The Providential Gardener

Lessons from Fields & Streets ~ Reflections on a Scott Turner Commentary

A regular feature on the Saturday Projo Commentary page is Scott Turner's column. He has been writing about nature for Projo for a while now, and I look forward to each column. It's good to see the world through his eyes.

September 6, the theme was "Lessons from field and street," a comparison of how he spent his summers in 1968 and in 2008 ~ the former in the Bronx in that incendiary summer, the latter in tranquil New Hampshire. It is sobering to think of what children in our cities experience ~ and don't experience. If you've seen any of the HBO series, The Wire, or if you drive around parts of Rhode Island's urban landscape, you have some idea of the Bronx in 1968 ~ its bleakness, hopelessness, and death ~ hardly a plant in sight ~ not even weeds. Another recent commentary, "Fragrance, Friendship, and Fast Living," June 21, 2008 also described an event from his childhood ~ how a friend excitedly introduced him to what might as well have been a different planet:

MY BEST FRIEND, Jamie, with the long eyelashes and thick brown hair, led me on a 20-block walk along teeming, tree-less, four-lane Fordham Road in the Bronx. He wouldn’t tell me where we were going, but I trusted Jamie enough to let him surprise me. “You gotta see what I found,” he said.

That late June morning in 1968 was bright and sunny as we slipped our bony, soon-to-be-10-year-old bodies through two bent wrought-iron bars on Southern Boulevard, sneaking into the New York Botanical Garden (NYBG)....

Take a look at Scott's commentaries, especially this one about NYBG and find out how their adventure turned out. You can find very recent ones on Projo through their search function [search on "Scott Turner"], or try Google ~ this search turned up a lot of Turner's columns:

"scott turner" "nature writer"

Providence is indeed fortunate that more than 25 years ago, some folks decided there should be a land trust here that encouraged urban agriculture. Clifford Street in Providence now looks very different from The Wire's streets. I learned recently that the site of City Farm was once a chop shop for processing stolen cars. Now it looks like this:  

Southside Community Land Trust has been running afterschool Youth Garden Club programs at two Providence elementary schools for four years now, in addition to other programs and their hundreds of community garden plots. City Farm has open houses through October on Thursdays around 6pm, and out at Urban Edge Farm in Cranston on Saturday, September 13, 2008, it's the very fun fund raiser for SCLT, the annual hoedown.

The current newsletter describes the Youth Garden Clubs, and the website has the hoedown info, as does What Grows On in Rhode Island ~ Rhode Island's most comprehensive environmental calendar.  SCLT is working on acquiring more land for urban gardens to meet the needs of their long waiting list for plots. For the land and for the garden clubs they can use all the funds they can get. The fields are now surrounded by Providence streets. Kids today, all kids, who are just like Jamie and Scott, ought to grow up in gardens.   

 

Garden Guys at the Garden Show on Saturday, February 23, 2008

Friday's icy roads may have kept you from the Garden Show in Providence, but make up for that by heading out to the Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show on Saturday. It's open until 9:00pm on Saturday, and 6:00pm on Sunday. We could all use a good dose of flowery greenery about now!

From noon to 2pm on Saturday, Layanee DeMerchant and Sam Jeffries, two of the "Garden Guys" who are on WHJJ 920AM on Sunday mornings, will be at the Rhode Island Spring Flower & Garden Show.

Also, look for these other garden guys: Friday members of the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society of Landscape Architects were giving brief consults on garden design for attendees. I've also seen them do this at another occasion last year. It is a good way to get a feel for how a professional could help you deal with those difficult problems that keep your yard from being as beautiful and enjoyable as you would like. Maybe they'll be at the show again today! Ask at the "Ask a Master Gardener" booth at the top of the escalator as you enter the show.

Vanilla Beans, Learning Landscape, and the Garden Guys

I couldn't resist calling in to the Garden Guys show this morning (January 27, 2008) on WHJJ 920AM because I knew the answer to the last question for listeners: From what plant do we get vanilla? Not only did I know vanilla comes from an orchid, but also I had actually SEEN the Vanilla Orchid plant four days ago right in Providence! It's native to Mexico, actually, but Madagascar is said to be the largest producer. So how can I have seen it here in the city? It's snowing out as I write this.

Well, the short answer is, I was at Roger Williams Park Botanical Center on Wednesday for training I describe below, and there was the vanilla orchid, a vine growing on trees in the orchid display. The Botanical Center opened about a year ago, a tropical oasis in New England, open Tuesday through Sunday, 11-4, for a very nominal fee. You don't need a passport or an airline ticket to get to the tropics this afternoon. Just get in the car and go to the Park. The Botanical Center is across the road from the Mounted Command.

