DC Urban Gardeners

Glover Community Garden in the Post - all season long

Adrian Higgins' article in today's Washington Post brings some really exciting news.  In it he introduces us to the Glover Park Community Garden in N.W. Washington, D.C., and to a few of its gardeners.  And the best part is that Higgins will be checking in with them via video every month throughout the season, so we'll be "Following a Growing Drama, with Many Plots".  The main characters are the wiseguy chairman of the garden, some young but experienced gardeners, and a total newbie.  This is our kind of reality show - and how cool is that?

Higgins and the Post deserve a big rave for this terrific idea.  Watch the first installment.

Posted by Susan Harris

DC's Community Gardens in the Washington Post

Posted originally on Gardenrant.com, the team blog that this blog piggybacks onto at no charge, by Susan Harris:

A small but earnest bunch of gardening activists in Washington, D.C. are mighty happy about this article in the Washington Post by Adrian Higgins.  He attended what we hope was the first of a yearly event, a free Gar

den Forum about urban gardening, especially in public spaces.  This experiment was a roaring success, with packed rooms and coverage by not just the Post but National Public Radio, too, staying till the last minute.  And the publicity will surely bring urban greening types out of their tiny backyards to join us.  An environmentally sleeping city is finally stirring.

My buds at the D.C. Urban Gardeners were in the thick of things and one of our VPs even got her pretty face in the Post.  It's one of those realistic gardener shots we rarely see, though.  They had her doing actual winter clean-up, and who looks their best doing that?  So here's a much better photo of Mandie, a 25-year-old union organizer by day and community gardener and organizer in her off hours.  We recently published her brand-new spreadsheet of D.C.'s community gardens, an accomplishment that's curiously exciting for us all.  (When you start with nothing, even the garnering of a valid email address can seem huge).  There's more about Mandie and some other uppity gardeners on our About page.

Congratulations to the America the Beautiful  Fund (especially Katie and Bea), Washington Parks and People, DC Schoolyard Greening, the 7th Street Garden, Jenny Reed of Natural Resources Design, fellow DC Urban Gardeners and former embodiment of Garden Resources of Washington, Judy Tiger.  Now who did I forget?

Editor's note:  A full report of "Rooting DC: A Forum for Urban Gardeners" is coming soon.   It's a little late due to the pesky problem of bloggers having to make a living.  It a reality in our all-volunteer world.

Calling all Community Gardeners

One of the great functions of DC Urban Gardeners is pulling together gardeners of all stripes across the city (and area).  As part of that mission, we're trying to establish a community gardener caucus of sorts so that we can work together and share our knowledge (and maybe tomato seeds) to strengthen the community of community gardens in this city.  We can also identify issues that DCUG may be able to help us with. 

We're also trying to develop a complete information base on the city's community gardens - Who has space? Who has a waiting list? Who can a new resident talk to?  Where do you get your topsoil?  Wouldn't it be great if by this spring we all know where the other gardens in this city are?

Any Community Gardeners on this list - please drop me a line and let me know where you garden who you are and who (if anyone) coordinates your space.

Thanks!  Just respond in a comment.
Posted by Mandie Yanasak.
Photo by Christa Carignan of Calendula and Concrete

Yes, people have gardens here in the city - And no one steals the tomatoes

By Guest Blogger Christa Carignan of Calendula and Concrete

It was the sidewalk less traveled that led me to the community garden. I usually took walks in my neighborhood by heading eastward, but one day I decided to break the routine and head west. I turned a new corner and found myself enthralled by an expanse of cobbled-together fences that enclosed dozens of gardens in all shapes and sizes. My eyes grew wide at the sight of towering sunflowers, lines of leafy lettuces, and bent-over plants dripping with ripe tomatoes.

People have gardens here in the city? And they grow food? And no one steals the tomatoes?

I signed my name to the waiting list and eventually got a plot at the Newark Street Community Garden. I really wanted a flower garden, and my husband, who firmly asserted he wanted no part in daily gardening chores, agreed to help me at least put up a fence. Then He-Who-Loves-to-Cook soon caught on to the idea of growing fresh herbs and vine-ripened tomatoes. We decided to divide the plot equally for edibles and ornamentals.

