Yesterday there was a garden tour in my neighborhood, and my garden was one of the stops. We had garden tours in the past, and they were open-house style – people could stop by any time during the course of the day. This tour followed a schedule, and everyone traveled as a group. That meant the gardeners on the tour could also participate. Cool!
The tour started at the headquarters of the HARBEL Community Organization. There is a garden in front that has been designed for pollinators (bees and butterflies and such).
It’s right next door to Michele’s church.
As before, the most fun I had was talking with other gardeners. I got to ask them about their gardens and what they did to tend their plants. One of the houses on the tour had chickens! The owner got one out and we could pet her. She was so soft.
She said she kept chickens because her mom stays with them in the winter and her mom always had chickens.
That same gardener had the funniest thing I saw all day:
The cleverest thing I saw all day was a raised bed made with cement blocks. There were vegetable plants in the bed, and herbs planted in the cement block holes. Such an interesting idea!
And of course it was really fun to have people walk through my garden while I talked about things I’ve planted.
It was about twenty people. A lot for my garden to hold.
I would love to get together with my gardening neighbors more often. I’m part of a Facebook group now, so maybe I’ll see more opportunities. In the short term, I talked with several neighbors about giving away divisions from my garden – banana pups, pineapple lily clumps, and tiger lily bulblets. One of them wanted to give some water lily plants to me in return. Nice.
I was thinking about you yesterday early afternoon and wondering how this was going. As it turned out, you had good weather for this, no? And twenty garden visitors- wow! Bet all your plants really stood up and preened themselves, so to speak,with pride. Congratulations – another garden show under your belt, and now a “support group” to share plants with. (This could cut the nursery bills down a bit, wouldn’t you think?) Does it get any better than this?
That lady had a ConBloGar! Far cooler than any I’ve seen, however. 😀
Now it makes sense why you’ve been making your garden extra-splendid. I think you mentioned it before but I have a terrible memory. How great that you all can delight in those little sanctuaries in the city. 🙂
I remembered you did this, Lauren, but couldn’t remember your name for it. I don’t know why – it’s obviously the best name for this planting technique.
For the record everybody, Lauren had this idea back in 2009. Here is her first post about it:
http://lloydandlauren.com/2009/04/27/dream-garden/
Also for the record, I stole it from people who did it in a more beautiful way. 🙂
I like it! Conblogar! Awesome! I would have too “bejewel” my blocks.
That is some of the worstest Lego stacking I have ever seen. You should offer your GreenThumbineering (Green Thumb + engineering) skills to the gardening community of Baltimore.
I completely agree. I can’t imagine how that doesn’t fall outward.
I was thinking about you on Saturday! It turned out to be a nice day for a garden tour. I treasure the cast-off plants you have given me. The banana trees are coming up and all the others are doing great. I think I even have a baby pitcher plant coming up. I thought they died off 2 years ago!