This week was the National GrowTogether Conference, a meeting of community gardeners from all over the country. It was organized by the NYC ParksGreenThumb in partnership with the American Community Gardening Association and the Denver Urban Gardens’ Urban Garden Project. This was the first time the GrowTogether conference went national, took place in June and not in early Spring, and went on over several days. This year’s theme was “Seeds of Resilience”.
Saturday was the day that I could attend, and I had a great time. The day started with a keynote talk by Robin Wall Kimmerer, the Potawatomi botanist, ecologist, and writer most gardeners know from at least one of her wonderful books: “Braiding Sweetgras: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants“. Who has not read this book should pick up a copy. In her talk, Robin spoke about our relationship with the land and how the land gives to us freely. These gifts, we can gratefully accept, but we have the responsibility to give back. Here is what she thinks we need to do:
Robin talked about climate change and the engineering efforts to sequester carbon into the ground. She reminded us that plants have been doing this since the beginning of time: take CO2 from the atmosphere and turn it into organic matter, much of which is in the ground (the roots!). All of this happens with solar energy only. Robin is a scientist, and she knows that plants can’t solve our climate crisis on their own. We people have to help in many ways. Robin’s response to some politician’s call to get even more oil out of the ground is this:
I think we can all agree.
The 2025 National GrowTogether Keynote Address by Robin Wall Kimmerer can be watched on the NYC Parks GreenThumb YouTube Channel until June 26th.
The keynote talk received standing ovations and was followed by panel discussions and many workshops, including a meditation workshop by our own Eileen Ain.
It was hard to pick a workshop from the many offers, so I decided to just have fun and go into a room where Don Boekelheide from Charlotte, NC made music with us. For an hour, we sang garden- and gardening- related songs. These were a fun mix of children’s songs, songs by famous songwriters (e.g. Arlo and Woody Guthrie and Sally Rogers), a British protest song from the 17th century, other songs in English like “The Garden Song” and songs in Spanish. The “Canción de Jardinera” from the Argentinian songwriter Maria Elena Walsh has a lovely verse:
Merenme, soy feliz
En nuestro jardines crecen
Verduras y amigos los dos
Con amor y el compost
(More on compost later)
Look at me, I’m happy
In our gardens grow
Veggies and friends both
With love and compost
Singing together is always a lot of fun, and so is making things. During the next workshop, I and many others learned from Sofia van Leeuwen how to make cordage from Yucca filamentosa leaves and the outer layer of the stalks of perennial hibiscus.
While we gardeners were sitting inside, our gardens got some nice rain. And LaGuardia Corner Garden also got compost! The department of sanitation had organized a compost give-back event at our garden during which neighbors and gardeners could get one or more large bags of compost.
We thank all New Yorkers for throwing their food scraps into the brown bins and not into the trash. That is one small thing we can all do to give back to the land and combat climate change.
