An organic volunteer garden in Mountain View.
In my winter garden last season, I planted some green onions. They were plentiful and definitely more than I could use. I was really curious to see what an onion flower looks like as I have never seen one….. so I let one bunch flower and go to seed. I thought you may find it interesting as well so I took some photos.
Anyone know if I can plant these?
Did you know that Mountain View historically was a farming community? Did you know that until the middle of the twentieth century, agriculture was the primary industry?
There are still over 33,000 acres of farmland in Santa Clara County, but things have changed a lot since then. There are no longer vast tracts of untouched land, and the existing developed land is expected to house more and more people. As the city undergoes rapid urbanization, it is important to create and maintain public spaces that represent the city’s roots and history. Gardening allows for self-sufficiency, builds healthier communities, and teaches our youth skills for future generations.
Today you still see many hints of our agricultural heritage. You see it in our fantastic year-round Sunday Farmer’s Market. You see it in the success of Willowgate Community Garden. Willowgate’s members yearly donate thousands of pounds of produce to the Community Services Agency, which in turn provides fresh, local, and organically grown produce to our community and families in need. And you see it in so many of the small backyard homesteads and front yard gardens of existing residents.
New residents moving to the area appreciate a beautiful year-round climate favorable to growing all kinds of fruits and vegetables. But the increasing number of people on a fixed amount of land puts precious open space, and privately-owned yard space, at a premium.
One solution to this problem is shared urban garden spaces. Urban gardens work by creating a shared garden space that is built and maintained by volunteers from the community. The fruits of the garden are shared with the community and amongst the volunteers. Gardens provide a venue for sharing of skills and for families and people of all ages and backgrounds to get involved. Kids learn the process of how food comes to them and the effort behind the final product. They create an opportunity for partnerships with local schools and surrounding organizations and businesses. From a public health perspective, these collaborations facilitate teaching opportunities about food and nutrition that keep people active and able to lead healthy lives.
Examples of this concept in our local region include Veggielution in San Jose, Gamble Gardens in Palo Alto, Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale, and the Gilroy Demonstration Gardens in Gilroy.
It is in this spirit that Soil&Water was formed. We are a group of residents who are working to create an urban demonstration garden space within Mountain View. We are currently engaged with the City and local groups to realize this vision. We are sponsored by the Kiwanis Club of Mountain View and the Los Altos Community Foundation.
We want to say a big warm welcome to so many of the new residents that signed up to support this project at our Spring Parade information booth. Welcome to all of you. If you are interested in getting more involved in this project, please send an email to soilandwatergarden@gmail.com This is a great opportunity to create more public garden spaces within your neighborhood and community, to exercise those creative design skills, and a chance to give back to your community through volunteering.
(If you feel like you may have read this article before……you’re right – This article was published by me in the February 2014, Volume 26, Number 1, Old Mountain View Neighborhood Association Newsletter, www.omvna.org)
A personal note.
I never thought of myself as a gardener. Gardening only became a love of mine after moving to California. Everything grows here! Even in San Francisco, I would get a pretty good season of tomatoes off of one plant on a balcony. I fell in love with all the community garden spaces hidden throughout the city and volunteered at a few of them in my own neighborhood in Hayes Valley. I moved to Mountain View two years ago and can’t believe that I can grow food year round. The climate is perfect.
So I have been trying all sorts of different edibles over the past couple of years at first on my mostly shaded balcony in an apartment and now in any sunny spot I have in the tiny backyard of our rental. Some plants thrive, some fail, but I am definitely hooked. There is something incredibly powerful about the feeling of a dinner made from produce grown at home. Then there is my young daughter and the feeling it gives me when she picks a ripe strawberry and proudly shows it to me as she pops it into her mouth. I think of all the different vegetables she is more willing to try when she picks it off the plant rather than on her dinner plate. Finally, I have always been very interested in herbs and their culinary, therapeutic and cosmetic uses. I feel like the more I discover and explore about gardening, the more there is to learn, and as a researcher by profession, I do enjoy the trial and error nature that is gardening.