My gardening experience was virtually nothing up to that point, except for tending to a few houseplants. I grew up in a family of gardeners, though, and I think they cultivated my spirit to grow things all along. I was captivated at a young age by a swath of lacy pink Sweet Williams that grew outside my grandmother's front door. My dad grew a row of raspberry bushes and my brothers and I had the unpleasant task of helping him pluck away the Japanese beetles that invaded them before we could get our hands on any berries. I learned early on that there were beautiful and delicious things to be had from a garden, but they didn't come effortlessly. In the same vein, I recall the oddball chore of having to deliver the bucket of food scraps from the kitchen to the compost heap; I was sure no other kids in my entire school had a compost heap.

Ah, but now… compost. Give me compost!

Our first vegetable bed at the community garden was literally a pile of dirt we mounded into a semi-rectangular shape. In the first major rainstorm, we had beet seedlings tumbling over the side and washing away. We laugh at it now, but it was clear we needed a little help.

We have since met so many fellow community gardeners – young and old – who have inspired us and helped us along the way. I recall the day when our new friend, Juan, gave us a few stems of oregano. "Just push this into the ground", he said, "and it will grow into a new plant." We looked in disbelief – as the stems didn't appear to have roots – and we shoved them into the ground just as he instructed. Now, three years later, we have a beautiful and thriving oregano plant. We also have delicious sweet onions and a fledgling grapevine from our friend Albertino. We have a patch of the most extraordinary strawberries grown from transplants left "up for grabs" by the shed. And we've grown our own garlic, peas, squash, cabbage, and much more.

Growing some of our own food has been nothing short of an extraordinary learning experience. I look at food differently now. I am more in tune to what's in season. I think about where our food comes from and what it takes to get it to our table. I am more open to trying new things. Every harvest, however small, is immensely gratifying because we grew it ourselves. How incredible it is to witness the journey of a tomato – from a single seed started in a pot on our apartment living room floor in February, to the final juicy slice enjoyed between two slices of bread on a sweltering day in July. Or to go to the plot after a long day indoors and pop a few fresh peas in my mouth; I am awed to think that just moments ago, those peas were pulling sun from the sky and water from the depths of the earth. My garden nourishes me in more ways than just the physical.

On my blog, Calendula & Concrete, I share my gardening discoveries and newfound appreciation of fresh-grown food. Online, I've found a community of generous and thoughtful people around the globe who are eager to share their own experiences and enthusiasm for growing things. It's a community garden that's grown well beyond these cobbled-together fences.

Photos by Christa Carignan

DC's First Annual Community Garden Bicycle Hop

By Lara, Kat, and Liz, The Garden Cyclers

On Saturday, June 9th a group of 30 cyclists met up at the Melvin Hazen Community Garden to begin a tour of food garden sites throughout Northwest DC. It was quite a tour! The goal was to visit 9 sites but we only made it to these 8: Melvin Hazen Community Garden, East Columbia Heights Guerilla Garden, Twin Oaks Garden, Fort Stevens Community Garden, Peabody Garden, Blair Road Garden, US Airmen’s Home Garden, and finally the 7th Street Garden.  This local event was organized by the Women's Garden Cycles Bike Tour and intended to raise money for and drum up interest in the main event - a trip later this summer documenting the resurging local food movement from DC to Montreal and back. (!)

Melvin Hazen Community Garden was the perfect place to start the tour, since it is one of the few remaining Victory Gardens from the WWII era, when the federal government was encouraging families to grow their own food to help with the war effort. At that time, 11 families used this space to grow their own food, and now more than 100 individuals share this space to grow vegetables. The plot sizes have shrunk over time but still, a lot can be grown on a 10 x 20-foot plot of land. The garden has a waiting list of about 40 people and it takes 1 to 2 years for those waiting to get a chance to grow.  Karen Adams, the president of Melvin Hazen, says that more people are requesting to have a spot in the garden and that it is growing more popular with the younger generations.

The next stop was the newly planted Eastern Columbia Heights Guerilla Garden.  The garden has taken over the spot where an old rowhouse used to be but burned down years ago and where illicit activities were taking place. Community leader Alan talked to us about how the garden came together under the leadership of Marcus Popetz and how neighborhood youth helping to plant, pull weeds, and water the beds. The garden is a powerful display of community initiative and strength to come together and find a solution to a space that transformed into a space where knowledge, laughter, and veggies are shared.  One of the cyclists who joined us, Emily Napalo, commented “I didn’t know about guerilla gardening – or the fact that there was one around the corner from me. I also didn’t realize that people of all walks are really involved in these gardens that are hidden in plain sight in D.C. (at least to me).”

