Street Garden

July 19, 2007

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Please Don’t Destroy My Garden No More

I really need to make a sign like this for my street garden. Except mine would include an assortment of choice words and threats… all the things I want to say to the various offenders but can’t because I never catch them in the act. Threats such as, “If I ever catch you urinating in my garden you better have jets on your feet.” My neighbor once relayed the story of coming home to find a business man had stepped out of a limo and was urinating on our front steps. Now we’re not in the middle of nowhere here. There is a coffee shop right around the corner just a few steps away. Instead of shouting threats or calling the guy out he just walked up, stood alongside him and pulled down his zipper. “Watching you makes me feel like peeing here too.” he said to the startled and confused public urinator. I’m guessing that as a female this tactic would not be effective for me.

I often stop to photograph signs like the one above wherever I find them. And I find them more often than you’d think. It would be nice to believe that everyone appreciates the hard work gardeners put into making something beautiful that everyone can share in but the reality is that some people are messed up and those people sometimes feel resentment towards other living things and acts of beauty. Maybe it hurts them too much? Maybe they don’t feel like they can share in it but rather that it is just another thing they can’t have in their lives? Maybe they’re just angry as hell and need to take it out on something? Maybe they just need to pee RIGHT NOW and they don’t care where and they don’t care how? I don’t know or even understand all of the motives but I do know that just about any city gardener has a story and we’ve all learned an unexpected thing or two about human psychology via our gardens. Although I never would have thought of it, I really dig the signs that threaten karmic smiting. However when it comes down to it I find that I can’t wait or even believe that the “universe” will take care of business, I want to be the one to deliver the blow.

When bad things happen to my garden I sometimes feel angry enough to cut some heads off. Metaphorically of course. But other times I just feel sad. Defeated. When my garden was most recently viciously assaulted my response wasn’t to get angry or violent. Instead, uncharacteristically, I crumbled. I decided to tack up a letter addressed to the perpetrator but all I could muster up was a sad and pathetic, “Why?” This time it just hit me in a way that it hasn’t in the past. This person didn’t just clumsily fall into the irises or trample the lilies on their way to a semi-private pee spot against the back wall. This person maliciously and purposefully took out every globe thistle in the garden. The thistles were big. They were tall and just about to bloom. This person very meticulously tramped every single stem in such a way that the stems were crushed right to the ground like crop circles in a corn field. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that this was not the cruel work of a tiny spaceship or a troop of little greys but the calculated act of a real human. I couldn’t believe it. Of all the things that have happened in and around that garden this particular act just floored me, leaving me feeling sad and powerless in a way that I did not like. So much so that it has taken me 4 weeks to coherently write here about this event. I mean I could get angry and throw stuff but who do I direct the anger towards when they are a faceless phantom? And what made it worse was how the purposefulness of it felt personal, like it wasn’t just the plants that were destroyed but that I had also been kicked in the gut and left to rot. And that no one did anything about it in that way that people will watch an assault on the street and then shamefully turn away from the victim rather than reach out or help.

And it gets worse. I know the attack happened during the day when there is always at least one or several people from the law clinic standing around shooting the shit and smoking. I know because I am never without an audience as I bend over to work on the garden. And they never say a peep and turn away when I look in their direction, never engaging and then when I am not around throwing their butts into the garden. To top it off, when I went outside that day and discovered the destruction I stood there for several minutes in shock. And then the emotions started to come. And as I turned around I caught a woman standing inside the doors of the law office gawking at me! Thanks lady!

About a week or so after the incident, I had finally got up the nerve to go out there and begin cleaning up and moving on. The thing is, what happened sucked but I’ve been through a lot with that garden, worse than this. And I’ve been through a lot in my life, much, much worse than this. And after a certain point I can’t not get back on the horse and keep going. Thankfully my stubbornness knows no limit. As I was getting ready to leave a man stopped and called out to me from across the street saying that he loved the garden and was glad to see that I was able to get back on my feet and keep going after what had happened. I was feeling too overwhelmed at the time to say what I felt but I want to tell that lovely man how much I appreciated his words and support. That seemingly small and simple act of kindness from a stranger really turned things around for me because he had acknowledged what had happened, saw how it had hurt, and turned towards me instead of looking away.

12 Reasons Why I Don’t Grow Edibles in My Street Garden

When I started digging what would eventually become the street garden I had no idea that it would evolve into a social and scientific experiment. People often ask me if I grow food in this garden. The following twelve points should clear that question up. Hell, number two will do the job all on its own.

