Hazelwood urban gardening/farming history
Everyone's Garden presentation
I participated in establishing flower gardens in Hazelwood years ago to make the neighborhood more attractive. At the economic downturn of 2008 - with family budget stresses making for difficult choices between spending on food and other needs - there was a convergence of recognition in the city that urban food gardening could be a wise financial choice. In the years since, we've enjoyed working together with the city and individuals and groups such as the Student Conservation Association.
The urban gardening/farming movement has mushroomed everywhere, with feeding people not the only benefit recognized. Pollination, biodiversity, local healthy food and community nutritional status are all integral to a place's economic health. The microbial diversity a neighborhood has when its gardens have healthy soil improves the immune status of everyone.
Our second I named Everyone's Garden because often people asked whose garden was this and I answer "Everyone's. It's like a park; everyone's welcome."
Veteran community gardeners know there are many hindrances to people working together. Some think a garden should only have plants. Some want to make money from a garden. Some want camaraderie and a friendly neighborhood, and see that as a goal for establishing a garden. Children see a garden as a place to play in and - with guidance - learn about eating what's produced there. Many adults and children have been raised to fear insects and other larger wildlife. The definition of a garden in some minds is one that is orderly, as contrasted to a woodsy/forest area, and so "uncontrolled" plant growth somewhere engenders nightmare images of vermin and criminal behavior, whereas others looking at the same situation might think it a pleasant wooded area. Given it's location, Everyone's serves via medicinal/culinary/aromatherapy/beauty plants such as mint, rose, chives, oregano, sage, thyme, garlic, fennel, dill, lemon grass, marjoram, purslane, lambs quarters.
Everyone's Garden has, other than a little span of ornamental wooden fencing, no fence. That means wildlife and people are allowed. There is no 24/7 managing presence, so people can and do trample, pick (ripe or not) veggies or fruit or herbs or flowers, along with anything else they want to do. I'm a garden steward, not a warden.
For this particular location, given the lack of interest in the average neighbor in food production (except when it's time to eat), the benefits of not having a fence exceed the costs - actual cost of the fence, exclusion except when unlocked of people and other wildlife, etc. It became clear that growing some things was not productive. Melons can get picked before they're ripe, kids can throw them at each other,... People sit down and talk, drink beer, smoke. Peach, apricot, fig, apple, and a pine tree. Volunteer sunchokes, collards, dill, fennel, tomatillo, arugula, and sunflower shoot up in expected and unplanned places.
Wood-chipped walkways give clear definition as to where the beds are - where you're NOT supposed to walk. The pile of wood chips maintained at the front of the adjacent lot serves as source for replenishment as the walkway chips slowly biodegrade (which, by becoming soil feeds the beds and other plantings). The wood chip pile, periodically added to by local landscapers, serves also to provide habitat for spiders and food source for earthworms and other soil life. The quantity and variety of life on a site tends to biodegrade synthetic organic toxics and chelate metals into less harmful forms or even forms usable as mineral nutrients. So simple application of wood chips can begin to clean up a polluted site. A wood chipped area can also serve to grow mushrooms in.
I know of shared gardening in Hazelwood that goes back to the Great Depression and the Victory gardens. Food being a necessity, growing food can (and at times does) serve as context for bitter conflict. Sharing growing food - doing community - is not something many are used to. Our first garden, which the city and Grow Pittsburgh and neighbors cooperatively established, was eventually bulldozed because it had become unused. The group which began the food gardens is no longer functional, in spite of the fact that we had raised money. We can't all work together. We have instead now the Urban Ag Group, in which we coordinate and work with each other in a variety of settings - both commercial small vendors such as the Kogel/Pattison micro-farm and community venues such as the YMCA Hazelwood Community Garden (at the greenhouse of which we intend to get potted plants and herb and veggie starts to distribute in the community and also sell). We have Floriated Interpretations as a plant retailer and Dylamato's Market as a food retailer, including some of both food and plants we produce.
Everyone's produces learning and food to the neighborhood. When people widen their cultural boundaries by learning about foods they hadn't heard of before (such as lambs quarters, a highly nutritious and easily grown common wild green) those without affordable transportation can better survive those nightmare times between jobs.
Everyone's Garden, the second garden we established, started just after the demolition of a problem building at a problem intersection. The site had a basement full of bricks which was covered with sand, leveled off, and planted with grass covered with straw. We salvaged bricks from the demolition, built a barbecue pit and garden beds with them, and also placed 7 raised wooden beds. We at present have a bench and some chairs. The inside border, adjacent to a residence, is lined with rose-of-sharon as a living fence. There is a planting of comfrey, horseradish, five or six varieties of mint, three patches of figs I'm hoping people will take babies from, strawberries and French sorrel and hyssop and gladiola and daylillies and lillies in various places, a total of thirteen beds. The six peach trees produced a significant crop for the second year this last season, but their fruit was small; we're learning as we go about e.g pruning some peaches earlier in the year so that the ones left on the tree get bigger. Peppers, and tomatoes are problematical because people pick both tomatoes and peppers before they're ripe, so the peppers are small and green when they get eaten, and the tomatoes are mostly fried green.
