I don't recall Berry's examples, but I remember thinking, "Yes, this is what has happened for me by staying put in Omaha these past twelve years." Initially reluctant to move to the Midwest after a lifetime in big cities on both coasts, I've been here long enough to perceive patterns in the change of seasons over years, to expect the haunting voice of the hoot owl who migrates through our urban yard every fall, to know the difference between a tornado "watch" and "warning," come to love my neighbors, feel outrage over the outcome of a local election, and know the last frost date before spring planting so my baby seedlings will be safe. In short, to feel at home.
One
of the most meaningful sources of connection for me has been City Sprouts,
a volunteer-based inner-city garden project that my husband, Andrew Jameton,
and I began four years ago. City Sprouts has grounded us literally and
figuratively in our community. It has been a passageway leading us and
many other City Sprouts volunteers beyond our initial hesitancies to form
complex relationships with a place and its people and in so doing, to transcend
our differences and come to belong.
A flourishing garden needs, creates, and insists on connections. City Sprouts links us city folks to features of nature, our society, and ourselves that we might otherwise overlook. We now think and talk together about such things as rainfall, flea beatles, pollinators, microscopic soil organisms that look like dinosaurs, manure, cover crops, okra, farmers, commodity prices, youth gangs, neighborhood churches, "terminator" genetic seed technology, humane hog pens and chicken "tractors," sewer systems, perennials that bloom in September, plants to extract lead from our soil, a friend's mother's cancer, and on and on. These details of conversation and awareness, as Berry counseled, have the power to join us now in new ways to each other, the earth under our feet, and the world beyond.
City Sprouts
As
a result of urban sprawl into farmlands to the west, there are some 3,000
vacant lots in north Omaha, the section of down town where we live. Neglected
houses and businesses have been bulldozed over the last twenty-five years
as wealth and population moved away from our part of town. Many of these
now empty lots are dumping spots for trash and waste. Not surprisingly,
they are often gathering sites for trouble too. In the fall of 1995 we
began City Sprouts on one of these lots. Much had happened earlier that
year. Now in retrospect, these events take on a coherence that make City
Sprouts seem like an inevitability.
That year, our neighborhood was reeling from the surprise and tragedy of four violent deaths and several drive-by shootings. This was also the year we sold our house in Berkeley, marking a commitment to stay in Omaha (only after eight years!). That spring I read Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way, and began the habit of writing "morning pages," three pages of journal entry each morning before the demands of the day could shape my thoughts and desires. I thought I was going to write my way into the life of a novelist or poet or potter, but my pages kept filling instead with lists of ideas, plans, and details for a community garden project.
Years ago, my first job was as a community organizer and I knew from that experience that hope can often be mobilized when people join in the making of a tangible project. I love to garden and the many vacant lots were part of our neighborhood's problem, so a community garden project seemed like a logical direction to take to turn things around. And besides, I joke now that maybe the Omaha Produce Market Master was channeling through me in my early morning writings. He built our house and planted a big garden and orchard around it at the turn of the century. Surely he must be sickened to see all this good land going to waste in our neighborhood when it could be growing fruits and vegetables!
Who
knows the mysteries of such confluence? Obviously, given the ready reception
that City Sprouts has received from neighbors and the many hours of dedicated
service our volunteers from all over town have given, City Sprouts is meeting
a need. We have come a long way in a short time since that sunny, cold
afternoon when a rumbly old car stopped at the curb where we were digging
the garden's first raised beds. The driver leaned through the car window
to ask, "Is it true you're looking for bodies?" "You bet!" answered a gardener.
Laughing, she looked over at her young children playing idly in the nearby
compost pile and continued, "And it sure would help my boys' motivation
to dig if we could find a femur."
Now, entering the garden's fourth season, we have completed beds on most of the lot's entire ½ acre. A flower garden runs along the sidewalk. Many (14 x 4 foot) beds mark the garden's perimeter. A winding bed shaped in the design of a classic labyrinth fills the garden's center space where we needed to bring in topsoil to cover an old building foundation. There is a Peace Pole reminding us that we have all been touched by violence and a bird bath from the family of the young man who was shot on the lot in 1995. Two little prairie plots were planted by women college science students and young members of Girls' Inc. On one side of the garden there is a composting system, and shaded by trees from the afternoon sun, there is a tool bench and three picnic tables. This year, City Sprouts has raised enough funding from grants and donations to hire three part-time people to help sustain our volunteers' enthusiasm over the long haul.
The City Sprouts garden hosts the Growing for Market program with Boys and Girls Clubs members who grow vegetables, flowers, and herbs to sell in the Omaha Farmer's Market. Families from the Catholic Charities St. Martin DePorres Center also use beds in the City Sprouts garden to raise produce for their own use and to sell at market. City Sprouts volunteers run an annual plant sale, a garden tour to other north Omaha gardens, weekly work parties, and an annual winter lecture. Wow! And there hasn't been another shooting in the neighborhood since we started.
We
are especially delighted that, inspired by the City Sprouts garden, other
individuals and community groups have planted their own gardens on neglected
lands nearby. City Sprouts volunteers have helped with some of these gardens.
Other gardens however, like the little one started at the state social
services office down the street, are blooming just because someone driving
by City Sprouts noticed what a difference a garden can make. No doubt City
Sprouts has had other hidden effects. After all, as Marge Piercy reminds
us about connections and gardens, "You cannot tell always by looking
what is happening. More than half a tree is spread out in the soil under
your feet" (Circles in the Water).
Kate Brown is a medical anthropologist. She and her husband Andrew Jameton, a philosopher, co-founded City Sprouts. They both teach bioethics and health policy in Omaha NE. You can contact City Sprouts at 3606 Lafayette Ave / Omaha NE 68131-1364.
The article's title is inspired by Mary Engelbreit's book, Gardener's Journal.