This garden season, Giving Tree Gardens is proud to announce a working patnership with premeier Minneapolis permaculture hardscape designer
Andrew French
and his new company,
Make Giving Tree Gardens or Shadow Dance Stoneworks your first call for
Earth Friendly Landscaping!
"The Earth laughs in flowers."
Gardening requires a lot of water - most of it in the form of perspiration.
~Lou Erickson
Come see the Giving Tree Gardens Facebook Page! While you're visiting be sure to check out our new Facebook page for Healthy Yards, Healthy Lives.
The Cow Palace may sound like an odd moniker to bless a homestead with, but then this place pretty much named itself. Rented from a cattle farmer this corner of a River Falls, Wisconsin beef cattle farm might have been an ironic place to settle down for a vegetarian family, but the cows never seemed to mind the irony.
I imagine the young cows looking out from their fenced in pasture, gazing toward the setting sun and smelling the sweet, mouth watering scents that each evening rise from the garden just down the hill. Those cows really can’t be blamed for breaking through the fence every now and then to set their jaws to chomping down on the delicious greens and berries in the garden below. If I had 4 stomachs and a nose as big as an apple I’d likely bust through that fence too.
From it’s beginning the Cow Palace was more then just a home for one family. Javi, Ladonna, Lilly, and Keara are some of the friendliest folks around and as soon as they moved in, this home became a community.
Early the spring of their first year, with their farmer-landlord’s blessing, family and friends staked out the nearest corner of the tilled up corn field to claim as garden space! That first day in the garden we laid down long rows of planks to separate walking spaces between beds. Next we generously heaped compost on each bed, making a huge, fluffy, blank canvas ready to be filled with yummy edible plants!
As soon as the beds were made, friends from all over Wisconsin and Minnesota started dropping in to plant and nurture seeds, starts, and transplants. Oh how happy those cows must’ve been to see people growing something other than corn for them to munch on. Strawberries, spinach, raspberries, potatoes, tomatoes, mint, and kale were just a few of the initial crops planted in those early days.
While this was Javi and Lillie’s first season in the garden, Ladonna and Keara had gardened together at one of their previous homes and had saved some flower seeds from that garden which helped start the first Cow Palace growing season. As it turns out, saving seeds has become a very important theme in this midwestern homestead. Due to the abundance of seeds harvested throughout the season, Javi and Ladonna decided to open their own ebay seed company called Rainbow Seeds. Now serving thousands of customers around the globe with their huge selection of rare, and heirloom plant varieties, Rainbow Seeds has become a resource for gardeners everywhere.
Datura, verbena, poppies, orach spinach, morning glories, amaranth, sunflowers, and epazote are just a few of the seeds that grow freely in the garden and sell like hot cakes to plant-savvy web-shopping gardeners.
The seed company is one obvious community benefit that has developed from the Cow Palace gardens, but there’s so many more benefits, that just a quick look at the layout of this little garden plot made by friends is a testament to the community empowering nature of gardening.
One small pack of strawberry plants donated from a friend has turned into an abundantly producing berry patch. Right next to the strawberry patch is the raspberry patch, started from a donated transplant, the raspberries are too numerous to fully harvest in the late summer, and the birds always end up with a bit of the goods. Growing under and around the raspberries is chocolate mint started from a single transplant, the mint harvest now lasts through a winter of tea making. Potatoes along the edge are stored to feed large gatherings of friends and family all year long, as will preserved tomatoes and berries. Asparagus, spinach, rhubarb, thyme, lavender, and kale help round out the garden’s perennial selections, while hot peppers, radishes, carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, potatoes, orach, and a host of herbs form a portion of the annual planting scheme.
Friends share seeds, labor, produce, and good times in and around these gardens. The wealth of community and happiness grown here has turned this little corner of the cow farm into a palace indeed!