The tour continued to Twin Oaks Garden at 14th Street and Upshur where Leslie Griffith, the president of the community garden, greeted everyone. This garden is on Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) land and right across the street is another garden space where DPR holds youth summer programs. She was happy to show us the small garden where several local residents are growing food and flowers and she emphasized that two of the plots were strictly taken care of by local youth. Twin Oaks is a relatively new garden and has been adopted by the Newark Community Garden to help set up a structure. It showed us how D.C. government is involved with lending out land for community gardening initiatives. 

We continued up the hill towards Fort Stevens Community Garden where we were able to meet with Corina Prince, the president of the garden, who said she was thrilled to have “all those bikers visit the garden”.  She told us how she got into gardening - learning from an older woman who had a plot right next to hers who taught her when to grow and how to grow certain vegetables. Vegetables are growing nicely in her plot but what she really treasures are her strawberries!  John, another gardener, spoke excitedly about what he was growing in his plot and allowed the group to harvest some of his lettuce and other greens. This was a highlight; everyone loves free, fresh and local greens!  Fort Stevens is a garden located on National Park Service land and has a dedicated group of gardeners that keep it blooming!

Right around the corner is the Peabody Garden, on 8th St and Peabody Street, also located on federal property. This garden is run by Mr. Bill Vest who met us there and talked to us about his reasons for gardening, which consist of staying active! He was born and raised in the city and never really was into gardening until this garden popped up in his neighborhood around the 1960s. Since then if he’s not on a tennis court, he is out gardening and chatting with his gardening neighbors. This garden is beautifully maintained and has a striking backdrop of huge cell phone towers. 

We hopped on our bikes and cycled over Blair Road Garden to meet with long-time gardener Mr. Williams. This was our resting stop on the garden hop, where we shared locally grown apples from Quaker Valley Orchards, personal stories about our own community garden experiences, and then listened to Mr. Williams, a gardener at Blair Road Gardens, who’s been there for the past 50 years. We learned that 50 years gains you a lot of gardening experience and gives you the ability to tell great stories! The Blair Road Garden is a huge swath of land close to the Metro tracks and right next door to the Animal and Rescue League. Mr. Williams shared with how us how one Easter, bunny rabbits were dropped off at the Animal and Rescue League, but they wouldn’t accept them so they were left at the garden. And boy, did they thrive! Mr. Williams said they had trouble with those rabbits for at least 3 years! This garden site is a beautiful site with rolling hills, large garden plots, and it is one of the only gardens we visited that didn’t have a waiting list.
 
After a nice lunch underneath the willow oak trees we pedaled off to the US Airmen’s Retirement Home  on Rock Creek Church Road where there's a garden tended by the veterans, and as we entered through the gates we knew we were setting foot on historic lands. The campus is beautifully maintained and has one of the best views of the city from the hilltop, which we rolled down to get to the garden, which is at the bottom near the golf course. There we met two veterans who showed us their plots and talked to us about why they love to grow vegetables.  It was a spirited exchange and we left knowing that growing food certainly keeps you young at heart and sharing what you grow is the greatest gift you can give. They are having a Stone Soup event in July where they gather everything they’ve grown and put it into a large pot to slowly cook and share with others, and we were all invited to attend.

Our last stop was the 7th Street Garden in Shaw. By this point we had a few cyclists leave for other events but those who remained were greeted with ice-cold lemonade and watermelon. The 7th Street Garden used to be a youth garden under Shaw EcoVillage but since March 2007 has been transformed into a garden for the community. Through the vision of four individuals, it has become a space where more then 20 local residents participate in the Resident Gardener program that provides weekly shares of fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers in exchange for hours helped in the garden.  The garden is also a place for school groups and adults to learn how to grow food.  The 7th Street Garden wants to reach out to individuals about the importance of fresh vegetables in our diets for healthier minds, bodies, and spirits.  This was a perfect space to talk about the day and special moments that touched us.

