Weekly Reflection

Week 1

The first week in Healing Gardens was very exciting. We discussed what will be happening this quarter, and our assignments. I have enjoyed the reading thus far, and am excited to keep reading the books.

I have met my group members, Alisa and Karen. We seem to have similar ideas for the Decorative Areas, and I look forward to working with them. We are thinking about shrubs and flowers to put at the entrance. We are trying to figure out ways to combat the grass at the front of the building.

We will definitely need to work on identifying what we have, and identifying plants to add. We are also hoping on adding a decorative rock.

We thought about our cultural backgrounds and how they influence our ideas of nature and gardening, which was an interesting way to think about gardens. I had never really thought about how my culture my influence me.

 

Week 2

I spent the last week working on finding a community garden. I wanted to find a place on Bainbridge, since I'm currently living there. I contacted IslandWood to see if I could volunteer in the Garden Classroom. I also contacted my library to see if I could volunteer in the Japanese Northwest garden. Both said I could volunteer, but I ultimately chose to work at IslandWood.

At IslandWood, I will be working in the Garden Classroom. I'm not sure what I will be doing yet, but I'm very excited about it. (I love IslandWood)

I thought about what types of gardens there are, and decided that there are so many different types to list it woyld never end. So I focused on a few dividers of types. First there are personal gardens, and community. Personal gardens might have any purpose except for the one(s) maintaining it. Community gardens usually have a purpose to share with those who visit it. I think that most gardens are meant to create a relaxed atmosphere and bring peace to those within it. However, when you're taking care of a garden, it can be very stressful. It's important to stop and just visit your garden sometimes. I know that when I'm gardening I often forget to actually pause and enjoy my surroundings.

A garden can be defined by anything, and determining what is or isn't a garden seems to be very personal and intimate. I might find a grassy spot at a dead end with weeds growing a garden, while others would not. What type of garden would it be? Accidental and unplanned, with no real classifier. Maybe there does not need to be defined types of gardens. Maybe the whole planet is one big garden.

 

Week 3

This week I visited IslandWoods Garden and figured out what I was going to be doing there. I really like the garden instructors Scott and Rachael. It was really nice to be back at IslandWood. I saw my intern sponsor from the summer while I was there.

This week we visited the Skokomish Reservation and finally saw the Gifts to the First People Garden. It was distressing to see how overgrown everything was. It was nice to have everyone work on it for a short time and to see such improvement so quickly. The garden is very touching.

Traditional ecological knowledge is

a cumulative body of knowledge and beliefs, handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (including humans) with one another and with their environment. Further, TEK is an attribute of societies with historical continuity in resource use practices; by and large, these are non-industrial or less technologically advanced societies, many of them indigenous or tribal (Berkes 1993:3).

-- Thanks to the website http://www.carc.org/pubs/v22no1/know.htm

So basically you learn about how to live with nature through the practices of your culture and community. It's like Bruce talked about in the film, how he learned everything. And everyone doesn't learn the same thing. Also, the knowledge is probably not taught purposely but subsequently by living around the practice. You learn just by seeing it done.

Within mainstream perspectives of gardening, I'm sure a lot of TEK is thought to be respectable, but also outdated. It's probably often looked at in a sense of almost superstition. As in, you could do it that way, but science has now shown I could also do it this way.

Week 4

This was the first week I actually worked in the IslandWood garden. I am learning a lot about preparing a garden for winter, and how to how to maintain it during the season. I usually give up on my garden once everything's been harvestred. I know that's not the responsible thing to do with the garden, but I've never taken the time to learn about floating row covers and cover crops. I am now learning about these things along with mulching and cutting back plants.

This weeks question is very similar to week 2. What purposes do gardens serve? I think I may have actually answered this question in week 2. The purpose of each garden is not always specific. Although, some like IslandWood have the main purpose of being educational. However, it also serves the purpose of growing food for the kitchen at IslandWood.

My garden at home has the purpose of supplying food for my family, and friends. It is also very therapuetic for myself and my mother. When I have children at my house I also make it educational by involving them in the garden. It also serves to be pleasing to the eyes. We grow flowers and shrubs, that really have no other purpose to us other than their appearance.

A garden can also serve the purpose of memorial, in order to remember someone or something. However the intended purpose of a garden is not always the resulting purpose to those that visit it. Some large public gardens may have an intended purpose such as educational, but people may visit it with a different purpose, such as relaxation or becoming more grounded.

Just like I concluded in week 2, the purpose of a garden is a personal matter. Who determines the purpose of a garden? The visitor, the caretaker, the designer? Each person involved with the garden may have different purposes for the garden.

Week 5

What is a garden? I feel like I am beginning to repeat myself. Weeks 2 and 4 both answered this question, at least in the way I approached it. So I am posing questions that I am thinking about.

Would a corn maze be a garden? I guess so, but only in the way that a farm is a garden. I'm beginning to think that maybe there is a line between what a garden is and what a farm is. I don't think I could define that line. At first I was going to say size, but there are some huge gardens, that really are gardens.