These days, the Cow Palace community will have a new meeting place as the family packs up and moves their favorite plants and wares to a little bigger patch of Earth just a stones throw off the St. Croix. River. If I’m a lucky gardener, then I suppose I’ll have a few more garden tales from this new well-wooded space to share with Seed readers in years to come. Next time instead of cows though, I think the garden stories may involve a different four-legged, one that is slightly more adept at going around garden fences. White-tale deer sure are good jumpers. I foresee fond memories of the ease of dealing with garden rummaging cows soon sprouting in our group’s imaginings.
While I wander barefoot over to the fence to offer the cows some clover, tall grass, and garden treats, I feel the sun on my face and a calm in my heart. The wonderful, funny little arrangement that nature has blessed this busy world with makes me smile again as I think of it. Here we are, friends and family all nurturing this sweet little patch of Earth, and the Earth giving back with such wild abandon that there’s more then enough for the beef cows to bust through the fence every now and then and steal some food from the vegetarian gardeners.
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The Seed Vol. 36 March 20, 2010 A Giving Tree Gardens Newsletter
Photos by Russ Henry and Ellyot Stacy ©2010 ,Text by Russ Henry
©2010 by Giving Tree Gardens, all rights reserved.
Friendships are one of the most beautiful things to blossom in a garden. Like roots grabbing the soil, the simple act of working together to build and nurture a garden can bind any community. From compost heap to harvest our garden adventures are filled with opportunities to share, laugh, learn, and grow.
For some folks, the idea of gardening seems like a lot of work, and to those folks, I have only this to say: Yes, gardening is a lot of work. That’s why you invite your friends over and turn it into a party.
Gardening is an activity that naturally raises folks’ spirits. There’s just something so magically human about getting our hands dirty to support our health, our environment, and our community. Why would you want to leave your friends out of such a great opportunity?
This year Giving Tree Gardens is happy to offer a new service that brings communities together around good organic ideas. The Community Design Forum will help any church, neighborhood group, or business learn to go green in the most affordable ways possible. By mapping community assets and organizing group momentum this forum will bring out the best ideas and energies that any group has to offer. We help green dreams become garden realities! Click here to learn more.
So many good relationships have been sprouted in the gardens in which I’ve worked that it would be easy to imagine each flower representing a moment shared between garden friends. In honor of my garden friends everywhere, this 3rd anniversary edition of The Seed is dedicated to the notion that folks who garden together, grow together! Read below to see how one family has found fun, health, and community by sharing their gardens many gifts with friends.
Hey Facebook Fans!!! Let's Be Friends!
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We'll help you turn your yard into an
oasis of health and beauty!
Thinking of Going Green? Start by Growing Green!
These organizations can help residents, neighborhoods, and organizations in Minneapolis and St. Paul learn to eat and grow sustainably!
Mother Earth Gardens: The best plant selection, locally owned, and expert organic advice. One stop garden shop!
Midtown Farmers Market: Shop for locally grown organic foods, and meet your farmers and neighbors!
Diamond Stone Oriental Medicine: Your first wealth is health. Treat your body with love, care, and expertise!
Giving Tree Gardens is happy to now offer empowering and eco-friendly Community Design Forums for churches, non-profits, and businesses in the metro!
Garden Friendships
The aptly named Deer Glen or as Javi prefers to call it, Playa Tranquilo, will provide a new home for Cow Palace community members to take root and grow together!
Look at these super sweet strawberries, why would anyone want to leave their friends out of something so yummy?
Fruit, veggies, and smiles grow all over the organic garden! Below, Javi enjoys the "fruits" of his labor. Radishes are one of the first crops to be ready each year!
All work and no play dulls a gardeners tools! Kickin' back is one of everybodies favorite garden activities!
Garden friends come in all shapes and sizes! I imagine this bee is as happy to see the mint flower as we are to see each other.
Gardening with friends grows good organic fun all season long! Next time you scoop into that compost pile, call up your friends and make it a party!
Organic seeds straight from this beautiful garden are available at Rainbow Seeds, CLICK HERE!
Sister's Camelot provides free organic food to folks in need throughout the Twin Cities!
Kids learn to grow, cook, and sell food. Sharing skills that will sustain for a lifetime!