Ann Huegelmeyer listed some of her favorite aspects of the tour - “visiting different neighborhoods, hearing the organizers of each of the gardens talk about their garden, the free organic apple, and riding in a pack (oh yeah!)” - and she was speaking for all of us.  And the tour only scratched the surface - there's such a rich diversity of gardens and gardening activities in the District.  Depending on interest, we plan to organize another urban garden bike tour in the fall after our major trip to Montreal.

To learn more about the Women’s Garden Cycles Bike Tour, please visit our webite.

Is there a Divine Miss M for D.C.?

I was reminded of the incredible work of Bette Midler over the last 12 years - creating 57 community gardens out of the rubble of New York City's worst neighborhoods - by this story in Garden Design Magazine (not the kind of story this glossy usually covers).  Plus saving over 100 parks from development, and lots more.

So check out the New York Restoration Project's site for the whole amazing story, plus before-and-after pictures.  Okay, so there's only one Bette Midler, but even the story of one business owner - a maker of outdoor furniture - inspires with his commitment to the cause and the difference he was able to make through his partnership with Midler's group.

Now wouldn't it be nice to see some Divine intervention right here in D.C.?

Posted by Susan Harris

Open for Business: 7th Street Garden

Eleven-year-old Davalier Harvey was just strolling 7th Street near the Giant food store in Shaw today when he stumbled upon a scene teeming with enviro-gardeners and sustainable food advocates.

There was a gardening instructor from the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Service, an intern from the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition, an eco-crime investigator from the Environmental Investigation Agency.

The word had gone out through all kinds of neighborhood and progressive listservs, and upwards of 50 volunteers had shown up to help open the 7th Street Garden, a project designed to engage the nearby community in an effort to teach about gardening and provide a neighborhood food source.

Davlaier Harvey couldn't resist.

"I was walking past and saw them planting and it looked like fun to me," he said.

He was soon put to work, along with an 11-year-old friend, Jorge Torres, planting and watering carrots, parsnips, lettuce and spinach with one of the garden coordinators, Liz Falk.

Meanwhile, there were crews building boxes for raised beds. Someone else was putting the last touches on a new compost bin made out of wooden pallets and chicken wire. People were nailing together signs, wheeling compost into planter boxes, shoveling, planting strawberries.

"We've had a really great turnout," said a beaming Falk. "We just put the word out every way we could, and people responded."

Management of the garden was turned over to the 7th Street Garden project by Shaw EcoVillage and Bread for The City, which continue to provide support. There had been some questions about the condition of the soil on the property. That issue was solved by Vinnie Bevivino, the University of Maryland gardening instructor, who donated the $100 cost of obtaining five cubic yards of compost delivered by the public works department in College Park.

  The site consists of a 2,000-square-lot near 7th and Q streets NW, recognizable for the community murals painted on the sides of nearby buildings. There are already 27 raised beds in wooden planter boxes, with more under construction. Some contain a variety of herbs: chives, thyme, rosemary. The lot also has three peach trees currently dressed in a display of lovely pink blossoms, along with two apple trees and three cherry trees.

Johnson's florist had donated bags of organic compost, with seeds coming from the America The Beautiful Fund.

Zach Baker, an intern at the Sustainable Agriculture Coalition who just moved to the city from Portland, OR, a few weeks ago, had never gardened before but was ready to get his hands dirty.

"I'm a policy wonk kind of guy," Baker said. "But I wanted to see what this is like in practice. It's exciting to see people out here and working on it."

Next at the 7th Street Garden is a clinic in urban food gardening April 6-8. For more information about that, go here.

Posted by Ed Bruske

Community Gardens, How Can We Help?

Hill East Community Gardeners held their Annual Meeting/Potluck Dinner and invited DC Urban Gardeners Ed Bruske and myself to attend.  Okay, they didn't know we exist yet (how could they?) but their invited guest - Lorin O'Toole of D.C.'s Department of Environment, invited Ed and me to tag along and maybe answer some questions about pests.  So here's what we learned and a little about what they might have learned from us (more coming soon, we hope.)

