About 12 April 2008

This blog is about an urban garden in the metro Boston area of New England, USA. This garden was begun in April 2007. The gardener and writer, Liz, has also gardened in other gardens prior to this one.

My focus is on sustainable gardening, through such things as supporting wildlife habitat in the garden, growing some herbs and vegetables myself, preserving heirloom varieties of plants through growing them and saving their seeds as much as possible (in urban conditions, genetically pure seed saving of crops that aren’t self-pollinating is somewhat difficult since the range for possible genetic pollution often covers an entire neighborhood), xeriscaping as much as possible, and preserving part of the harvest for wintertime. For a short overview of the garden conditions I’m currently working with, please see my first post.

This area is technically considered USDA hardiness zone 6B, but in recent winters it has been very variable. Additionally, in this area snow cover is intermittent most winters. Most often our summers are a mix of hot, humid weather and slightly cooler, drier weather, but that is also variable. Here, one often hears the saying, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait five minutes.”

As part of attempting to have a sustainable garden and kitchen, I compost. My town does not collect curbside compost like many European towns do, but it does sell home composters at a discount (I recommend checking to see if there is a similar program in your area), and I started out with one of theirs. It is the kind that one has to aerate by hand with a compost-turning implement. After also considering worm bins, in 2008 I switched to a rotating composter. They sometimes cost more than the kind that needs to be hand-aerated, but they produce compost much faster.  (My 2008 update post on the new composter is one of the most-viewed pages on this site: read it here.)

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Caption: Salpiglossis (tallish here-tilting plants with trumpet-shaped flowers, the largest percentage in this photo being red-with-yellow-bands), gazanias (short with mauve flowers), quicksilver (tall fuzzy silver foliage plant), creeping verbena (short with purple flowers), sweet alyssum (short with white flowers), Marguerite daisies (white flowers and yellow flowers), lantana foliage, pansies (purple flowers and red flowers in the background), dianthus foliage, plus one dwarf cleome just starting to bloom. Click photo to view in a larger size. [taken summer 2007]

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More about the gardener: Other than gardening, I spend much of my time reading (both fiction and non-), writing, taking photographs, spending time in nature, cooking vegetarian food and baking, following current events, doing crossword puzzles, and watching films/TV (again, both fiction and non-). One of my long-term dreams is to someday have my own small organic farm and orchard.

Since people often ask, I’d like to add that I am a self-taught gardener. It seems to me like people in my culture often regard gardening and fine arts the same way – that they are skills that are inherent, and if you don’t have some natural talent for it, there is no hope for you. I do not believe this. I believe that gardening can be learnt like anything else and that there is some aspect of gardening that will be a “fit” for anyone, though it may be an aspect that’s uncommon. My style of gardening is a fit for me, that’s all. I hope you enjoy reading this blog no matter how different your own style might be or if you are gardening vicariously through reading blogs. If you are thinking of starting a garden – and a garden can begin as a few pots on a windowsill – I recommend a combination of reading on your own, asking questions of local gardeners/nursery staff/public garden staff, and your own trial and error. If there are any questions you’d like to ask me, please always feel free to ask away; I’ll do my best to answer what I can and point you to possible sources for things I do not know.

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More about statistics: I use wordpress.com’s statistics program, which tracks referring links to my blog, what search engine searches brought people to the site, what pages beyond the front page were viewed in a given day, the total number of hits each day, and what external links were clicked on my blog. It does not track anyone’s ISPs nor individuals’ movements on my site.