Community gardens – they allow for humans, plants, food, and wildlife to come together in symbiotic relationships. And now we have a new one in Pemberton!
Here at Nurture in Nature, we have 15 Pembertonians joining us on-site for two hours each week to maintain this communal permaculture garden. Everyone comes once a week to participate in the cycles of gardening, so the daily workload is shared amongst the group and we all get a weekly harvest. You can see in the above gallery we have come a long way so far this season! Thanks again to Sea To Sky Soils for helping so much with the initial setup!
So far, we have harvested cotton buds, nettles, fiddleheads, dandelions, wild mint, spruce tips, and sweet cicely from the wild side of our garden. From our cultivated areas, we are already harvesting salad greens, heads of lettuce, kale and collard greens, and a plethora of herbs such as mints, lemon balm, oregano, summer savory, parsley and thyme. I have seen some pretty creative food ideas coming from the garden as we as a team learn how to create and share a yield as a community, but also how to appreciate what Nature is already offering without any work on our end. Cotton bud tinctures, nettle pesto, dandelion honey, peppermint brownies, herb butters and teas have all been made by our gardeners. Many of us joined this garden because we just didn’t have the space at home to grow our own food, so we can already see dramatic change towards resiliency for those of us currently involved!
My favourite aspect of permaculture gardening that I have been able to share so far this year is succession planting. Check out these pictures, as we are now harvesting our biggest lettuce heads, we are freeing the carrot and beet babies that are hidden underneath – can you see them? How about the parsnips coming up under the peas, and the little lettuces that will replace the bigger ones when we pull them?
The web that this garden is creating is already visible and tangible, and it is only a month old. We have new friends, weekly connections with people and our environment, and a deeper understanding of our food sources as well as gratitude for fresh nutrition. And the colours are only just beginning to blossom. What else will this new community garden bring?!
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