When I was little, I had a great book about weird plants. Huge, graphic novel-esque illustrations and bizarre descriptions of the sensitive plant (it recoils upon being smacked), passionflower vines (flowers like UFOs) and the loofa plant (I don’t remember what it’s called, but you make loofas from the squash by drying it and shaking out the seeds) fueled my dreams of creating a garden of my own. Back then, I was more dreamer than doer, and I only got as far as buying passionflower seeds. But this summer, the urban gardening trend has caught me on its wave. I’ve started going to permaculture workshops and meeting people who also dream of growing ripe tomatoes, summer squash, blueberry bushes, and culinary herbs all in their apartment rooms or on top of their terrace or patio. I’ve started collecting all manner of trash in anticipation of starting seedlings indoors, to get a head start on the last frost date (around May 1st), the time to begin growing outside.
Last weekend I met up with some of them to talk gardening, and wrote about it for the Urban Homesteaders’ League blog: “The first meeting of UHL’s unconventional gardeners: Are we part of a trend, or a movement?”
“I learned a lot at the Unconventional Gardeners Workshop last Sunday, March 7th. One thing I learned was that we’re truly part of a trend — or a budding movement. Twelve people showed up, enough to surround a table piled with food on the patio of Hi Rise Cafe. Not one of us had gardened for more than a year…” [read on]
