marching forth towards spring gardens

The forecast this weekend is most amazingly for temps to hit the mid-50s on Sunday and on Monday! Many of us will be doing final clean-up from the blizzard and starting to prepare our property for Spring Gardens! I'm thinking within 4 weeks or less we'll start seeing tulips and hyacinth, and then it'll be Azalea time in Takoma Park (make no mistake, your humble reporter is REALLY sick of winter!)

For those of you with some community minded gardening impulses, I want you to know about a grant program the City has for public space along New Hampshire Avenue. These gardening grants are part of a wider effort by the City to 're-brand' that dysfunctional space known as New Hampshire Avenue as somewhere people actually want to be.

I don't know if you've checked out the really stunning website: http://www.thenewave.com/is part of the City's efforts pump some economic blood into what is effectively the City's gateway corridor from DC. The gardening grants form part of the same New Ave campaign that has placed funky benches and chairs in brilliant colors along New Hampshire Ave.

The garden efforts supported by the grant have to be on or near (within a 1,000 feet of) New Hampshire Avenue. These can be vegetable gardens, decorative plots, or even a single tree.

One neighborhood (Hillwood Manor) has used the New Hampshire garden grant money to take an uber-boring stretch of grass and woods choked with weeds and diseased branches, and crafted it into a real park space where you can view the water and flowers from artsy benches. The program has also contributed to the community vegetable garden on Orchard Avenue.

According to Paul Grenier of the City's economic development/planning team: "The New Hampshire community gardening projects don't have to be big. Anything that adds color and life and beauty, and that plausibly can be called 'greening,' can potentially get a grant. If a group of scouts, or your bridge club, or a group of day laborers, or the Horticulture Club, wanted to grow cilantro in a container near New Hampshire Ave., we'll give it a serious look. (Sometimes, actually often, the best projects start out really small.) Getting people hanging out with one another, 'forming community,' as the phrase goes, is part of the idea behind the grants."

"These are not grants for growing stuff in your backyard. But that is about the only limitation. If you can get permission from the owner, the greening and gardening can take place on a church's front lawn, or on the asphalt parking lot of a business (containers can be funded too), or in the planting strip (the area between the sidewalk and the street) along the street, or on County or City land. The limiting factor is often access to water, so bear that in mind when coming up with your project. The other thing to bear in mind is that the funds for this grant WILL RUN OUT, definitely, this June."

So if you are even vaguely thinking of doing something garden related, call the City's garden grant coordinator ASAP. Contact info: Paul Grenier, 301-891-7220, pgrenier@takomagov.org

The grant info is available here.

Paul suggests the following inspiring resources: "To explore the idea, why not hold a viewing of the inspiring PBS documentary, “Philadelphia: The Holy Experiment,” which describes Philadelphia’s community garden experience? This beautiful film is now available at the Takoma Park library."

“How to Organize a Community Garden,” a talk by Judy Tiger (a leading expert in the field) is also available on request from Paul. City staff may even be able to link you up with interested gardeners in your area.