How Does Your Garden Grow | Sam, St. John
Tell us about your gardening experience!
I started my gardening experience in 2014 when I had the amazing opportunity to teach a 3-5-year-old gardening class at a children’s museum. I will admit I learned a lot by failure and took some time to get used to gardening in the desert climate of Los Angeles. Once my family and I moved back to St Louis it got a lot easier due solely to knowing that rain was a thing here. Ever since then we have slowly grown our garden(s) at our house and I continued to learn more while working at the Missouri Botanical Garden.
My favorite thing to grow is flowers, especially zinnias, marigolds and sunflowers. As much as I love growing food, flowers are what bring all the beneficial insects that both my kids and I love to watch. We had one Mexican Sunflower (Tithonia rotundifolia) and would see up to 15 butterflies on that one plant at the same time. Adding flowers through our edible garden also breaks up all the green foliage bring much-appreciated beauty to space. That being said I love growing cherry tomatoes – one of my favorites snacks to eat while working in the garden.
The biggest change in our garden is the addition of a giving garden in our front yard. We have a decently sloped area of our front yard next to the sidewalk. Rather than mowing the evil hill, we are going to be planting it up with cut flowers and edible plants so anyone can harvest what they need. May that be a handful of herbs, a few tomatoes or a bouquet of flowers to bring life to their house.
Back in 2020, we took down 2 trees in the backyard opening up a lot more light. We will be adding a food forest area in the backyard including many fruit trees, raspberries and of course native flowers.
Tell us a little bit about your growing space! What are some challenges you’ve encountered?
My family is my first priority and sometimes my biggest challenge in the garden.
First, my husband is extremely allergic to the outside world. If he comes outside while someone else is mowing their lawn he tends to break out in hives. Or if I mow our lawn then our dog’s tack in clipping onto the sofa he goes into anaphylactic shock. I personally want to fill our whole yard with native plants and edibles, I also know my kids in a space to play. Finding this balance between gardens and play areas is the second challenge I face every year when I am planning the space out. Luckily our next-door neighbors have a child the same age as my oldest and the three kids tend to fence hop all day long. This has to lead to their yard as the running yard and ours the adventure yard. All of the plants we grow are great for playing hid and seek, looking for bugs and we even plant some of our neighbor’s favorite foods for him to snack on while playing in our yard too. This has allowed me to slowly covered half our backyard with growing spaces and a lot less grass to aggravate my husband's allergies.
Our home sits on around the 10th of an acre (which is really just fancy saying 5,000sqft) and our garden is around 1,200sqft..which is around the same amount of space as our house in comparison. This includes our new giving garden in the front yard, our market garden style veggie patch and a new food forest in the back yard. And lastly B.A.R.B., our Big A** Raised Bed. BARB was the first garden we built with motorcycle pallets we got off of Craigslist 4 years ago. BARB is 21’x3’x4’ which has been great to grow herbs and veggies that I only want to grow one of. This year we have added old windows that I have collected to make a mini greenhouse to start all of my plants this spring.
What are some tips and tricks for other gardeners? What are the benefits of gardening for you?
Gardening should be enjoyable.
One of the main reasons we built BARB was because my mom wanted to help in the garden but couldn’t do the bending for traditional in-ground gardening anymore. In the summer I don’t even start working on my garden until after dinner normally because of the heat. There are times that my beds get super weedy and I let it happen because I know the world will not end if I wait until I feel like I am up for the task. Yes, I want to have a beautiful garden but don’t make it so complicated that it is no longer enjoyable.
Also, listen to your garden. I have made my life a lot harder before because I was trying to force plants to grow in areas they were not suited to. Look where the sun hits, where water pools, where the high traffic areas are in your yard. Hint: don’t plant something in the direct path from the swing set to the house when you are potty training...plants will get squished in a bathroom emergency! Listening to your garden goes further than that though – if you notice low production, you might be missing pollinators like the native bumblebee...plant some flowers among your veggies. Squirrels only go after your tomatoes...most likely they are thirsty so add a water score. Missing lightning bugs thought the summer added bushes for them to hide in thought the day.
Even though I have worked with plants for the past 4 years as my job I truly find gardening fun. I love the planning of what I want to grow, the act of getting my hands in the soil is satisfying. Solving the mystery of why a plant is struggling and finally, harvesting makes me want to give myself a pat on the back. My biggest benefit though is seeing how much my kids love the garden. Whether I want their help or not they are in the garden with me.
Why do YOU garden? What does gardening mean for you?
It is very important to me that my kids have a strong connection with nature. The easiest way to do that is to make our yard an enjoyable place they want to be in.
They go through the seed catalogues in the winter and they help me pick what we should grow. This has led us to have a small Disney section with Rapunzel Tomatoes, Cinderella pumpkins and Hercules Carrots. My son has requested we grow his weight in raspberries and cucumbers. Their love of the garden is what keeps me going some days and allows me to grow in so many gardens.
Sam is the Volunteer Coordinator and Assistant Farmer at Urban Harvest STL! Read more about her here.
How does YOUR garden grow? Submit your photos and tell us more at urbanharveststl.org/share-your-garden
