Healing Gardens

Body:

Week 1

 

Saturday - Toured the long house gardens as part of class. Began reading Biopiracy and obtained course materials

 

Week 2

 

Tuesday & Wednesday - Worked in my own garden for about six hours preparing it for planting. I have designed a reverse spiral bed layout and now have a general idea where some of the plants will go. The garden's purpose is to attract pollinators and birds, while also providing healing medicinals and a few food crops. I have established a patch of herbs and plants including a few varieties of mint, fennel and dill. In addition I've planted lavender and valerian. The valerian has beautiful foliage and is really taking off.

Approx 6 hrs

Wednesday - I have selected dandelion to be my healing plant for the quarter. Because spring is associated with the liver, I felt dandelion's detoxification properties would be fun to explore. I have sat with dandelion and have begun some preliminary sketches in a lined notebook. This will have to be transfered to an unlined book when I find one that works for me. I have been reading about dandelion's properties and will continue to do this, while also digging deeper into understanding the plant's morphology and relevant botanical terminology.

Alisa and I spent some time in class envisioning the decorative sign area. I created a preliminary sketch of this and have now transfered it to an unlined journal.

Thursday - I spent time walking along roadsides to find plants that I felt would fit well into the various decorative areas. More specifically I was searching for dense patches of bleeding heart and came across several that I will harvest a few plants from.

Approx 2 hrs

 

Week 3

I visited the long house garden Tuesday evening on my way to see Frances Moore Lappe. I discovered my sketch of the decorative area is somewhat inconsistent with the placement of the sign. This will require some modification of our plans, but it is something that is easily worked around.

This week I will be spending time collecting the bleeding heart and working to procure more plants for the decorative area.

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I met with my team members to envision our garden space, identify immediate needs, weed and plant. This took about 1.5 hours and was in addition to the 1 hour's worth of sustainable harvesting I did earlier that day.

Saturday I stayed an extra hour after class to continue the planting of nootka rose, fireweed and clean up our area.

As of this week I am at 3.5 hours and will spend additional time in the longhouse garden on Friday or Saturday, if the weather permits.

 

Week 4

I went to the longhouse and weeded in the main decorative area nearest the building. This was tricky because there are strawberries and yarrow popping up all over the place. I need to work on the area nearest the seasonal creek because it is being overgrown with horsetail.

2 Hours

 

Week 5 (may 4)

Today is my day off from work and class. I woke up early to begin working on my personal garden space and then moved to the longhouse at 10 am where I worked until lunch. We have no plants for the decorative areas! I am running out of things to do and don't want to jump into other people's areas and project spaces. I brought my watering can and filled it in the lab II janitorial room, and managed to take care of the nootka roses we planted. They are not looking well and a small can is not going to provide enough water no matter how many trips I make. I am thinking a ground cover or mulch in this area will be helpful to trap water in the soil.

2 Hours

 

Week 6/7 (may 11)

 

I spent most of my day going to nurseries looking for reasonably priced native plants for the decorative areas. Unfortunately, the black lake organic nursery was very low on stock. Home Depot & The Bark & Garden Center are pricey and have a lot of non-natives. I did pick up a couple of lupines that I will plant before the quarter is over.

3 Hours

 

Week 8 may 18

My additional expense request came in and I have funds to pick up plants for my personal garden. I've decided to set aside a lot of my volunteers for the decorative areas at the longhouse, but need to check with Marja and the rest of the decorative areas team to find out what plants are acceptable. I have motherwort, poppies, calendula and a ton of pansies. I've moved most of these to one bed in my personal garden where I can keep them until I get a definitive answer.

After lunch I went to the Bark and Garden center to look for native grasses including bear grass and sweet grass. They have neither! (surprise surprise). I'm going to read up on propagating some sweet grass and bear grass for planting in the longhouse at a later time.

4.5 Hours including travel and transplant time, but I'm only counting 3.5 because some of this was for personal garden

 

May 19

I spent my afternoon in the woods this afternoon looking for bunchberry dogwood with no luck. I think both grass lake park and evergreen are too damp/shaded for it, or I'm looking in the wrong places. It's also possible that I'm missing it because it is done flowering already and hasn't yet produced any berries.

Roughly 3 hours

 

Week 9

I haven't been out for about two weeks, but have been busy in my personal garden. We have some plants that need to be taken care of. I also still have some fire weed and columbine that need to go in the ground ASAP. On Friday I will get out in the early morning to complete this. Need to discuss planting locations with the team.

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I'm at roughly 19 hours for the quarter. I'll be out Friday morning and Sunday taking care of the ton of non-natives and native nasties like horsetail to push to meet my hours commitment. I'll post back here on Sunday with an update on my activities and time.

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I went out this morning (Friday, June 1, 2007) from 6 am to 11 am and worked on the upper decorative area around the main sign. Several columbines and lupines have now been planted there. The lupines i planted are already very wilted and I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they will come through. The dirt (not soil) is terrible, very hard to work with, has virtually no organic matter, and is VERY VERY dry. I was concerned anything I planted would be wilted and dead in this heat, so I spread mulch around the area and made the plants recessed to the surface of the mulch so they can be well watered with minimal waste. Someone had been out previously to water, either this morning or last night, and I re-watered before leaving because some areas were already beginning to dry out. The E3 conference was taking place while I was working, and many of the visitors expressed interest in what I was doing and were very pleased to hear Evergreen has a class like Healing Gardens. I suggested to some that they come to super saturday because we may have a booth there.

5 hrs

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June 3, 2007

I arrived at the longhouse at 11:30 to many wilted plants and was really concerned that nothing had been watered yet that day, so I went around and thoroughly watered every area I could get a hose to. I intended to transplant several wood violets to the upper decorative sign area, but it was/is too hot and the soil there is incredibly dry. I'd like to wait until a cooler day before doing this. Brandy showed up to work and journal, and we had a chance to catch up. Her area is looking very nice. I'm a little concerned about the placement of two lillies close to the garbage can near the longhouse entrance. I think they'll do well there as long as whoever empties the can is careful. Also, I noticed an orange was placed in the hand of one of the welcoming poles. Is it OK to remove it (if it hasn't been already)?

2.75 hrs