810-LmeMtor Faming, Saturday, May 10,1906
All Kinds of People Enjoy Cultivating Vegetable Gardens
WASHINGTON - “Last year
raccoons kept diggin’ up my corn,
and the worms got into my
tomatoes, but 1 didn’t give up, and
I won’t this season,” says Sharina
Price.
The 10-year-old Washingtonian
displays the same sod-busting
determination shown by millions of
other Americans who are con
fidently attacking another growing
season with hoe, rake, and shovel.
Gardening ranks as the coun
try’s number 1 outdoor leisure
activity. Last year 39 million
households were involved in food
and flower gardening and the
number is expected to grow.
Motivated by a desire for fresh,
nutritious, better-tasting food, the
postwar baby-boomers are
swelling the gardening ranks.
“They garden because they like to,
not for the economic reasons of
past generations,” says Charles
Scott, president of the National
Gardening Association in
Burlington, Vt.
Everybody’s Doing It
Baby-boomers are only one
offshoot of the planting craze.
Special gardens are sprouting up
for almost everyone. The young
and old, the handicapped, prison
inmates, and corporate employees
all have their private plots. So do
Bible-lovers, history buffs, Asian
refugees, and married couples,
among others.
Gardens for inner-city kids, such
as the one at the National Ar
boretum, have been especially
beneficial. As Sharina Price says,
“Gardening is fun, you can watch
things grow, then eat them.
Besides, it beats staying at home
where there’s nothing to do. ’ ’
One of her supervisors, David
Johnson, concurs. “School, pool,
and Bible studies are the only
things a lot of these kids can look
forward to in the summer,” he
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says. “Gardening gives them
another dimension. ’ ’
Children added such a dimension
at a nursing home in Milwaukee
that had plowed up part of its lawn
for a garden. Someone came up
with the idea of inviting youngsters
to help the oldsters with the ar
duous weeding and digging chores.
Friendships and working
relationships blossomed along with
the crops.
The elderly and handicapped
aren’t the only shut-ins who enjoy
gardens. “Prison inmates don’t
have to sit around and act like
vegetables; they should grow
them,” says Nancy Flinn, author
of “The Prison Garden Book.”
Flinn, who has journeyed around
the country encouraging voluntary
gardening in prisons, says the
response from inmates has been
overwhelmingly positive. “Gar
dening gives them dignity and
helps the time pass,” she says.
“And the vegetables don’t pass
judgment. A brussel sprout doesn’t
care if someone’s a saint or a
murderer.”
Massachusetts Freezer
The gardens have been so suc
cessful in Massachusetts that
correctional institutions there
have converted their cannery in
Concord into a freezing plant. It
operates five days a week, four
months a year, and produces about
500 pounds of vegetables and 100
gallons of tomato puree weekly.
Prison gardens soon may
blossom under the most arid
conditions. An acre has been set
aside near the correctional facility
on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands
for a new planting system known
as “Living Wall Gardens.” The
gardens are formed by vertical
plastic containers of various sizes.
Plants grow out of small openings
in the sides of the containers and
require relatively small amounts
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of water and fertilizer.
F. Wesley Moffett Jr., who
developed Living Wall Gardens,
thinks they may become vital
weapons in the war against
hunger.
Cultivating difficult areas has
long been a specialty of the Hmong
people, many of whom have
migrated to the United States from
the mountains of Laos.
In Seattle, church groups have
helped Hmong refugees find
neglected patches of land near
parking lots, highways, and steep
hillsides, which the displaced
tribesmen have cleared to plant
some of their favorite crops, such
as mustard greens.
The spindly mustard is one of the
plants that grow in the “biblical
garden” nestled next to the
Cathedral of St. John the Divine in
New York City. Composed only of
plants that thrived during biblical
times, the quarter-acre garden
surprises some visitors when they
don’t find an apple tree there.
Botanists have concluded that
apples didn’t grow in the Holy
Land in those days. Some biblical
scholars think Adam and Eve
might have been undone by an
apricot, plum, quince, or fig, the
apricot being the likeliest culprit.
Trees bearing these fruits shade
the New York garden.
Propagating Colonial Plants
At the Northshore Community
Garden in Middletown, Mass.,
green-thumbers honor a much
smaller slice of history. They
collect “heirloom” seeds and
propagate plants that flourished in
the 18th and 19th centuries. As
many as 312 types of beans and 29
varieties of squash have been
raised in the garden during a
single growing season.
A crop’s yield, not its pedigree, is
what matters most to married
couples who tend a plot of land set
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aside for them at the University of
Vermont. Created primarily for
low-income couples, the garden
was designed to help them through
college by saving on their food
bills.
Many companies have found that
gardens ease executive tensions as
well as help employees at the lower
end of the pay scale. A Hewlett
Packard scientist in Palo Alto,
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intense; gardening gives me a
change of pace and a few calm
moments in a rigorous routine. ’ ’
Industrialist J. H. Patterson is
credited with pioneering company
gardens in the United States in the
1890 s. Garden-minded young
people, he theorized, would make
the best factory foremen and civic
leaders when they grew up.
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