Leonard Moorehead, The Urban Gardener: The Great Melt

Saturday, March 07, 2015

Leonard Moorehead, GoLocalWorcester Gardening Expert

Demeter cry out for your daughter Persephone. Shine over our deep snowy gardens. Call to Persephone, we are weary of winter. Make the long climb up, frozen, slippery, confines urban gardeners. Surely it is time to seek golden purple crocus blooms. Are there Lenten Roses under snow drifts? Where are the snowdrops? The last full moon of winter teases us. Fragrant hazelwood remain tightly curled, epic tides follow the moon, Demeter, goddess of growth and harvest, rescue Persephone from her dark abode, raise her up. We’ll celebrate, spring so long denied deserves homecoming. The equinox approaches, we yearn for spring.

Pull your noses

Pull your noses and checkbooks away from seed catalogs if you dare. Urban gardeners feel the pulse. Drip, drip, slip, slide along pavements. We parse seed catalogs for early varieties of beets, kale, broccoli, and spinach, the nutritious powerhouses of cold soil. Kale will germinate in 45 F degree soil, a mere 13 degrees above freezing. Kale soup is a hallmark of Portuguese cuisine and lingered on the margins of the produce counter. No longer.

Savvy gardeners

Savvy gardeners are not dictated by profit margins. We have the luxury of choosing plants full of nutrition, taste, and flavor. Free from advertising and long distance transport, we focus our attention upon high yield, low impact gardens. Rewarded by freshness, minutes to the pot rather than days in refrigerator trains or reduced to concepts of what should be rather than choices made, urban gardeners are now screening their seed catalogs for kales, broccoli, beets, chards, and other greens with deep green, purple, and red colors. All are benchmarks of higher nutrition.

Bring children

Bring children of every age into the garden. Start at the kitchen table. Legacy publications are eminently suitable for study. Search for catalogs that contain both common and botanical names for each plant. Who can resist rolling the tongue off Lavendula augustifolia? Or if you will, Munstead for an essential garden plant that flourishes in scorched, nearly sterile, well drained soils? Link plants to senses for yourself and youngsters. No one can forget lavender or lavendula when dried sprigs are kept as tokens of happiness among the socks and drawers. Sniff, breath in, and memory enshrines goodness.

Draw out

Draw out your garden. Clip out pictures of plants, don’t fuss over the fine points yet. Urban gardeners are very fortunate to have a cornucopia of choices. Our vocabulary is the garden, assemble an alphabet of those plants that appeal to you. Never allow a garden become a leafy spreadsheet. Free the imagination. Once you and yours have marshalled each preference begin introductions. Forge ahead and link plants with values important to you. Form groups of plants into seasons, discover their common needs and match them with your resources.

Childhood excitement

I have never lost childhood excitement. Actually, I believe we retain a core innocence much built over. Told, “crocus bloom under the snow”, I found one. I was small and indulged, my search was in very likely territory for a crocus under the snow. Even so, this miracle of Persephone enchants decades later. My daily routes across town and neighborhood have botanical signposts. A big Victorian house moved west along Angel Street has a sunny south lawn. A short, steep space, trampled like so many other urban spaces under tons of heavy machinery, built over, demolished, a building moved, still, there on the lawn, previous to everything bloom Lenten Roses. In pink, white, and sometimes red, Hellebore or Lenten Roses are often the first signs of Persephone’s ascent from winter. The smile started in childhood.

Foster hope

Foster hope. Deny yourself a garden? No. Community gardens expand into vacant lots and spaces. Urban gardening is far beyond the territorial. Leave possession to the powers that be, use of land is our common heritage. You don’t have far to look in most towns and cities. Benign organizations of like- minded people cultivate plots tucked among old neighborhoods. Many sponsor workshops, information, and cooking classes. I am a seed saver. There is a moment of recognition at seed swaps when her grandmother’s tomato meets my apricot colored double bloomed zinnia. Call it fate. Call it destiny. Kismet, we chat and despite disparate origins, ages, beliefs, sizes, there is basic unity.

Desires expression

Our pluralism desires expression and community gardens are the ultimate melting pot. Meet new plants, new people, new cultivation methods. As snow melts into the sea we take off heavy winter coats. We let go of the past wind chills and frozen grounds. Search for crocus under the snow, the bright spot among the melting past is the future. Hand in hand, from the kitchen table’s comparisons we are ready for spring. Legends are made every day. Let’s begin ours now.

Leonard Moorehead is a life-long gardener. He practices organic-bio/dynamic gardening techniques in a side lot surrounded by city neighborhoods in Providence RI. His adventures in composting, wood chips, manure, seaweed, hay and enormous amounts of leaves are minor distractions to the joy of cultivating the soil with flowers, herbs, vegetables, berries, and dwarf fruit trees.