• Community gardens are HAPPENING, very cool in a community-building, get-to-know-your-neighbor sort of way.  And as a lifelong by-myself gardener who spends waay too much time talking to myself in my own back yard, I'm totally jealous.  The photo shows board member Rochelle Woodard speaking to the group.
• The Hill East garden started in 2002 and the first year and a half was spent just clearing the space of debris, including whole cars.  So somebody sure had vision, to look at a dump site and see the potential for growing food.  And with who-knows-what-all in the soil under all that crap, they wisely decided to build raised beds. 
• Hill Easters were guided by a nearby experienced community gardener - Pat Taylor of the King's Court Garden.  Pat's also a mover/shaker in the Capitol Hill Garden Club.
• Gardeners at Hill East pay $50 a year, plus a one-time $100 initiation fee (which includes orientation).  All 36 of its 12x4 plots are occupied now and there's a waiting list to join. 
• Hill East is an all-organic, which is a particular challenge for community gardens, where scores of different gardeners are making their plant choices independently and exercising different degrees of garden clean-up. 

Pests?
You bet, and the most-hated insects here are cucumber beetles and harlequin beetles. So what's an organic gardener to do?  Ed offered suggestions about the macro solutions, like soil amendments (compost, compost, compost), using pest-resistant varieties, and giving giving up on growing pest-prone vegetables altogether.  Or how about attracting more beneficial insects?   I recommended the Maryland Home and Garden Center as the best local source of information for gardeners - here's the link to their science-based publications, including several about Integrated Pest Management and the best varieties of vegetable to grow in this area.  Even Virginia Master Gardeners recommend this excellent site, which is produced by the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Service.

(Later, D.C. Master Gardener Barbara Baldwin did a little research and sent me this bad news about cucumber beetles:  there's no real organic control; only row covers offer a bit of protection and picking off the insects, along with cleaning up the area in the fall and in the spring.  Sorry!)

Ornamentals
Here's a photo of Hill East at its worst, I'm sure, and if somebody has a photo in season, send it along and I'll post it instead.  What it would surely show are lots of color and beauty in the garden's 2-foot-wide perimeter plantings, including drought-tolerant perennials like sedum and daylilies.  Asked to suggest others, we threw out ideas like butterfly bush, crapemyrtle, salvia, and for evergreen color, tall but narrow junipers.

How can we help?
If Ed or I had anything helpful to offer Hill Easters we're pleased as punch but really, we were there to find out how to help.  So now that there's a volunteer gardener group in D.C., how can we help its 30-some community gardens?

• What should we add to our website?  How about a separate page about starting, managing and growing in community gardens?
• We learned that Hill Easters have their own Yahoo group - an important resource for any group - but would you like a way to communicate with community gardeners citywide?
• When Lorin talked about the TWO hazardous waste collection events yearly in all of D.C., it was obvious that more are needed.  And the ONE event this spring is April 21 at Carter Barron Ampitheater on upper 16th Street - nowhere near Capitol Hill.  These collection events are for your unused pesticides, fertilizers, lead paint, florescent lights, and dead electronics.
• And how about free compost and mulch from the city's leaf collection activities?  We agree that's a huge need and we're on it!  A full report is coming soon to this blog and will be posted permenantly on our site.

Hill Easters, it was great meeting you and seeing your garden, and invite us back soon!

Posted by Susan Harris

Hill East Community Gardeners held their Annual Meeting/Potluck Dinner and invited DC Urban Gardeners Ed Bruske and myself to attend.  Okay, they didn't know we exist yet (how could they?) but their invited guest - Lorin O'Toole of D.C.'s Department of Environment, invited Ed and me to tag along and maybe answer some questions about pests.  So here's what we learned and a little about what they might have learned from us (more coming soon, we hope.)

• Community gardens are HAPPENING, very cool in a community-building, get-to-know-your-neighbor sort of way.  And as a lifelong by-myself gardener who spends waay too much time talking to myself in my own back yard, I'm totally jealous.  The photo shows board member Rochelle Woodard speaking to the group.
• The Hill East garden started in 2002 and the first year and a half was spent just clearing the space of debris, including whole cars.  So somebody sure had vision, to look at a dump site and see the potential for growing food.  And with who-knows-what-all in the soil under all that crap, they wisely decided to build raised beds. 
• Hill Easters were guided by a nearby experienced community gardener - Pat Taylor of the King's Court Garden.  Pat's also a mover/shaker in the Capitol Hill Garden Club.
• Gardeners at Hill East pay $50 a year, plus a one-time $100 initiation fee (which includes orientation).  All 36 of its 12x4 plots are occupied now and there's a waiting list to join. 
• Hill East is an all-organic, which is a particular challenge for community gardens, where scores of different gardeners are making their plant choices independently and exercising different degrees of garden clean-up. 

