The community gardens of DC come in many shapes and sizes. I have a plot at the Newark Street Community Garden, but I like to visit other gardens to see what’s growing, what’s interesting, and what’s different. I’ll make it a semi-regular series on this blog. Yesterday I visited the Temple Garden, which is on 15th Street NW behind the crazy-huge masonic temple. Google Streetview has a better picture than I was able to take while the skies were overcast:
Image via Google Streetview
The thing that makes this garden so different from the Newark Street Community Garden is the lack of fencing. There are some low fences and hedges around the whole of the garden, but the individual plots are not separated by fences. Wandering around the Temple Garden’s woodchip paths, it was hard to tell where one plot ended and the next began. It had a lovely balance of vegetables and flowers, planted in delightfully haphazard bunches.
At Newark Street deer are too much of a problem to allow this openness, which is a shame. What a luxury to be able to plant raspberries and not worry that deer or other critters are going to nab them:
I spoke with a woman tending to her plot, and she said the openness of the garden helped foster a very friendly community. She also said that interest in the garden had really peaked in recent years, which I know for a fact to be true. I tried to put my name on the waiting list for this garden last year and was told that the waiting list was already so long they weren’t adding anyone to it. Ah well, it’s still a nice place to visit.
Ha! I guess that far south into the city, they don\’t have to worry too much about deer–they rarely wander down from Rock Creek Park. But do you remember about 9 months ago, maybe, how two or three deer were on 16th Street down at L or something, blocking traffic?
Despite bug problems, I don\’t have to worry about birds, squirrels, or deer–that is truly a relief!
I think it would also be interesting to observe whether different community sites foster different subcultures in their gardens: do gardeners at one site tend to favor the same unusual plants, more flowers, straight paths, decorations, etc?
Thanks for the tour…I think it’s such a good idea to visit the community gardens and post about them. I look forward to your next!
[...] chaining up their plants to prevent theft. It made me think about the Temple Garden I wrote about yesterday; I wonder if they’ve had a problem with plant and/or fruit larceny. And I wonder if theft [...]
[...] immediate difference I noticed was the height of the deer fencing. Unlike the fenceless Temple Garden downtown, everyone in Glover Park had fencing at least seven feet high. Given that the garden [...]