2008 August 20 | You Grow Girl.

Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s Community Gardening Guide

I’m very proud to have co-produced the cover photograph for the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s “Community Gardening” guide alongside my partner Davin Risk. Yep, that’s my soiled hand and a bouquet of sage held up at our own Parkdale Community Beer Garden. There are four varieties of sage in that photo which I continue to harvest in droves this year.

But I digress. You might be familar with the Brooklyn Botanic’s guides on a whole host of gardening topics from growing natives to food gardening. This latest guide provides a closer look at the ins and out of community gardening, including hands-on tips for getting started and a case study section profiling several inspiring urban gardens.

If you’re looking to start a community garden but don’t know where to begin I would also suggest “How Does Our Garden Grow? A Guide to Community Garden Success” written by Laura Berman and published by Foodshare.

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The Culprit

My friends and I stood on the roof the other night watching a pair of young raccoons climb around and perform all kinds of amazing acrobatics on the building next door. I kept reminding them that we needed to scare the raccoons off not encourage them since I am now positive these two are the culprits that have been gorging on my ripe tomatoes every night for the last week. I threw a hot pepper in the general direction of this one, thinking that would somehow deter it (?) Instead it started playing with the pepper, rolling onto its back and passing the pepper between its paws. Everyone thought that was very adorable and funny. I just kept thinking about my tomatoes. Sure enough, more were missing that next morning!

Screw those friends. There will not be any tomato sauce for them this year!