Pests?
You bet, and the most-hated insects here are cucumber beetles and harlequin beetles. So what's an organic gardener to do?  Ed offered suggestions about the macro solutions, like soil amendments (compost, compost, compost), using pest-resistant varieties, and giving giving up on growing pest-prone vegetables altogether.  Or how about attracting more beneficial insects?   I recommended the Maryland Home and Garden Center as the best local source of information for gardeners - here's the link to their science-based publications, including several about Integrated Pest Management and the best varieties of vegetable to grow in this area.  Even Virginia Master Gardeners recommend this excellent site, which is produced by the University of Maryland Cooperative Extension Service.

(Later, D.C. Master Gardener Barbara Baldwin did a little research and sent me this bad news about cucumber beetles:  there's no real organic control; only row covers offer a bit of protection and picking off the insects, along with cleaning up the area in the fall and in the spring.  Sorry!)

Ornamentals
Here's a photo of Hill East at its worst, I'm sure, and if somebody has a photo in season, send it along and I'll post it instead.  What it would surely show are lots of color and beauty in the garden's 2-foot-wide perimeter plantings, including drought-tolerant perennials like sedum and daylilies.  Asked to suggest others, we threw out ideas like butterfly bush, crapemyrtle, salvia, and for evergreen color, tall but narrow junipers.

How can we help?
If Ed or I had anything helpful to offer Hill Easters we're pleased as punch but really, we were there to find out how to help.  So now that there's a volunteer gardener group in D.C., how can we help its 30-some community gardens?

• What should we add to our website?  How about a separate page about starting, managing and growing in community gardens?
• We learned that Hill Easters have their own Yahoo group - an important resource for any group - but would you like a way to communicate with community gardeners citywide?
• When Lorin talked about the TWO hazardous waste collection events yearly in all of D.C., it was obvious that more are needed.  And the ONE event this spring is April 21 at Carter Barron Ampitheater on upper 16th Street - nowhere near Capitol Hill.  These collection events are for your unused pesticides, fertilizers, lead paint, florescent lights, and dead electronics.
• And how about free compost and mulch from the city's leaf collection activities?  We agree that's a huge need and we're on it!  A full report is coming soon to this blog and will be posted permenantly on our site.

Hill Easters, it was great meeting you and seeing your garden, and invite us back soon!

Posted by Susan Harris

Planting for a Community

It may have been freezing the last couple of weeks, but anyone with an eye on the calendar knows it's time to start seedlings for transplanting in the spring. The three women on the left are doing just that, and with even bigger things in mind. Their plan is to help provide food for the neighborhood around 7th and Q Streets NW by reviving a vegetable garden in a large open space there. Calling themselves The 7th Street Garden, the group hopes to work closely with the surrounding community to get the project up and running by spring. Pictured here, from left to right, is Liz Falk, one of the project coordinators, along with volunteers Sabrina Sideres and Rebeca Bell. Not pictured are three other project coordinators, Liz Tylander, Lara Sheets and Susan Ellsworth.

The 7th Street Garden is collaborating with Bread for the City and Shaw Ecovillage. At a recent brown-bag lunch at Casey Trees, Falk and Tylander explained that the purpose of the venture is to teach neighorhood residents how to grow their own food and provide a place to do it. The group envisions garden and nutrition education programs, a community kitchen, school garden, cafeteria and learning center, all centering around pesticide-free, permaculture principles. Many details have yet to be worked out. The group plans to use existing raised beds while amending the soil elsewhere on the lot. They are looking for donations of topsoil, compost, mulch, tools and lumber and welcome volunteers. You can reach the 7th Street Garden at 7thstreetgarden@gmail.com.

And no, Ms. Falk did not bring a mighty big thirst to her seedling planting. We just happened to catch her in front of a few cases of tea donated by Guayaki.com.  Thanks, Guayaki.  You are supporting a very worthy cause.

