The Hill is Home

Photo from Green East Community blog/Google images

Gardeners are a great group of people.  Being a gardener myself means I get to bask in my own compliment; but I don’t think that’s so bad because speaking recently to Colleen Cancio and Tom Kavanagh, leaders of the happy effort over at the Green East Community garden, I have even more solid proof of this fact.

In case you missed our earlier post on the Green East Community Garden, it’s one of the newer gardens on the Hill.  It got its start back in the fall of 2008 with a determined group of neighbors and a vast, seemingly abandoned parking lot behind their houses.  Thanks to the help of gardening and legal-minded neighbors, the residents from the 1700 block between D and E streets, SE, were able to obtain this land. The lot in question had been tied up, as many properties in large metropolitan areas can be, in some legal mumbo jumbo, which was sorted out so that everyone in the neighborhood could benefit from a beautiful garden in progress.  Once the land was secured, the garden came together thanks to the kindness of the community: the plans were drawn up by the neighbors at Fowler Architects; the fence was built in one single day by the impressive crew sent along by P&P Construction; the mulch, that essential gardener’s gold, was donated and conveyed in an enormous 18-wheeler that handyman Paul Mudd helped get into the alley by dismantling and rebuilding a neighbor’s fence. The beds were built with salvaged lumber from Community Forklift, and everything was done in just four days and with lots of neighbors coming out and enjoying the newly green space and each other’s company.

As you can see from the banner picture, the space is actually two large plots separated by an alley. To date, only the area south of the alley has been made into a garden; the expansion plans include turning the north part of the alley into a twin garden, the first Green East.  The wish of this garden is to be a welcoming and very child-friendly space, as there are many kids of all ages living nearby, including a budding pre-teen gardener in the bunch who tends to his own plot– an early bloomer! (har, har)

Since the garden is so very new, the rules are still flexible in terms of gardening practices and plant selections; they are looking for interested Capitol Hill neighbors who cannot wait for spring and who want to work their plots and perhaps talk about the best way to get rid of hornworms while sharing a glass of something cool.

If you are interested in becoming part of this garden, which is in its second growing season, please email Colleen Cancio at ccancio [at] gmail [dot] com.  The garden also has a blog, which you can access by going to http://greeneastcommunitygarden.blogspot.com