Our First Year 2004 In Review
In practice things worked out more successfully than might have been expected. Starting in January and ending in April, there were four, two-hour, seminars which took an eclectic look at all manner of things from how to sharpen a spade to what holds a tree up. In the gardens, what was planned as simple work parties turned out to be a season-long extension of the teaching/learning process.People who were skeptical during the seminars turned into believers when they put theories into practice and saw the results. The gardens also became a social place. Working in groups of two or three, people got to know each other as they got to learn new skills and techniques. Perhaps most importantly, as everyone managed at least once to tip over a wheelbarrow or to stab a tulip bulb with a fork or to fall backwards off a garden stool, nobody felt particularly inept, embarrassed or vulnerable.For half a dozen of the seminar attendees, a couple of hours here and three or four hours there soon added up and the original eight-hour commitment became a distant memory. With the enthusiasm of the 2004 volunteers, the nursery garden was more than doubled in area, going from a neglected patch of shoulder-high weeds to over three thousand square feet of cultivated bulb and perennial beds. Existing baked-up display beds in the public area of the fairgrounds were re-worked and more than two-thousand spring-flowering bulbs were planted. Even large misplaced shrubs were given legs and relocated to where they could grow and be useful. By the end of November 2004, when the gardening season finally came to a close, the gardens had benefitted from more than five hundred volunteer hours.