Posted by Ed Bruske, photos by Susan Harris

It may have been freezing the last couple of weeks, but anyone with an eye on the calendar knows it's time to start seedlings for transplanting in the spring. The three women on the left are doing just that, and with even bigger things in mind. Their plan is to help provide food for the neighborhood around 7th and Q Streets NW by reviving a vegetable garden in a large open space there. Calling themselves The 7th Street Garden, the group hopes to work closely with the surrounding community to get the project up and running by spring. Pictured here, from left to right, is Liz Falk, one of the project coordinators, along with volunteers Sabrina Sideres and Rebeca Bell. Not pictured are three other project coordinators, Liz Tylander, Lara Sheets and Susan Ellsworth.

The 7th Street Garden is collaborating with Bread for the City and Shaw Ecovillage. At a recent brown-bag lunch at Casey Trees, Falk and Tylander explained that the purpose of the venture is to teach neighorhood residents how to grow their own food and provide a place to do it. The group envisions garden and nutrition education programs, a community kitchen, school garden, cafeteria and learning center, all centering around pesticide-free, permaculture principles. Many details have yet to be worked out. The group plans to use existing raised beds while amending the soil elsewhere on the lot. They are looking for donations of topsoil, compost, mulch, tools and lumber and welcome volunteers. You can reach the 7th Street Garden at 7thstreetgarden@gmail.com.

And no, Ms. Falk did not bring a mighty big thirst to her seedling planting. We just happened to catch her in front of a few cases of tea donated by Guayaki.com.  Thanks, Guayaki.  You are supporting a very worthy cause.

Posted by Ed Bruske, photos by Susan Harris

GROW No More

Some of you may have gotten the flash e-mail and weren't sure whether to run and hide. Come on down to the offices of Garden Resources of Washington, the e-mail announcement said, and scoop up free garden tools, books, whatever. We're closing shop!

We just wanted to shout, Say it ain't so!

Sadly, it was so. Judy Tiger, executive director of GROW lo these many years, was finally giving up the ghost. She was shuttering her small office adjacent to St. Augustine's Church at 15th and V Streets NW and closing the books--at least for now--on an organization that has been a friend to gardens great and small in D.C. Perhaps more than any single person in Washington, Judy had become the fairy godmother to all sorts of gardens, but particularly those most in need. Over the years, GROW and Judy Tiger helped start more than 100 gardens in schools, churches, senior centers and parks, and helped fund numerous other street plantings and other projects. GROW'S small but essential grants gave many of us a start and a leg up.

So what happened?

Well, we'd all like to know. But Judy has been a reluctant interview subject. So until she decides to fill us in, we'll just have to settle for our own favorite Judy Tiger stories.

In my own case, that would be a little more than a year ago when I and a small group of teachers at my daughter's charter school, Children's Studio School, resolved to start a small garden on a vacant lot not far from the U Stree metro station. We had not a clue how we would pay for it. Then one day my wife was scanning the U Street News website and declared, "Hey! Somebody's giving away grants for gardens. Maybe you should look into this!"

Next thing I knew, I was sitting in a conference room at Martin Luther King Jr. library listening to a small, very talkative woman explain what these grants were all about, who was eligible, how we would have to sacrifice our first born to get one, etc. We went around the table introducing ourselves and, lo and behold, it turned out Judy Tiger had once gardened in that very same vacant lot with teachers from the very same charter school. It seemed the stars were in some kind of mysterious alignment.

As a result of that meeting, I not only got $900 dollars to start our garden, but also referrals that eventually led me to the Master Gardener program at the University of the District of Columbia, where I met the fine folk who are my partners in this D.C. Urban Gardeners organization. I was also encouraged to apply for other grants, specifically from our local Advisory Neighborhood Commission 1B, which led to another large donation, and finally a container garden that covers a 1,600-square-foot area adjacent to Children's Studio School that had been nothing but a patch of bare asphalt. Before the year was out, we were one of the five schools chosen citywide for last year's D.C. Schoolyard Greening tour.

Does this sound like something out of a Frank Capra movie?

I hope it does. So just count this as a tribute to you, Judy Tiger, and all the great work you've done. And all you others out there, don't be afraid to chime in with your own Judy Tiger stories.

Posted by Ed Bruske