The Greening of the Garden

Progress continues in the garden. In the area where the Trash Mob recently helped us remove piles of weeds, we have now planted cast-offs from the local garden center. Peppers are already in the ground, with plans for tomatoes, squash, and melons to follow close behind.

It's amazing to observe the greening of the garden. A few posts ago we wrote about how "It's Growing!", but to compare the third picture here with the same shot in that post, it's incredible to see the difference.

The last photo here is of one of the pumpkin plants in our pumpkin patch. We got a late start, but are hopeful that we'll have some great little pumpkins by the end of the summer.

Finally! An Answer to Our Three Simple Requests

Ever since we've been working in this space, we have tried to do our best as individuals and as members of the community to take care of this space in our neighborhood. And in turn, we've requested that the city do a few simple things that we consider basic public goods in a public space. The pictures to the left show the dire conditions:

1. Mow the grass. In this photo, you can see in the foreground where a month ago we hand-snipped the grass that had been as tall as the fence. Behind the fence, one half got cut at one point, but the section closest to the street was left to become prairie grass, aka a trash magnet.

2. The lightstands over the park benches did not have functioning lights, posing a public safety risk, since the metro elevator is right next to this park area

3. The trash has rarely been emptied, and often is left to overflow, making the litter problem worse, since there's no place to fit the litter.

So for this post, we would like to thank all of those who were persistent and helped bring resolution to these three wishes this past week. We are proud to report that the grass has been mowed, five of the six lightbulbs have been replaced, and the garbage has been collected (we hope this will become a regular occurence). All of these have helped to make the area much safer and cleaner, and ultimately more able to be enjoyed by the community.

We were almost at the stage of wishing for a genie to grant our three wishes, but thankfully, the city came through and dealt with these public goods.

Joining forces with Capitol Hill Trash Mob

Today we had the awesome privilege with teaming up with the Capitol Hill Trash Mob for a united attack on trash, litter, and garbage in and around Stadium Armory metro station. Together we filled over well over ten bags. Our group shared some of the underlying reasons why the area collects a lot of litter:

1. The city rarely empties the 3 trash bins (or if they do, only one or two are emptied, never on a regular schedule). Therefore the garbage fills to overflowing, making it difficult to actually put anything in a bin.
2. The grass behind our garden is also not regularly cut by the city, which makes it an attractive location to toss trash.

Our group begins each work time with picking up the trash, so it was fantastic to have others enthusiastically joining us to make the place clean. And we came up with some more strategies to convince the city to do its job.

Another huge accomplishment is that we eliminated a whole patch of weeds, trees, and shrubbery that shouldn't have been there. Thank you so much to those who helped. The photo at the bottom is one of the "before" shots, and as you can see in the top 2 photos, we definitely did some damage.

Way to go, Capitol Hill Trash Mob and Our Stadium Armory Community Garden Crew!

It's Growing!

Our Stadium Armory Community Garden is seeing an amazing transformation as our seeds of hope actually begin to emerge. It really is finally starting to look like a garden.

Here are a few photos to share what we've got so far:
-A close up of canteloupe seedlings poking through the straw in garden bed #3
-Garden bed #2, from back to front: lemon balm, celery, purple flowers, squash seedlings, marigolds, chives
-Along with the pre-existing herbs in garden bed #3, we've planted canteloupe, beans, winter squash, peppers, tomatoes, and basil
In garden bed #4, we have lamb's ear and lillies (thanks to King's Court Community Garden!), pumpkin, zucchini, watermelon, and purslane

Community Joining Together to Build the Garden

As we continued our work, we kept inviting others to join us in helping make this space beautiful. We established our work days: Mondays and Wednesdays (6:30pm) and Saturdays (9:00am), and were delighted to have other who live nearby contribute their support, time, and in kind donations.

We've been especially grateful for those who have donated:
-soil
-plants (lamb's ear, mint, lilies, tomatoes, etc)
-seeds (various herbs, lettuce, zucchini, sunflowers, etc)
-straw
-tools

A huge thank you to those who have worked as part of our team to help us get this far.

Working Hard to Get the Area Ready for Gardening

We had incredible help to remove the weeds, cut the grass, and get the space ready for the vision we were beginning to have. Featured here are some of the strong muscles that made this reality happen, using a few tools and a lot of energy to get the job done. Finally the area was starting to get cleared and we could imagine what be coming next.

Before it was "Our Stadium Armory Garden"

When we began, we had a huge task ahead of us. A couple of years ago, these garden spaces had been created, but as time passed, they weren't maintained. These are some pictures from earlier this summer, when the herbs were getting crowded out by prickly weeds, dandelions, and lots of clover. The grass hadn't been cut all season, so it was nearly as tall as the fence. Newspapers, bottles, and cans littered the area. We started talking together - don't you think this area could be so much more beautiful? What would you want it to look like? So in the midst of a ton of weeds, a vision began.