beyond the bounty
A local gardener digs into why we garden
Words & photos by Paula MacKay
On our woodsy Bainbridge road, we have a community farmstand. The stand is business casual, with rough-hewn posts, a cheerfully painted chair, and welcoming words on an oversize whiteboard. Lemon yellow letters promote Flowers to passersby, who might also get lucky and find Fresh Eggs for Sale. Spring is my favorite season to stop by and take a gander, so I can survey young seedlings in need of a bed. Last May, one plant in particular called out my name—an heirloom tomato, pot-stressed and leggy. “What’s one more tomato?” I asked myself sheepishly, dropping a few crumpled dollars into the box.
Every gardener I know could tell a similar story. I’m convinced something chemical happens in our brains when longer days and warmer nights signal planting season is around the corner—the human equivalent of chlorophyll greening up our thumbs. I hear it in my friend’s voice when she raves about horse manure, the smell of it drifting from driveways after compost deliveries. I feel it at the nursery when I zip in for seeds and get swept up in the zeal of fellow shoppers filling their carts. As I join the chorus of admirers singing praise to the pansies, I realize this is what I came for all along: the collective euphoria of people who love to nurture plants.
Gardening is like a club whose secret handshake includes gloves. Even if you garden alone in your secluded backyard, you know you’re part of a much bigger network—and membership is blooming these days. According to seed maven Renee Shepherd, founder of Renee’s Garden, most seed packet companies have seen a 100% increase in sales since Covid-19, reflecting an explosion of new gardeners who want to raise their own vegetables and engage with their kids. “The trend has not slowed down over two growing seasons,” Shepherd said.
Indeed, psychologists have identified gardening as one of the most effective balms to social isolation during the pandemic. At a time when most of us felt the walls closing in, plunging our hands into the soil helped us detach from bad news and reconnect with the rhythms of nature. Holly Hughes, a Chimacum-based poet, put it this way: “My efforts to garden remind me to pay attention to the changing weather, the changing seasons, and the way that the outer landscape mirrors my inner one.” Hughes said gardening also helps root her in the land. “I’ve learned that my efforts to garden, whether successful or not, are centering, grounding, connecting me with the long tradition of stewardship practiced by the Indigenous peoples of the Salish Sea.”
But will green thumbs fade when our lives regain their color? Shepherd doesn’t think so. “Gardening is something that, once you start doing it, you keep doing it if you have even a small measure of success because it is so satisfying and gives you food on the table,” she said.
True, our seasonally soggy landscape can present minor hurdles to gardeners (hello, slugs!), but once you’ve found the sweet spot around when and what to plant, the Puget Sound area is a paradise for producing veggies and flowers. “You can grow lots of cool season things better than anybody else, and hot season things in midsummer,” said Shepherd from her home in California.
For gardeners who don’t have property or sunshine for a private plot, or who prefer to garden among neighbors, there are dozens of community gardens spanning the Kitsap Peninsula. At Wacky Nut Community Garden on Bainbridge, for example, picturesque raised beds support 50 gardeners, who also have access to communal herbs, berries and fruit trees.
Last October, I visited the garden with Len Biel, who helped start the garden in 2008. “It’s just a heaven on earth for me, a wonderful place to enjoy the comradery of the gardeners,” Biel said as we toured a mosaic of beds bursting with fall colors. Once a month, members bring drinks and appetizers to share around the firepit, and a new cider press makes autumn nectar from apples. Then there are “Len’s Dahlias”—650 of them, comprising one of the most striking displays I’ve ever seen.
I’ve come to realize there are as many reasons to garden as there are gardeners, whether we’re cultivating food and flowers, friendships, or the fertile seeds of hope. For me, there is nothing more rewarding than stepping out my back door and picking spinach for a salad or cucumbers for soup. And that forlorn tomato plant that called my name last spring? It yielded eight quarts of spaghetti sauce that brought summer to our household all winter long.
