GROW WITH YOUR NEIGHBORS
We can encourage the schools, the teachers and the children to work together to plant school gardens we will get so much closer to solving these problems. If we can convince the town councils and the condominium boards that having a community garden in the park or on the property is the right thing to do, we will be so much closer to solving this problem. Simply working with a neighbor to create shared garden-space that other people on your block or street can access will get us closer to solving this problem. By engaging in these kinds of conversations with our schools, our towns, and our neighbors to remove the barriers to be able to use the land together with plants and the soil we develop real solutions. Community gardens are actually working and have become a logical practice that many communities are already doing. We just need to continue to encourage it, support it, be a part of it, and be willing to do the hard work and get dirty.
Obviously, to do that, to reconnect with nature, we have to plant a garden - after we’ve planned it. Working with our community members we will create bountiful spaces together, providing nutrition and healing properties from the harvest. Planting certain crops directly into the garden like beans, potatoes, corn, squash, onions, garlic, and greens like kale, chard arugula, allow us to get our hands deeply in the Earth’s crust where the majority of all life on the planet exists. We all need to be brave and become small so we can fade into a garden scape. To lie amongst the foliage of the peppers, beans, corn, melons and tomatoes on a bright day and feel the warm soil against our skin as the clouds float overhead while the pollinators dance between the petals of perfect flowers is to be a human animal on the planet.
Planning and planting the garden will result in the need for consistent interactions. Thus, deepening our connection as parts of a real and thriving micro ecosystem - albeit possibly urban or suburban. The more we align ourselves with the natural flow and cycle of the plants, insects and the weather that Mother Nature reveals throughout the growing season the more connected we become to the very cycle that sustains us.