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Susan Harris's blog about eco-friendly and urban gardening, plus the adventures of a DC-based garden writer, coach and occasional rabble-rowser.
From the monthly archives:
November 2006
Amazing things happen when can-do people with a passion for gardening get together. And
somewhere in Washington, D.C., six of them have been getting together every Monday at 10. The meeting place is a big, cozy kitchen in a big, ramshackle house in the big city. Refreshments are fresh-baked scones and plenty of good coffee.
Since August these D.C. Master Gardeners have been brainstorming about creating some cool projects – DOING something with all their energy and their love of gardening. Brainstorming about forming some sort of organization, about attracting and putting to good use more and more people like them, with results that can’t possibly be known but will probably include school gardens and healing gardens and public events to teach composting and pruning and eco-friendly gardening and who-the-hell-knows what else. And in the process creating comraderie and the fun of team accomplishment for people who’ve previously gardened by themselves in their own private places.
Their first e
vent in October was a successful plant swap, housed in a historic garage on the grounds of the Georgetown estate called Tudor Place. Next, their Speakers Bureau launched with a PowerPoint talk/demo on composting held at a rec center, also well attended because they were smart in publicizing it. Two passionate composters, including one whose email address is compostman@something.com, carried the word. And a new school garden has almost emerged from the grueling paperwork-and-fundraising stage to groundbreaking.
As its primary project the team has adopted the Washington Home and Hospice, much in need of help with its six garden areas in varying states of development. There’s talk of using plants to elicit memories in the Alzheimers Garden, of growing vegetables in raised beds with the involvement of residents and families, always with the goal of demonstrating environmentally responsible gardening in this very prominent site (the recent home of Art Buchwald).
In February they’ll meet the trainees in the Class of 2007, the pool of 35 or so potential activists. They’ll cheerlead for the cause and do whatever it takes to turn 
these volunteers into leaders for years to come.
So who IS the scheming sextet? Three retired government
professionals (all medal-deserving jumpers of bureaucratic hurdles). And still aspiring to retirement are a teacher/professional gardener, a writer/caterer, and me. You know how sometimes when you put out a call for people interested in making something happen, nothing happens? Well, the call I put out last summer yielded these five. So after convening the first meeting, my job was to stand back and then discard any delusion I might have had that I was in charge. They’re one of the coolest groups of people I’ve ever known.
Addendum: Here’s an update posted in November of 2007. It includes my testimony to the City Council blowing the whistle on DC’s Master Gardener program.
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18 is the number that my friend Adrienne was told it would take to do fall clean-up of her lovely but tiny townhouse garden. And at $50 an hour, that’s 900 bucks right there, before you add the cost of the mulch.
So she took a pass and sent me a desperate email: Could she hire me to do it with her? There was a hesitancy because she knows I don’t hire myself out as a manual laborer. Got that, everyone? But she’s one of my bestest friends, so the rules don’t apply.
Cut to the townhouse this past Sunday, a glorious sun-shiney day. When I arrived Adrienne’s car had been topped-off with 10 bags of mulch, the limit of its capacity. Before spreading it there was – I’ll admit it – a whole lot of weeding to do, yesiree. And maybe 30 minutes of pruning. But 3 and a half hours later it was all done and doing the math, that’s 7 work-hours, in this case 7 women-in-their-50s-hours.
So the question is: Is it us? Is it them? Or is this landscape contractor ripping people off big-time?
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