Two important events marking the arrival of spring took place
over this past weekend. The first involved a cast of a dozen intrepid
gardeners. The second was a more personal one for Betty and me.
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| The Medfield Community Garden |
This is our (gulp) thirteenth year managing the Medfield
Community Garden. Before we became the lone members of the Community Garden
Committee (the existing members all resigned), town employees handled almost
all aspects of the garden; collecting fees, mowing the perimeter and,
especially, marking out the garden plots. One by one, we assumed those duties
or, in the case of mowing, doled them out to gardeners in exchange for waiving
plot fees. The result is an extremely high degree of self-sufficiency. We ask
the town to deliver supplies of wood chips. Other than that, we’re on our own.
Town Department of Public Works employees marked out the
garden the first few years. Then, Betty and I tried it on our own, with painful
(literally and figuratively) results. When an entire weekend is devoted to the
task of pounding 160 stakes into the ground, something is profoundly wrong. So,
we asked for volunteers and the task became easier.
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There are three-foot aisles
around each garden |
As the garden expanded from 40 plots to 50, more volunteers
were invited to join the effort, sometime with comical results. All gardens
have a three-foot-wide perimeter around them. One year, an enterprising
volunteer with an inexact grasp of the concept of elasticity brought a six-foot
bungee cord to allow three plot corners to be marked simultaneously. A one-inch
error in a 30-foot measurement is forgivable. When the fifth plot measurement
was off by a cumulative ten inches, we were forced to declare the use of bungee
cords
non grata.
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| My staking diagram |
This year, we had 60 plots to mark, and 11 volunteers in
addition to the two of us.
Two-thirds of
the crew assembled on Saturday morning were veterans armed with yardsticks,
mallets, tape measures unspooling in lengths up to 100 feet. I brought 240
stakes, 60 pie plates with names and plot numbers already affixed, and – most
important – a Plan. Betty and I had already laid out two long strings
indicating the axis of the garden. Now, using the corner plot where the strings
intersected, I showed how using the
outward faces of the stakes was
crucial to ensuring accuracy. Everyone nodded their understanding.
Then, I produced my singular act of genius: a flow chart.
While Group 1 put down pie plates (held in place with heavy rocks) in each
plot, Group 2 would move southward along the first row of plots, and Group 3
would begin marking the westward column. When Groups 2 and 3 had each marked
their second plots, Group 4 would go to work laying out the second row!
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| And so, we staked the garden |
And, lo and behold, it worked. The entire garden – more than
an acre – was completed in almost exactly two and a half hours.
We thanked everyone profusely, went home, and took a long nap.
Then, on Sunday morning, we started the task of waking up our
own home garden.
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Beneath these leaves and pine needles,
perennials are waiting to emerge |
Conventional wisdom – at least according to people who make a
living taking care of other people’s lawns and gardens – is that at the end of
the season, grass and shrubs should be pristine and free of leaves. That belief
is horribly wrong on multiple counts, not the least of which is that leaf ‘litter’
protects bulbs and the roots of shrubs, while providing overwintering homes for
valuable insects.
Accordingly, in late
October and early November, we not only ‘allow’ leaves to congregate under our shrubs,
we also deposit pine needles and chopped leaves over our perennial beds.
During the winter, much of that garden detritus breaks down by
the natural actions of temperature, bacteria, and precipitation to become
future soil and compost. In early April, we remove the excess from our home
garden. Leaving everything in place isn’t really an option: a layer of wet leaves
will form a mat that keeps the ground cold and prevents air, water and light
from getting to the sleeping bulbs and perennials under them.
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| The stone wall, partially cleared |
I began at the long stone wall at the south end of our property.
It collects a
lot of leaves. I work
with 50-gallon plastic bags, and I filled three of them jump-in-and-stomp-down
full (the leaves are emptied into the woodlands that make up the back acre of
our property). In front of that wall is a long perennial bed with multiple
clumps of spring bulbs.
Each gentle pull of the rake revealed a waiting surprise: Nepeta
(cat mint) putting out its first tendrils, wood ferns looking for sun, and
daffodil shoots trying to push through the leaf mats. Three Polemonium
caeruleum (Jacob’s Ladder) plants we added last spring not only made it through
their first winter, but were half again as large as what we planted in the
spring of 2021.
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This clutch of white crocus was
under a covering of leaves |
Betty began her tasks in a different part of the garden,
removing leaves from areas where bulbs and perennials were pushing up. In the
process, she gave clutches of yellow, white, and purple crocus; scilla, brilliant
yellow winter aconite; and
Chionodoxa an opportunity to show their
colors.
The long border of
Muscari
(grape hyacinth) was freed of a winter’s worth of blow-in detritus. In a few
weeks, we will be rewarded with a two-foot-wide, seventy-five-foot-long sea of
blue.
Over the course of the next week, we will tackle each bed in
turn, removing excess leaves and trimming perennial stalks we left up so seeds
were available for birds. We do all this to please ourselves and the hundreds
of walkers that pass by each week, smiling and waving their thanks.
The best part of this garden-awakening process is, when May
arrives and our neighbors get out their lawnmowers for the first of a six-month
cycle of weekly cuttings, we will be out on the porch enjoying the view, and
admiring the very different path we took with our own property.
