Why Do You Garden?
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Peaceful Belly gardening class at Hidden Springs
[HOST INTRO] For the last two months, the Market & Garden Report has aired tips on vegetable gardening — with the help of Clay and Josie Erskine of Peacefully Belly Farms. That’s the “how” of gardening. Today correspondent Guy Hand is going to look at the “why” of gardening — why so many people are suddenly interested in growing their own food.
(Gardening Sounds) (Guy Hand) A recent survey says over a third of U.S. households grew vegetable gardens in 2009. That’s nearly a 20% increase over the year before — or 7 million new families growing food. But why? I recently wandered through a season-long gardening class taught by Clay and Josie Erskine — asking students: “Why do you garden?”
(Adriana Veloza) I was telling my sister I want to get back to our roots. She said what do you mean your roots? I’m like human roots when we actually grew our own food and nothing came prepackaged and we were aware of where our food was coming from.
(Michael Rupp) To be able to turn our yard into something that’s fruitful rather than just a plot of grass that looks nice, to actually have it work for us and feed us.
(Dana Doherty Menlove) For me I feel like one of my jobs as a mother is to teach my children how to sustain themselves. I just wanna have skills to teach them how to grow food and know where the food comes from.
(Deanna Hlebechuk) I like getting dirty. It’s fun, it’s lovely. And you know, you walk away with the fruits of your labor you enjoy all week long.
(Hand) So what are you doing right now? (Mike Wallace) Right now I’m just pulling weeds out of the raspberries. They’re getting a little big. (Hand) And do you think it’s worth it with all the manual labor that’s involved? (Mike Wallace) Oh it’s peaceful. Once you get into a rhythm and just start weeding you can pretty much think about everything else except the weeding.
(Heather Cooper) To me that’s a great thing you can do for family and friends is feed them and to feed them fresh food is even more satisfying.
(Don Pollari) The more work you put into it the commitment grows and the connection to the land grows and the connection to the result grows and by the end the rewards far outweigh what you put into it to me anyways.
(Sara Cohn) It’s a nice opportunity to get outside when you’re in an urban area and connect to blackbirds and the wind.
(Dana Doherty Menlove) Everyone seems to bring so much good energy here, that you leave full.
(Karen Hammond) And I get to garden with other people which has been kind of fun. Something Josie said was once you garden in a group it’s kind of hard to go back to gardening alone. And I love that and I keep thinking about that.
(Robert Kosche) But it also allows us the opportunity to come out here by ourselves and just enjoy the garden. So you can be out here with a great group of folks or you can be out here when no one else is out here and it’s all yours. It’s spectacular.
(Hand) A few answers to the question: Why do you garden? For the Market & Garden Report and Boise State Public Radio, I’m Guy Hand.
