PLANT THIS

A garden is  more than a place to grow tasty vegetables or pretty flowers. There are plenty of people out there who will fill your head with nutrition data until your belly bursts from over consumption. Then there are those who will fill the air with testimonies with aesthetic testimonies about flowers until you pass out from inhaling the fumes of their exhortations.

Well both sides are a little right but completely wrong. For the real value of a garden you have to dig a little deeper until you hit fertile ground. Whether you have a raised bed or growing tomato plants in old milk jugs on the window sill,  the real importance is in the value in the lessons learned.

To be a good and successful  gardener, you have to car about something other than yourself. You need to take of the task of nurturing something, watching it grow, and develop into something that will be prized by others. The same criteria are held out for being a good parent. The lessons are transferable but instead of winning blue ribbons for an award-winning crop, we get diplomas issued from our schools. We are producing a bumper crop in the HIGHLANDS with the FORD SCHOOL and the INTERNATIONAL GARDEN.

With the diaspora of raised bed gardens the HIGHLANDS COALITION are building for families in the neighborhood and talk of a proposed expansion into a small section of COOK STREET PARK, everything could be coming up roses for the HIGHLANDS residents.