How Green is Your Garden?

The Land of Misfit Plants

Here at GORP headquarters our dysfunctional relationship with the natural world begins just a few steps out the front door.  Anyone who has been here has seen the results: the overgrown tangle of English ivy that now comprises the bulk of our front garden, the odd mix of flora and shrubbery and fallen leaves it partially conceals, the curious collection of dead potted plants.  All about is the debris of childhood and winter.  A storm-damaged dogwood tree clings to life in the midst of it all, held together by a child’s affection and an improvised duct-tape splint.  Somewhere a member of the Fan District Association is compiling a secret record of black-listed property owners, and our name is near the top.

In this domain, as in so many others, we need help, and on March 23^rd we invite you to join us looking for it at Tricycle Gardens, Richmond’s first urban, year-round, highly productive farm.  From 2-6 pm Tricycle Gardens is hosting a (free) Down on the Farm Party at its urban farm location in Manchester, “celebrating the season of planting while enjoying healthy, local food that comes from our urban agricultural endeavors.”

Tricycle Gardens is also offering a number of workshops this spring designed for the novice urban gardener:  Seed Starting (March 16), Urban Container Gardening (April 6, May 18), Learn How to Compost (April 13, June 1).  Costs range from $30-$60 per person.

Our own past endeavors to green GORP headquarters, grand and noble ambitions to the contrary, have had a mostly browning effect, the sort of result one might expect from an easily distracted and highly preoccupied primary caregiver – or a blind chimpanzee with a credit line at Lowe’s.  Undaunted, we have talked this winter of constructing a vertical garden, and perhaps a rooftop garden, though the former would require knowledge we do not posses and the latter a great windfall of funds.  Lowering our sights a bit, we are now hoping to plant something at home this spring that will survive until June.

Contemplating the dismal harvest of dead and misfit plants that constitutes our gardening efforts to date, I am reminded of the likelihood that GORP itself will wither on the vine if it remains a solo venture.  So if you have ideas for future GORP outings – favorite hikes or outdoor places, favorite family adventures, any thoughts on ways we can get our kids (and ourselves) more engaged with the world outside – please don’t hesitate to pass them on to me.  If you have ideas regarding how GORP could be improved in general, those would be very welcome here as well.  Though we’ve said it before, it bears repeating: We have no idea what we are doing.

“Our ties to the green world are often subtle and unexpected.  It is not merely that hemoglobin and chlorophyll bear a striking similarity in structure, or that plants provide the pleasure of food and flowers.  When people who garden find new friendships with neighbors, when a walk in the woods brings relief from pent-up tension, or when a potted begonia restores vitality to a geriatric patient, we can begin to sense the power of these connections and their importance to physical and psychological well-being...

“There are deep reasons for our love affair with nature.  We are creatures who evolved in an environment already green.  Within our cells live memories of the role vegetation played in fostering our survival as a species.  Plants reconnect that distant past, calling forth feelings of tranquility and harmony, restoring mental and physical health in a contemporary, technological world.  Whether in pots, gardens, fields, or forests, living plants remind us of that ancient connection.” – Charles Lewis, Green Nature/Human Nature: The Meaning of Plants in Our Lives

G.O.R.P.