Today’s post is in honor and celebration of Pollinator Week!
Warning: This post is full of cute bee butts!
Gardens and our health
It seems these days many communities around the world are passing the time by unearthing and reimagining their lackluster yards, gardens, and other shared green spaces. Whatever your tabula rasa might be, it’s undeniable that gardens offer an approachable avenue to enhance aesthetics and reduce food insecurity in urban centers, and improve human health in numerous ways. Gardening not only connects people with the fertile ground they toil, but also creates links and connections between community members, whether it’s swapping tips, tricks, and plants with neighbors, or being part of a larger network like with the Master Gardeners or Master Naturalists. Even in the Tidewater area, surrounded by brackish water and the threat of hurricanes for six months, luscious gardens are part of our landscape, and we have some beautiful historical gardens in this area to show it! Erica Deale, the Park Stewardship Coordinator, often remarks that The Mariners’ Museum Park is, “one of the most well-planned and well-documented parks that I have ever seen.” The plants, trees, shrubs, and everything in between, were planned out extensively in the 1930s, and many of those plants are still in their original locations!
We’ve recently begun initiating some programs at the museum to help keep the staff happy and healthy, including starting a Garden Club, of which I became a member. I joined because I don’t really know that much about gardening, but I really like growing things, especially things that I can eat. We were given space in one of our courtyards and managed to scrounge up the materials we needed to create the raised beds. Below are two images from the day we spent creating those beds, for which we had a pretty good and hardworking crowd. The first shot shows most of the group as we were nearly finished with the first bed, and the second shot shows the three completed beds. I’m really looking forward to planting and harvesting!
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