The only constant in gardens (and life) is change. Never has that felt more true than the last year as the Garden Team reconfigured plans during the pandemic.
But as we’ve written in this blog space before, the struggles, pain and necessities of last year led to new ideas and growth too.
In 2020, we turned individual community garden plots into a communal growing space to help safely manage the number of people on the farm. This year, we brought back individual garden plots for many gardeners at the Community Farm at Mill Ridge, but we also added space for about 30 growers who prefer communal growing. We’re calling it Full Circle.
On a recent Saturday in April, Community Farm Director Julia Reynolds Thompson walked some of the new participants through the Full Circle space to show them where they would work together to tend and harvest strawberries, cucumber, kale, komatsuna, beets and much more as the seasons continue to turn.
Then they stood among collards that had gone to seed and snapped off their tops to take back to their home kitchens. This patch of land that we’re grateful to steward will soon offer gifts of peppers and tomatoes in the collards' place in the ever-changing, renewing rhythm of nature that gives us so much life.
This year we will host our largest group of community growers yet including the Full Circle gardeners as well as about 50 gardeners with individual plots at the Community Garden at Mill Ridge and more than 20 growers at the McGruder garden (also a communal growing space) in North Nashville. All skill levels and at least four languages flow in these spaces.
It’s quite a change from 2020 when Julia spent many of her days working alone at the Community Farm at Mill Ridge helping grow food that we shared as whole produce in the community or with The Nashville Food Project kitchens for meals.
“It has its own pleasures,” she said of the solitude in nature. “But community gardens are meant to be shared with lots of people.”
We’re grateful for the opportunity to share this space more fully once again.
