A Garden of Your Own

Home Grown Food Network’s Ultra Low Cost House Demonstration at Desert Hot Springs, California, is using a corner of the East Yard to demonstrate that you can grow potatoes in recycled garbage bags. The demo area is in the corner as far away from prying cameras as we can manage, and near a source of leaves and twigs needed to supply the potatoes with a medium to grow in. The roadrunners that adopted the yard as their base come and take a twig or two each every day, but we keep it stocked up and the potatoes are coming along nicely.

The East Yard is emerging as a self contained place. Here, individual visitors can view the development of the gazebo as a seedling start area and then sit to enjoy an iced tea in shade and seclusion inside the front gate. Just last week two visitors were commenting on how the presence of our cement mixer in the yard added a touch of authenticity to the “work in progress” aspect of the project. The mixer is still in use, and is not, as the Park Management had called it, “clutter“. We had a fun discussion on how to creatively use what was in the yard to camouflage the mixer for occasions when we have visitors and, thanks to our privacy, our visitors felt confident enough to actually experiment with some of their own camouflage ideas! Including dressing it up as a scarecrow!

While visiting this project, people of all ages seem inclined to talk about how gardening in a private space provides a soothing environment that releases tension, engages the senses, provokes curiosity and invites interaction with nature. Gardening is well known to be a fun inter-generational activity during which the younger people learn some tried-and-true gardening activities. And we are discovering that all age groups interpret the clearly private space provided by our Ultra Low Cost Housing Demonstration as an invitation to feel free to relax and get creative! Even to go so far as to invent ways to dress up a cement mixer! Just for fun!

Peter Naughton, Manager, Home Grown Food Network