Maybe it's the mass productions of singular products. If there is mostly one plant being grown in a large amount, it is not a garden. But then Zen gardens are not gardens, or rose gardens are not gardens. So that negates that criteria.

Maybe a garden could be defined in why it was planted. If the person(s) caring for it really put their heart and love into it it can be a garden. But a person who creates a corn maze probably did put their heart into that maze, designing it and everything, so again my criteria is negated.

I guess as usual, my answer is that it's personal. Everyone decides what is or is not a garden. My thoughts that a corn maze is not a garden could be untrue for another person.

 

Week 6

Gardeners garden for many different reasons. I garden because I think it brings me closer to my environment. I also garden for very personal reasons, and find peace and spirit within my work. Gardening is enriching to me, and sometimes relaxing. However, most often it is not.

Gardeners can garden to reap the goods of the garden. They might grow for the fruit or flowers it bears. For me it is more about the process and care than the end results.

Of course, some gardeners garden for income. Although they probably still do that for personal reasons. In Fields that Dream, every person chose to become a farmer (gardener?) for different reasons. They also all pursued that dream in different ways.

There is no broad way to answer this question. I have a feeling that you
would have to ask every person who gardens why they garden. I don't think you would ever get exactly the same answer (Except maybe, my spouse/parent makes me).

 

Week 7

 

In respects to the idea of who gardens, I would say that anyone who take the time to cultivate the land before them and change it in some way.  With this definition, anyone can garden. As long as something is changed in a plot of land it can be a garden.

I guess this might be too broad, since putting a wal-mart on land is not gardening.  So I would add to my definition that it would be changes to the natural environment.  I can't say that the only people who garden care, or love the land.  There are many people who garden in a way that destroys the land. I would consider this bad practice, but it is still gardening.

<><>My thoughts on who garden is very negative, and I wish it could be optimistic. But I have learned that a lot of gardening practices were often intended to be good, and have turned bad.  It makes me sad to think that so much of our food comes from commercial farms, and those farms are not sustainable and are destroying the land.  I had thought that if your life and income is based off the land you would care about it, but it seems many look at it as disposable. <>

Week 8

This weeks question ties in well with week 7's. I do believe there are good and bad gardens.  Good gardens are created with respect and care toward the land.  Bad gardens do not.  It doesn't matter if the loved garden has plants planted in poorly chosen places, at least it was done with love.  Of course, the best garden would then be one that is sustainable, and has caretakers who are continually learning from it and others what is best for the land.

 

I consider bad garden's to be a result of a caretaker who cares nothing about the land and maybe even uses chemicals known to be harmful to the land.  I look back at older gardening books that my grandfather had, and they have whole sections about pesticides, herbicides and hormones. They describe them as essential new gardening tools.  There are no warnings of any kind in these chapters.  In fact, I read about now banned chemicals in these books, and no warnings.  They unknowingly poisoned the earth, thinking that the advances in science were only a good thing.  But, today even with the knowledge of the destruction chemicals are still used widely.

I am encouraged by the growing number of small scale gardeners who are trying organic, or at least low-levels of chemicals.  Small local nurseries are teaching customer's the better ways of gardening, and helping them.  I find it encouraging and also amusing.  To think that science was such a great thing at first, and everyone thought it was the way to go.  Yet in the end, all-natural sustainable growing produces better crops, and seems to be better all around.

I can't help but relate this to health care and the use of pharmaceuticals.  I think that right now we are still riding the belief that what science is creating for our bodies and health are this great new thing, that is the answer to everything.  But just like we've learned in the plant world, there are a lot of side effects.  Many that are unacceptable.  And just like in gardening, you could get a chemical to rid yourself of some minor pest, even though it won't kill your crop, and is therefore unneccessary, medicine is often used the same way.  You could take this medicine for a cough that will go away on its on, or take unneccessary chemicals to get rid of it now.

<>I am hoping that people will learn not to trust the chemicals so strongly, and realize that science is not as all mighty as society likes to say.  Yet on the same terms, once in awhile you really do need the help, and it works better if you don't take it all the time. 

Week 9

I suppose I almost talked about gardens as a metaphor in week 8.  However gardens are often used as metaphors.  Almost for anything that takes care and tending.  You can approach your school work and learning as a garden, tending and caring for it.

Your body is a garden, that need to be fed nutrients, and weeded.  If you don't take care of your body, things fall apart and you have much more work to get back in shape.  But with minimal daily care we survive, and get along.  Just like a garden, the more time and effort you put into it, the more beautigul the results.

Raising children is like gardening.  You need to tend to every need, food, water and everything.  They're almost like a hot-house orchid, that cannot live on there own.  But as they grow older they can turn into alders who give back (hopefully).  But without the early care that little sprouts need they would never make it to the later independent years. 

Cleaning is definitely like gardening. It takes continual work, you never stop weeding.  You often don't get thanked, but as long as you keep up with it, it's a beautiful thing.  My garden is never very beautiful, it's always a work in progress.  That's what housework is like, it never ends.  As soon as everything looks nice, you have a new project to work on.

 

 

Alina Kretz
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