Hello Garden Friends,

Since my last blog entry I was asked,“How does the garden make you feel?”  As I began to ponder this question, I felt a wave of warm emotions run through my heart. Quick flashes of some fond memories came rushing to my mind—like the time a young summer camper exclaimed, “Carrots are kindness!” And another memory involving a conversation I had with a neighbor in the community garden one summer afternoon. She shared that the garden was the first thing in her life that ever returned the love she put into it. I also vividly recalled a gardener telling me a story about a conversation he had with a passerby who asked him to look out at the street and tell him what he saw. The litter-filled street, he was currently trying to clean up, was the only thing he noticed. The passerby then asked the gardener to look down at the puddle of oil and water on the sidewalk and he said, “I only see the rainbows.” I also thought about all the food and flowers the garden provides my neighbors and me.  And I felt so grateful. This garden brings so many different people together. So my response to this question is: The garden makes me feel loved. It motivates me to want to continue to serve in this special community green space and to appreciate all the people surrounding it.


Over the last few weeks, the community gardeners and I have harvested flowers, pulled lots of weeds and, of course, enjoyed a wide array of fresh produce. As a reminder, folks from The Civic Garden Center will be in The Over the Rhine People’s Garden on Saturday 8/27/2022 at 1:00 PM. They will  provide a free class discussing the benefits of composting as well as how to create a small-scale composting site of your own. Hope to see you there!

Garden Club will be getting back together this month! I will be meeting with the high school group next week, and the younger group will be back right after Labor Day. The focus of this youth garden club is: learning how to grow foods and flowers using organic growing methods, building healthy relationships with each other, learning healthy eating habits, and discussing ways to make money from a garden through a flower farming-floristry business model. I am so excited to see everyone!

Wishing everyone peace and love from Over-the-Rhine People’s Garden! We will be back with more updates after Labor Day! 

Warmly, 

Christina

OTR People’s Garden Site Coordinator 

www.theflowerladyotr.com