A community garden is like a little shared oasis, a special spot where folks from all walks of life come together to grow delicious veggies, fragrant herbs, and beautiful flowers. It becomes a green sanctuary, where members roll up their sleeves, dig in the dirt, and let nature work its magic. Often organic, community gardens help promote soil health and community connection as much as they do delicious, locally grown food.
Posts tagged #garden
Herbs for Your Garden: Yarrow
Yarrow is an indispensable herb that you’ll always find growing in my herb garden. Its versatility is formidable, making it an excellent tool in your herbal medicine kit. If you asked an herbalist what single plant they would bring with them to a deserted island, their answer will most likely be “Yarrow!”
Ann Arbor Farm and Garden: Flower Therapy and Community Beautification
Do you like playing in the dirt? Maybe you’re a bit of a novice when it comes to plants, but you enjoy taking walks in neighborhoods that have been enhanced with beautiful flowers, or even learning more about them from an expert. Do you think of ways that plants and flowers can create beauty in a public place in need of some love and care? What about arranging flowers? Are flowers your go to for a loved one suffering from an illness? Would you like to help students who have a passion for botany or in improving the natural environment? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then read on to learn more about Ann Arbor Farm and Garden, an organization that has been giving back to the community for more than 75 years.
Green Living: Putting Our Yards to Bed For Winter
Over the past six months, we’ve witnessed the transformation from last winter’s dormancy into a lush and verdant summer. We’ve been enjoying the fruits of Nature’s labors—beauty, food, and shade from flowers, vegetables, and trees. Now is the time in our cycle when all this foliar production returns to earth. What has increased must decrease. For leafy life to begin anew next spring, all this green must become brown and nourish the soil.
East Close to Home
Since 1999, during the month of November, people across the globe have participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), attempting to write a 50,000-word novel in just 30 days. Many popular authors have gotten their start with NaNoWriMo. In 2008, some of Emily Springfield’s friends were among those who had taken up this, and other, month-long challenges. But, Springfield didn’t want to write a novel. As she told me, “I decided that since food and gardening were my passion, I would institute ‘NaLoFooMo’—National Local Food Month—and write about local food each day of November.”
Life Force: Discovering Invisible Allies Outside Your Door
As the sun moves higher in the sky, warming our bones and our soil, we might find ourselves more frequently drawn outside. We venture into our personal landscapes just outside the door, onto the trails of our neighborhood park, or even Nichols Arboretum, looking for more signs of life emerging from the earth. What is our personal connection with this green world outside? Some of us have started a spring vegetable garden, some of us hike or play regularly in the wild, and some of us might not know anything about plants—we just know what looks beautiful to us or how good we feel after spending time outdoors.
Using Crystals to Attract Faeries
Once upon a time, nearly every culture on every continent held some measure of belief in the existence of fairies. A life form described as small humanlike creatures that live in natural habitats, often invisible to human eyes. Early writings depict them as mischievous and even at times, malicious. Travelers often left offerings of food and drink for them in exchange for protection against the elements, wild animals, and other dangers that might befall on their journey. Legend has it that fairies especially appreciated milk, bread, cheese, sweets, and other prepared foods.
Michigan Flower Growers’ Cooperative Brings Local Flowers to the Table
In the middle of the growing season in 2017, something brand new sprouted in Ann Arbor. Grown with care, the Michigan Flower Growers’ Cooperative was founded on July 5, 2017, and ran through the rest of the growing season with great success. Now, they’re approaching their second year of bringing locally-sourced flowers to southeast Michigan, serving everyone from local flower shops to DIY brides to individual consumers with beautiful blooms.
A Practice of Mindfulness from Seed to Plate
I reflect on my experience with learning mindfulness cooking and eating practice during silent retreats at a Zen Buddhist Sangha in North Carolina. I examined the concept of gratitude when planting, harvesting, preparing and consuming food. Although these times were for deep contemplative study and complete silence, there was a common language spoken around the kitchen counter and table that I call reverence.
A Permaculture Perspective — The Production of Our Choices
Is it important to you that your daily life reflects choices that care for the Earth, its people, and our future? If yes, then you are already one step closer to deeply living in the ways of an ecological culture design science called Permaculture.
