible garden more aesthetically pleasing to visitors and staff.
Remember that muddy clay track from last year? By early summer, we had transformed it into lush shrubbery.
The vegetable garden grew much larger than I anticipated. These tomato plants provided several full harvests.
Like this.
By midsummer of 2012, the herb garden was barely recognizable from only a few months before.
All the herbs you see in the previous image started off like this. BAM.
This image finally brings us into the late summer. With the early spring blooms faded and the lawn replanted with a different variety of clover (I am fickle), I’ll work toward including species that bloom later to have continuous color throughout the year.
Always remember to start with the soil – the rest will follow.
So, long story short. One of my good friends had her backyard cleared of invasive shrubbery last year and it turned out that she had a great deal of space. I walked out one day to let my dog play in her yard and was nearly paralyzed by visions of eight-foot tall tomato plants and forests of heirloom okra. After my friend picked me up off her porch, an idea was born.
My friend’s backyard is roughly half an acre, and through the good grace of her father (the landlord), her sister and herself we have finally begun to farm the land uncovered post invasive weed genocide. I even found a fig tree struggling to survive within the death grasp of privet shrub. The fig tree’s doing just fine now.
Here are some pictures of our first planting two weeks ago. I used wheat straw to mulch, but didn’t have enough compost at the time to amend the soil in each of the rows. As they say, “Soil wasn’t built in a day.”
Some leftover lettuce from a planting I neglected earlier this year. Heh.
alternifolium 