Healing Gardens

My personal garden is about influences: past and present, as well as the garden itself being an influence in the future.

The location is my apartment, on my patio, in a wooden garden box.

The actual inside garden area of the box measures approximately 57” long x 15” wide.

This area gets late afternoon/evening sun only.  Currently I estimate it gets about 2 hours of full sun a day.  The rest of the time it is in full shade (when the sun is on the other side of the building) or partial shade (when the sun goes behind the trees).

Plant list
Strawberry – unsure what kind?  From previous tenant.
Lemon balm – seeds have been planted.
Mystery flowers – from Anna, she did not know what they were.
Mystery plants – I have been unable to identify these two.  They seem to be different slightly; one has a sign next to it that says “violets,” though the leaf structure does not look like a violet.
Lavender – seeds from the sayuyay garden, gift from Alisa.

I decided to keep the plants that were in there already and add to them some plants of my own.  The idea is to have a nice garden space for the next tenant after I move.  I hope to inspire the future tenant to interact with the two garden boxes that are there.

As of March 1, 2007, I have planted lemon balm seeds and have started the lavender starts.  The lavender cannot be planted until late spring/early summer, but the starts can begin now.  The flowers from Anna were obtained several weeks before this date but I cannot remember the exact date they were obtained.

Each plant represents a particular influence in my life.  The plants that were there when I moved in represent my past and the ways my past influences me today.  The lavender is my mom’s favorite plant and I hope to dry some and send it to her.  My mom is a huge influence on me as we are similar in many ways, both good and bad, and I inherit my relationship with the land from her.  The flowers Anna gave me are representative of my present influences through friends.  The lemon balm is the plant I did my plant study on, and I have fond memories of it in the sayuyay garden, so it is representative of Healing Gardens.

I will be moving soon and I will be starting a whole new garden in another spot, hopefully in a yard and with much more space.  I did not want to put too much effort into this garden because I did not want to be heartbroken when I had to part with it.  Thus, this garden is something simple that I won’t be too sad to part with.  I enjoyed so much watching things grow that someone else had planted; I felt like they were surprises just for me.  I hope to leave a garden box that will bring this same feeling of surprise to whoever moves into the apartment next.

(All photos by Meg Vollmer)