1. The Soil Hasn’t Been Tested: And seriously, anything could be in there. Never mind the chemicals that can’t be seen with the eye, you wouldn’t believe some of the “artifacts” unearthed over the years through planting and general maintenance. Anything could have happened in that space within the last 100 years. Anything.

2. Gifts From Neighbourhood Dogs, Both Large and Small: Their special poo packages come in appropriate sizes. Delightful discoveries revealed with the first thaw. Dog people of the world, when your puppy is sick, magical faeries do not remove the evidence with a wave of their magic wand… suckers like me do.

I am sorry you had to see that. Believe me, I chose the least offensive of the bunch.

3. The Urinators: Late night partyers or mid-afternoon dudes too lazy to walk a few feet to the local coffee shop. The surprise in turning the corner and catching a glimpse of some strange dude having a private moment over my plants is bad enough… now imagine that those plants are what’s for dinner.

4. The Tramplers: Aka drunk dudes who fall butt first into my gorgeous blooming iris bed crushing said iris bed and impeding their ability to bloom for an entire year. Who’s not bitter?

5. It’s Not Called the Street Garden for Nothing: Car and truck exhaust continuously showering the plants and soil in a chemical cloud of ass stench.

6. The Smokers: There is a constant assembly of stressed-out civil defence attorneys and their clients satisfying their cravings curbside from 9-5 daily. This same group also serves as my personal audience, peering over puffs of smoke at my ass crack as I bend over to pluck a weed or deadhead a spent bloom. It’s like I’m famous! Who doesn’t love an audience? This same group often throw their butts into the garden where a team of little elves are perched on standby ready to scoop the butts and swiftly deliver them to a nearby garbage receptacle.

A pill bottle and a cigarette butt together! At once! Just as nature intended.

7. Scary Trash: From collections of used needles (Despite the drop-off box located directly across the street. At least this spring’s collection had caps!), to not-yet-empty prescription bottles, half-full cans of tall beer, and used glow-in-the-dark condoms. The possible seepage off of these items alone is terrifying. Or that time someone dumped an entire bag of used kitty litter (poo and all) into the garden. Yeah, THAT’S where it goes.

8. The Potting Soil and Dead Houseplant Dumpers: I can’t begin to explain this one but people regularly dump large pots of used potting soil and dead or half-dead tropicals into the garden. There must be some kind of “back to its source” logic in action here.

9. Building Waste/Street Cleaners/Salt: More products of the street-side location. There was also that time early one Sunday am when some idiot smashed their car into the building leaving a front bumper and assorted car parts behind.

10. Stashed Possessions and/or Gifted Items: Pairs of jeans, purses, underwear, full makeup sets, gym bags… you name it. People see a garden and naturally conclude “personal outdoor locker.” Or there are the numerous lawn ornaments, plastic windmills, planters and assorted ephemera that have been anonymously “gifted” to the garden only to disappear sometime later. At least this stuff amuses me. Check out today’s offering…

I’m definitely NOT going to eat that. But I guarantee you someone did. I should take a look.

11. The BIA (Business Improvement Association) Might Make Me Remove the Garden: So they can put in a garden. This really happened! No bitterness here. Nope. None. Jerks.

12. Some Dumbass Would Reach to Take a Tomato and Rip Out the Entire Plant: Just like that time someone reached for a sunflower, peony, iris, rose, [insert plant name here]. Which I would then find in pieces scattered down the block or stuck into the BIA planter boxes in a half-earnest attempt to will it back to life.

Midnight in the Garden

…of garbage and urine. Click on the picture to see it large.

I took this photo of my street garden late one night in late fall. It was taken using a swing lens panoramic camera. The tall plant with the large, tropical-looking foliage is plume poppy a rather invasive perennial I have complained about often yet love to death. After The Fall, the plume poppy will be the last plant standing.

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January 10, 2007

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Full Disclosure

I think it’s important to go against the grain of traditional gardening magazines that focus on hyper-perfect fantasy garden porn and show you that there is no shame in a less-than-perfect garden.

Here is a photo of the street garden taken just last week. Keeping up with the garbage and the human pest damage is an impossible mission but the rest is completely my responsibility.

Enough said.

Canadian House & Home – Groundbreakers Profile

- From: Canadian House & Home (May 2006 – Green Issue)

“Ripe with tips and anecdotes geared towards the urban gardener, the book is an offshoot of her flourishing website yougrowgirl.com, where a growing community of gardeners share inspiration and advice.”

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