Last year, I finally had the time to take the URI Master Gardener course, which is about 12-14 weeks long and involves a serious volunteer commitment of 50 hours to earn the title, Master Gardener (MG). It's a continuing commitment: each year to maintain "certified active Extension Master Gardener" status, MGs must attend at least 15 hours of continuing education workshops and volunteer at least 20 hours. Many MGs have hundreds and even thousands of volunteer hours. I've heard that the URI MG Association is the largest volunteer organization in the state.

The URI Master Gardeners are part of the Cooperative Extension, with a mission to provide reliable information about all things growing in Rhode Island to the public. One program I volunteered on is the Learning Landscape: a morning of hands-on exploration and discovery classes in grades K-5 at URI (outside, during the spring and early fall) and

now also in February & March at the RWP Botanical Center!

Special rates are available for Providence School Groups!

School groups from Northern RI and greater Providence can more easily participate in the Learning Landscape ~ no long bus trip to South County. Three schools have signed up so far, but if other schools want to take advantage of this program, contact the Learning Landscape Program Coordinator, Cathi Cote. It's such fun for us who lead the groups of children around the various stations, and the children love it.

Marion Gold, who oversees all of URI College of Environment & Life Sciences Outreach Programs, described the new RWPBC Learning Landscape Program recently on Channel 10, WJAR. Volunteering for programs such as this gives many opportunities to learn; and of course, explaining and sharing knowledge with others helps the memory and further deepens one's understanding of the natural world. The photo is from the Learning Landscape training this week ~ Cathi explaining how to show the specimens of animals native to Rhode Island (all of which had died naturally, by the way, and were found in time to preserve them).

The Botanical Center has a culinary area where you can see bananas growing right now, as well as cacao (chocolate), lemon, guava, avocado, Mandarin orange, and fig trees. You'll also find a carnivorous plant bog maintained by the New England Carnivorous Plant Society, which meets at RWPBC every second Saturday at 12:30. AND...

they just posted the schedule for the SPRING GARDENING SCHOOL at RWPBC, which will be Monday afternoons, 2:00   pm to 4:00 pm, April 2nd  through May 21st at the RWP Botanical   Center Mediterranean Room.

You wouldn't believe all that's Growing On in Rhode Island! This is just a little sample of what there is to do and see in Little Rhody.

Which reminds me ~ If you have school-aged children in Rhode Island and love gardening, be sure to get your school involved ASAP in The Children's Garden Network! They aim to help establish gardens at every school in the state. Their website just went live, and there are advantages to registering your child's school garden as soon as you can. See their website for details, and also this post from What Grows On in Rhode Island.

The Providential Gardener is working on a comprehensive online Union Calendar of RI environment-related events called WHAT GROWS ON IN RHODE ISLAND. Any and every organization planning relevant meetings is welcome to add their events to the Calendar. As the Calendar itself grows, it will be easier for folks to find out about opportunities to learn about and tend our wonderful shared Garden aka Rhode Island.

Films, Videos, DVDs on Nature & Gardening

You might like to know about this new feature from Amazon: "Unbox" is a way to get videos that will play on your computer.

I've set up a FILM and VIDEO STORE and selected some items from Unbox that might interest Providential Gardener readers. Take a look HERE, and note there are links in the righthand sidebar to both my Amazon Bookstore and Amazon Unbox Store.

This graphic will link you to ALL the Unbox offerings from Discovery, HGTV, National Geographic, and PBS:

The RIght Way Great Green Shoot Off Winner ~ 2007

The Apeiron Institute chose a winner from several short films submitted in the 2007 spring RIght Way Great Green Shoot Off. It's called VOICES, it's on You Tube, and it's about 3 minutes long. Short and Sweet. Hope you enjoy it.  

Rhode Island can be the first "Sustainable State" ~ Let's make this happen soon!

A quote from VOICES: " Sure, our state is small, but we're proud of it."

Inch by Inch ~ Providence Youth Gardens Grow

I love talking with folks when I check out Providential Gardener Calendar events. There's always something new to learn. On Sunday, when I was at the Urban Greens West End Garden Tour, I heard about an 8-minute film made by Ilana Friedman while she was a student at Brown four years ago called "Inch by Inch: Providence Youth Gardens for Change." It shows how teachers can implement gardening programs in schools:

...Lessons emerge organically as garden settings help students address issues specific to their school. Building academic skills through hands-on learning, students also grow healthy food, develop literacy in a bilingual setting, make public art, and bridge the deaf and hearing communities. This video motivates educators to get growing with their youth.

It strikes me that this is a good Fourth of July story: about taking charge of the urban environment and developing self-sufficiency ~ and personal independence. Yet how interdependent we are on those who teach us and on those enabling organizations like Southside Community Land Trust, which continues to develop school gardens in Providence.

You can see this film right now on Media That Matters, a site worth exploring in itself. Read the story about the film for more details. Four Providence schools are featured: Community Prep and their Freedom Garden, Flynn Elementary, City Arts!, and the Rhode Island School for the Deaf.