With climate change and biodiversity and pollination in mind, I would like to manage the back part of the adjacent lot as more of a "foodforesty" habitat type of place- depositing wood chips more than halfway back allowing some place for birds, moles, rabbits, insects, etc to nurture.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
412-421-6496
I participated in establishing flower gardens in Hazelwood years ago to make the neighborhood more attractive. At the economic downturn of 2008 - with family budget stresses making for difficult choices between spending on food and other needs - there was a convergence of recognition in the city that urban food gardening could be a wise financial choice. In the years since, we've enjoyed working together with the city and individuals and groups such as the Student Conservation Association.
The urban gardening/farming movement has mushroomed everywhere, with feeding people not the only benefit recognized. Pollination, biodiversity, local healthy food and community nutritional status are all integral to a place's economic health. The microbial diversity a neighborhood has when its gardens have healthy soil improves the immune status of everyone.
Our second I named Everyone's Garden because often people asked whose garden was this and I answer "Everyone's. It's like a park; everyone's welcome."
Veteran community gardeners know there are many hindrances to people working together. Some think a garden should only have plants. Some want to make money from a garden. Some want camaraderie and a friendly neighborhood, and see that as a goal for establishing a garden. Children see a garden as a place to play in and - with guidance - learn about eating what's produced there. Many adults and children have been raised to fear insects and other larger wildlife. The definition of a garden in some minds is one that is orderly, as contrasted to a woodsy/forest area, and so "uncontrolled" plant growth somewhere engenders nightmare images of vermin and criminal behavior, whereas others looking at the same situation might think it a pleasant wooded area. Given it's location, Everyone's serves via medicinal/culinary/aromatherapy/beauty plants such as mint, rose, chives, oregano, sage, thyme, garlic, fennel, dill, lemon grass, marjoram, purslane, lambs quarters.
Everyone's Garden has, other than a little span of ornamental wooden fencing, no fence. That means wildlife and people are allowed. There is no 24/7 managing presence, so people can and do trample, pick (ripe or not) veggies or fruit or herbs or flowers, along with anything else they want to do. I'm a garden steward, not a warden.
For this particular location, given the lack of interest in the average neighbor in food production (except when it's time to eat), the benefits of not having a fence exceed the costs - actual cost of the fence, exclusion except when unlocked of people and other wildlife, etc. It became clear that growing some things was not productive. Melons can get picked before they're ripe, kids can throw them at each other,... People sit down and talk, drink beer, smoke. Peach, apricot, fig, apple, and a pine tree. Volunteer sunchokes, collards, dill, fennel, tomatillo, arugula, and sunflower shoot up in expected and unplanned places.
Wood-chipped walkways give clear definition as to where the beds are - where you're NOT supposed to walk. The pile of wood chips maintained at the front of the adjacent lot serves as source for replenishment as the walkway chips slowly biodegrade (which, by becoming soil feeds the beds and other plantings). The wood chip pile, periodically added to by local landscapers, serves also to provide habitat for spiders and food source for earthworms and other soil life. The quantity and variety of life on a site tends to biodegrade synthetic organic toxics and chelate metals into less harmful forms or even forms usable as mineral nutrients. So simple application of wood chips can begin to clean up a polluted site. A wood chipped area can also serve to grow mushrooms in.
I know of shared gardening in Hazelwood that goes back to the Great Depression and the Victory gardens. Food being a necessity, growing food can (and at times does) serve as context for bitter conflict. Sharing growing food - doing community - is not something many are used to. Our first garden, which the city and Grow Pittsburgh and neighbors cooperatively established, was eventually bulldozed because it had become unused. The group which began the food gardens is no longer functional, in spite of the fact that we had raised money. We can't all work together. We have instead now the Urban Ag Group, in which we coordinate and work with each other in a variety of settings - both commercial small vendors such as the Kogel/Pattison micro-farm and community venues such as the YMCA Hazelwood Community Garden (at the greenhouse of which we intend to get potted plants and herb and veggie starts to distribute in the community and also sell). We have Floriated Interpretations as a plant retailer and Dylamato's Market as a food retailer, including some of both food and plants we produce.
Everyone's produces learning and food to the neighborhood. When people widen their cultural boundaries by learning about foods they hadn't heard of before (such as lambs quarters, a highly nutritious and easily grown common wild green) those without affordable transportation can better survive those nightmare times between jobs.
Everyone's Garden, the second garden we established, started just after the demolition of a problem building at a problem intersection. The site had a basement full of bricks which was covered with sand, leveled off, and planted with grass covered with straw. We salvaged bricks from the demolition, built a barbecue pit and garden beds with them, and also placed 7 raised wooden beds. We at present have a bench and some chairs. The inside border, adjacent to a residence, is lined with rose-of-sharon as a living fence. There is a planting of comfrey, horseradish, five or six varieties of mint, three patches of figs I'm hoping people will take babies from, strawberries and French sorrel and hyssop and gladiola and daylillies and lillies in various places, a total of thirteen beds. The six peach trees produced a significant crop for the second year this last season, but their fruit was small; we're learning as we go about e.g pruning some peaches earlier in the year so that the ones left on the tree get bigger. Peppers, and tomatoes are problematical because people pick both tomatoes and peppers before they're ripe, so the peppers are small and green when they get eaten, and the tomatoes are mostly fried green.
With climate change and biodiversity and pollination in mind, I would like to manage the back part of the adjacent lot as more of a "foodforesty" habitat type of place- depositing wood chips more than halfway back allowing some place for birds, moles, rabbits, insects, etc to nurture.
Jim McCue
composter and biotech researcher
412-421-6496
posted by St. Jim the Composter at 7:46 AM
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