D.C. Gardeners Unite

What do you call 150 D.C. Gardeners jamming the Josephine Butler Parks Center?

A good start.

Until the day of the event, it was unclear exactly what the response would be to the first citywide gardening "forum," called "Rooting D.C." A year earlier, folks from the 7th Street Garden and the America the Beautiful Fund (ABF) conceived of an event where community-oriented gardeners from around the city could meet and network. Bea Trickett, a 7th Street volunteer working with grant funds under the aegis of ABF, had spent months contacting every known gardening group in the city.

The response was at first a trickle. But the trickle turned into a flood. Everyone seemed to be a bit astonished--overwhelmed, elated--to see so many gardeners gathered with so much energy under one roof.

The National Park Service's Glenn Engster gave a keynote address on the Metropolitan Washington Green Infrastructure Demonstration Project, after which the assembled crowd broke into workshops. Judy Tiger, former executive director of Garden Resources of Washinton, was giving tips on starting gardens along with teachers from City Blossoms. Jenny Reed, or Natural Resources Design, led a session on gardening with native plants. Food educator Kim Rush, along with Liz Falk and Susan Ellsworth of the 7th Street Garden, held forth on gardening for nutrition. Grace Manubay of D.C. Schoolyard Greening led a session on working gardening into school curricula. The Women's Garden Cycles showed a trailer from the forthcoming video on their remarkable bicycle/garden trek to Montreal and back. Fanny Hamilton discussed herbs and Parisa Norouzi of Empower D.C. gave a rousing presentation on the need to agitate for keeping public spaces green.

And if you read the following post by Susan Harris, you know that one of the visitors who stayed for the entire event was Washington Post garden columnist Adrian Higgins, who used the forum as basis for a new assessment of the growing involvement of young people in the city's community gardens and the movement toward gardening for local food and the environment.

Well, isn't that what D.C. Urban Gardeners is all about?

As Adrian Higgins has said, the gardening community in the District of Columbia is fragmented. If nothing else, this forum served to show gardeners of all stripes that they are not alone. And like many others who were present, we want to know, When can we do this again?

The answer to that question is, we are working on it. Several cosponsors, including D.C. Urban Gardeners, 7th Street Garden, D.C. Schoolyard Greening and America the Beautiful have already met and have begun drawing up tentative plans for a forum next year. Could it be bigger? We think so. Could it reach out more to home and apartment gardeners? We hope so. Could there be a greater variety of workshops? That certainly would be our aim.

What we envision is a place where environmentally-minded gardeners of all stripes can gather, share experiences and be inspired to join in the greening of the District of Columbia. This should be a big tent where we can address the specific concerns and informational needs of our city gardeners.

Have any suggestions? Like to help? Just leave your comments below.

Posted by Ed Bruske