One more thing: Stu Nunnery (Rhode Island Farmways) and many other people involved in The Children's Garden Network are hard at work on the Garden at Every School in Rhode Island by 2010 project. I have written about that program in other posts, and I'm sure we'll be hearing more from them in the coming school year. But for now, back to the parades and fireworks.

ProJo Digest ~ June 13

About This Series ~ What You Read or Missed in the Providence Journal Recently.... [you might find these articles at www.projo.com if you missed them]

June 13, 2007

• B1 ~ "Environmentalists challenge land-sale proposal" [in Charlestown]
• D3 ~ "Providence Public School Activities" ~ News of Southside Community Land Trust's youth garden clubs, which have involved more than 350 young people in garden projects
• E1 ~ "Ambitious Local 121 opens in old Dreyfus Hotel" [This is another great restaurant for Providence. You should see the pictures in this article. The photos show a truly elegant space.  The owner, Joshua Miller who also owns Trinity Brewhouse, is determined to serve as much locally produced food as is possible.  To ensure that this goal is met, the restaurant has hired an official Forager, Dana Berge....]
• E10 ~ "Eloquent homage to trees" ~ Brief book note: "A Natural History of North American Trees," by Donald Culross Peattie.

ProJo Digest ~ June 11 & 12

About This Series ~ What You Read or Missed in the Providence Journal Recently.... [you might find these articles at www.projo.com if you missed them]

June 11, 2007 

• A1 ~ "D.C. law firm may reap millions in fees from state" [DEM has hired Sutherland Asbill & Brennan to prepare for a law suit over a cleanup of toxic soil dumped more than 50 years ago in Tiverton. Gives historical perspective and legal ramifications of how we tend our common Garden, our Rhode Island. Whatever is going on here, it's important to the state's residents that someone, in this case the Providence Journal, investigates and asks questions. SK]
• D2 ~ "The Essentials"
  • "New mulch can weed,too" [Well, I don't like to take sides, because not everyone is ready or interested in sustainable gardening, but here is one of my biases: I'd be reluctant to use a mulch that had a weed preventer in it. Mulch at the correct thickness (2-3 inches) keeps down weeds anyway, and a weed preventer is a chemical. Even if it's "been around for years" why use chemical pesticides/herbicides etc. unless they are really necessary? Another bias: Why does mulch need "color enhancement"? Why aren't natural colors and processes acceptable? ~ SK]
    
  • "Give lawns one good soaking" ~ [This is good advice: It's best to give one deep watering a week. That's all the little plantlets need. ~ SK]

June 12, 2007

• B1 ~ "Groups lobby for seats on RIPTA board" ~ Environmental groups are concerned about the future of public transit.

ProJo Digest ~ June 10, 2007

About This Series ~ What You Read or Missed in the Providence Journal Recently.... [you might find these articles at www.projo.com if you missed them]

June 10, 2007

• B2 ~ Peter B. Lord's Environmental Journal
  
  • "West Greenwich honored for saving 1,566 acres of woods"
  • Coastal Resources Management Council hearing  set for controversial permit applications
  • DEM director W. Michael Sullivan speaking on "Marine and Freshwater Resources: Managing for the 21st Century," at Blackstone Valley Tourist Center, Pawtucket, Wed., June 13, 7pm [Part of the Summer Community Lecture Series]. Reserve a seat.
  • "Rain barrels to be sold at discount" [in Providence. buy by Thurs, June 14]

• F1 ~ "Taxpayers eat cost of coastal insurance"
• G1 ~ Neighborhood of the Week: Matunuck ~ "A place by the ocean, dear to the heart."
• J2 ~ Volunteer Center of RI
  • Blithwold needs volunteers
  • Audubon Environmental Education Center needs volunteers
• J7 ~ "Secret Garden Tour in Newport: Your annual chance to peek!"
• J7 ~ "Flat, round, coiled, rubber, vinyl: There's a hose for every need"
• J8 ~ "Ground cover can be attractive, intriguing as well as useful"
• J8 ~ "A shovel for every job"
• J8 ~ "Do-it-yourselfers can tackle irrigation woes"
• J8 ~ Home & Garden Calendar [It's hard to find this info online at projo.com or I'd link to it. I already have most of these events of interest to the Providential Gardener in the Providential Gardener Calendar]

ProJo Digest ~ June 8 & 9

About This Series ~ What You Read or Missed in the Providence Journal Recently.... [you might find these articles at www.projo.com if you missed them]

June 8, 2007

• D2 ~ Soil & compost workshops at Southside Community Land Trust Saturday, June 23, Providence. [Listed on the Providential Gardener Calendar]
• E2 ~The Essentials
  • What's your artichoke IQ?
  • Bleach patio with care
  • New tool for gardening multitaskers ["Planter's Buddy"]

June 9, 2007

• F1 ~ Development Rights [to Bald Hill Nurseries on the local agenda in Exeter/North Kingstown]