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!
"Familiarize yourself with strength. Hold each other up against silence."
"It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most
intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to
change."
"Be the change you want to see in the world."
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.
Now I’m no mathematician, but it stands to reason that walking bare foot out to the back yard organic garden to pick a tomato uses a whole lot less gasoline then it does when an unripe boxed tomato is shipped up here from Mexico, California, or Florida. That fruity equation represents only the first positive environmental impact your little homegrown tomato creates. Improving your health, empowering your community, creating genetic diversity, building soil strength, the list goes on. After a while of pondering, a simple tomato becomes a symbol of health, strength, diversity, wealth, and wisdom….. just your basic super hero job description.
So if one little home grown tomato is a super hero, what do you call the person who plants that tomato and a thousand other edible delights? Well, Sarah Greenfield is her name, so that’s what you call her.
Sarah Greenfield’s home gardens are a brilliant and colorful example of urban food production gardening. Her compost intensive organic gardening methods and finely tuned gardening intuition have transformed her little Minneapolis yard into an organic garden with an enormous positive impact on the local community and ecosystem.
Sarah figures that she grows fully one half of the fruit and vegetable needs for herself and Stephen Rogness, her fiance'. Imagine a world where we’re all growing half of our food needs at home, wouldn’t we all be so much happier with healthy food at our fingertips! In this way Sarah is a natural leader, exemplifying the notion that tons of organic food can be grown in a tiny urban space.
Starting with the remnants of the previous homeowner’s gardening efforts, Sarah has transformed what used to be bare urban space into a thriving food production space. Each year, every viable inch of space in her property is planted with fun plants that perform several important landscaping functions.
With out even trying, Sarah is practicing Permaculture principles in her gardening habits. Grapevines cover her patio to shade the seating beneath and grow delicious treats for herself and the passing birds. Blueberry bushes line the side of the house, which creates soil drainage, abates erosion, shades the bottom of the house, and provides more yummy treats. Mint, thyme and strawberries perform well as edible garden edging or beneath shrubs as living ground cover mulch. These super smart plantings are representative of an evolution in urban America life. More and more folks are growing healthy food in organic gardens right outside their own doors, and using edible plants to perform needed landscaping functions. Sarah’s organic gardening and Earth friendly landscaping style embodies this brilliant and welcome change.
Taking up every remaining inch of Sarah’s backyard space is an annual vegetable garden no more then 200 square feet in size. From this space, humble in size an astounding variety and amount of food is produced. Rotating through this garden space are our hero’s the tomatos, as well as potatoes, peas, cabbage, kale, cucumbers, radishes, peppers, arugula, lettuce, chard, beans, and many other fantastic food crops. A heaping pile of compost delivered to her yard by a local landscaping company a couple of years ago gave Sarah’s organic gardens the boost they needed to begin producing food with wild abandon.
Sarah’s gardening blog shows all sides of the garden relationship. Of course with any relationship there’s bumpy spots and difficult issues, but Sarah’s sense of humor seems to help ease her through any garden related woes. As she writes in her garden blog:
“I swear, when I am planning my beds in the winter (and the spring, and the summer, and the fall) I feel panicked, panicked, that I can't possibly have enough space in this bed for that crop or that bed for this crop. It always seems there will not be enough to put up, to eat, to some day reach that elusive goal of not buying vegetables I can grow at home. And then comes August.”
Sarah’s solution for yet another common gardening worry made itself apparent when I inquired as to the origin of the little net at the end of a branch in her apple tree. It seems that she never got a share in the apple harvest until she cleverly began netting off her budding apples. The squirrels are thwarted by this easy idea, and lord knows a gardener can take satisfaction in that.
While a few problems come and go in Sarah’s gardens, so many new and beautiful gifts are always available that her love for her gardens remains undeterred. Sarah tells me that she and Steve enjoy a higher quality of life because of the gardens green gifts. Healthy food, enchanting beauty, and a sense of being in touch with natures cycles seem to be among the most beloved of the gifts that Sarah receives through her garden experiences.
With her and Steve’s wedding just around the corner, this season, Sarah will be growing some very special flowers in amongst her vegetables. The love that she has for her gardens and the love she has for her husband will all be reflected in her beautiful home-grown bouquet at their summer wedding.
Congratulations to Sarah and Steve, may your relationship grow with as much health, beauty, and fruitful bounty as do Sarah’s gardens.
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The Seed Vol. 37 April 20, 2010 A Giving Tree Gardens Newsletter
Photos by Sarah Greenfield and Russ Henry ©2010 ,
Text by Russ Henry
©2010 by Giving Tree Gardens, all rights reserved.
It’s so easy to fall in love with a garden.
Imagine your garden as a new friend. You start off tentatively getting to know one another. Happy moments turn into beautiful days and soon enough you are greeting each other with gifts. A little help from a friend is always welcome, but with this relationship it seems all the gifts you give just pale in comparison to the gifts that are so generously given back. You see how potent this is, and more then a little entranced, you start to give all that you can afford; your time, your love, your thoughtfulness, but your new friend just gives ever more, ever more, and always with astonishingly benevolent humility and grace. Any remaining doubts and uncertainties vanish, replaced by genuine interactions that always leave you feeling so lucky, so well loved, and nurtured to your very soul.
To put it’ in Minnesota terms, That’s a keeper! Darn near anybody would want a relationship like that. But the question is, do we all get to have this kind of experience?
Despite the handy fact that every bit of our food is ultimately sourced from a farm, a garden, or a natural environment, for some folks, falling in love with the landscape might as well be a few lifetimes away.
So, it would seem that while not every soul is blessed with this capacity to love a garden, we could all learn a thing or two from those who do. Sarah Greenfield is one of these lucky, loving gardeners who help inform the world. Talking with Sarah I always learn so much from her that improves my own gardening hobbies.
Sarah’s the kind of gardener that shines a little bit when she’s showing off her sprouted seeds. I think that shine must come from the warmth in her heart that she feels for her garden space. Read below to learn more about Sarah’s gardens and the food, flowers, and love that grows in them!
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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!
In Love With The Garden
Food for you, Food for the wildlife! The robust radishes above are one of the first annual crops ready year. While the Swallow Tail Caterpillar below is welcomed to munch away wherever it should please!
Bare Earth in the beginning of the season is quickly replaced with productive greenery! These heirloom tomatoes grown from seed are just one of the many delicious organic foods in Sarah's gardens.
Sarah's eye for natural beauty, wizened garden intuition and her wit sharper then a new pruning saw are shared with the world through her fantastic garden blog Fieldgreens
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!
Offering on-site energy and sustainability consultations for families, businesses, and non-profits in Minnesota!
Above the yard before Sarah's green thumbs took over, and below an image of her handiwork. This is one highly evolved urban landscape!
Congratulations Sarah and Stephen! Blessings and best wishes from Giving Tree Gardens!
If this was the view from your back door each summer, I'll bet you'd be as in love with your gardens as Sarah is. This is one urban Minneapolis gardener who understands the value of healthy land, good food, and natural beauty!
