Community Gardening
Once, I lived in a place with a community garden. Now that garden has turned to a patch of weeds and sand.
When I first moved to Sarasota, I lived in an apartment building in Laurel Park. It was close quarters. I lived in half an old carriage house and my front door was 10 feet away from another apartment. There were 12 apartments, each meant to be a single, but half of them housed couples – all in half an acre of land.
The crowded conditions led to something I’ve not experienced outside of a college dorm – people talked to each other, became friends with each other, even if they didn’t really get along.
That’s how we ended up with a community garden. Someone thought it would be a nice thing, and everyone pitched in. A woman who worked at the Ritz hauled over some plants they were going to throw away. Someone bought gardenias at the farmers market and someone else loaned a truck to get them home. A master gardener lived across the street & gave us some of his cuttings. Folks saved packing peanuts to put in the bottom of the planters to make them lighter. Weekly, little garden gnomes would appear, snuck in by different residents. A couple of guys dug out some old pavers from the overgrown corner of the property to make a path. Someone spotted a stone bench on the side of the road and hauled it back to the middle of the garden.
It was beautiful. It was a gathering place. Everyone agreed it was a great place for a Friday evening cocktail.
And now? Now I’ve moved, but not far (2 blocks). Other residents have also – to Palmer Ranch, Siesta Key or farther. I think there are only 2 folks who still live in the building, but I know 3 or 4 more people who moved just a little, as I did. I talk to a couple of people on Facebook, and wave when I see them in the neighborhood. But what we don’t do anymore is talk and share those little moments – the getting into the car in the morning moments, the “I have leftover dinner, do you want some” moments. I don’t feel like I can intrude on their everyday lives the way I did when space enabled me.
Thinking back, that time showed me three things. First, the physical structure of our lives is important. It mattered that I was so close to my neighbors. The space created the conditions for a relationship.
The second is that community is built in the little moments, in the knowledge that maybe we don’t agree on many things, but when I needed a white dress last week, you let me borrow yours. Because the little moments made you irrevocably a unique person, I want your company despite our disagreements.
The last thing? Our community, our garden, may not survive. It isn’t there for the ages. It doesn’t flourish and grow on its own – it needs care. Our garden being gone doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have dug it, or that our time was wasted. Because we haven’t kept up with it doesn’t mean it was a failure- it means these things are hard and we are human. It means things change & we have to keep trying.
Did you enjoy this post? Why not leave a comment below and continue the conversation, or subscribe to my feed and get articles like this delivered automatically to your feed reader.
I was thinking about your post yesterday, remembering the first apartment I lived in and how I had the OPPOSITE experience of shared space, which I think a lot of others have had too.
I lived in the apartment complex right on 41, just North of Rico’s Pizza. And when I say right 41, I mean RIGHT ON 41. That’s where I developed my habit of sleeping with a pillow under and over my head, to drown out the constant-but-just-random-enough-to-disturb car whooshes. The apartments were nice, and a great deal–lots of light, well-insulated–but there was no denying the feeling that this place was, and would always be, second-best to somewhere else.
And the common feeling you described of living close to one another physically and then psychologically–the ‘hello’s’, the borrowing and lending, creating a beautiful shared space together–just never happened. Because I love that stuff, I always tried, and a few neighbors would reciprocate, and relationship was born. But it never became a GROUP thing, and it never took over the place.
Our shared space was the laundry room. Like the neglected feeling of our social fabric in that complex, the laundry room was scuzzy. Not just scuzzy–it was that sense that people either didn’t care or didn’t have enough investment in their commonality with their neighbors to do something as little as throw their trash in the actual trash can, instead of the floor…or ‘pay it forward’ and throw away someone else’s trash.
What was the difference? Why did my place never become a place of belonging and contributing and creating together, while yours did?
I don’t think it was the people. I stubbornly hold faith that all people have the capacity for good and evil when it comes to neighborliness, and am just as stubborn in believing that income- and rent-level has very little to do with which side tends to win.
Two things come to mind: when I visited your apartment in the past, the neighborhood felt safe, pleasant… while my apartment complex sat literally five feet from rushing traffic, walled off on all other sides from the ‘nice’ neighborhood that stretched to the bay behind.
When I lived there, the second-class feeling of the place never ceased to strike me.
I’m not sure what I’m concluding. I don’t think that creating the nice, commonly owned space you experienced would be impossible at my past dwelling just because the physical layout and placement screamed “compromise/last option/second-class.” But I DO think that it can be a factor.
Now I find myself thinking…what would it have taken to get that laundry room cleaned by everyone, or the majority? What would it have taken to create the buzz of friendly exchange? What are the things that help this happen in each of our neighborhoods?