Why I believe in Gardening: Part 1

This week, I’m away from my garden, traveling in the Mountain West with my fiance and my dog. We’ve spent hours in the car, moving between small lake towns, searching for open space for our minds to wander. As I’ve watched this region roll past my window, I’ve watched the prairies and meadows of wheat and wildflowers. Just beyond each wooden gate, near the home of each farmer, I can make out a clearly defined kitchen garden, fenced off from deer and elk, at just about every home. That’s my goal for Boise, to make every person in our community a gardener. Here’s why.

I believe in gardens. I believe in their ability to teach us about our communities.

Growing up, I lived near Chicago. On weekends that I visited my grandfather in the city, he took me around to all the mom-and-pop restaurants he served as a wine distributor. I loved pushing through those revolving doors and pulling back the velvet curtains that kept out the cold of Lake Michigan. They revealed warm dining rooms, filled with people tending to their communities. The restaurant owners or managers hugged my grandfather, taking his tall, thin frame and making it big for the community he served. They talked about their families, their business. For a suburban kid like me, these interactions transported me to another time, another world, where community mattered.

During those weekends in the city, I learned about the hospitality business and its very core to serve the communities where we live. Small business owners were the people who ran the restaurants, who supplied the food, who made the wine. Small business owners, many times, were the people who consumed all that, and the cycle began again. As a high school journalist, I used to say I have a passion for people with passion, and I think this is where that passion began.

When I went to college in the middle of Missouri, I again sought meaning in the midwestern values of my community. I visited the farmers market, the local restaurants and the surprising wine region nearby. I found professors who encouraged me in that direction, and I began writing about food and the people who produced it. I quickly fell down the Michael Pollan rabbit hole and learned about conventional agriculture and all the harm it did to the farming communities in America, not to mention the harm it continues to inflict on the communities who rely on our food system.

I wrote about local food as I learned, and I ate local food as I went, and I became more and more convinced that should I want to become engrained in my community, I had to do so through my stomach. I never wanted to judge other people’s food choices, but I did want to show them how to make things better by turning our gaze inward, by supporting our community instead of corporations. Until this year, though, I haven’t found a great way to do that.

I moved to Atlanta after college to pursue a career in hospitality, but I quickly found the work (for a corporation, of course) to be unfulfilling. I felt locked in that cubicle, but once I figured out that I could work remotely as an independent contractor, I got an unpaid internship with a restaurant PR firm and began making contacts in Atlanta’s restaurant community. Working two jobs, I found my way to living in a new neighborhood on Atlanta’s Westside. I so badly wanted it to be an all-inclusive community, where I could walk to the market, to my favorite restaurants and stores, and never get in my car. That was a tall order for Atlanta, but the only piece missing was a fresh food market.

I spoke to business owners around my apartment, and they seemed interested in a farmers market, so I cold-called almost 100 farmers to build a roster of vendors. I also spoke to other farmers market managers in the city, and eventually paired up with a non-profit who helped me open the Westside Farmers Market. The pride I felt on opening day, and every spring-to-fall Sunday after that, bowled me over. I was the conductor of a new community. I brought people together to learn about local food and get to know the business owners in their community.

After opening two farmers markets, I moved to Boise, Idaho, to start again. My partner and I were looking for a new community, one that aligned even more with our values. The first place I visited was the Boise Farmers Market, where I met farmers and producers of so many types and walks of life I again felt inspired. This was my new community, and I could not be more eager to learn their stories.

Before the pandemic, I spent every Saturday morning at the market , and each visit filled me with hope for the future of this world. If these people, who are kind, hardworking, ethical, and moving to the music of local food could make a difference in my world, I wanted to know how I could make a difference in theirs. Boise has a great farmers market, run by an amazing manager, and the food writing scene is led by yet another exceptional talent. I took my time learning, asking questions, and when the pandemic hit, I spent more time at home, figuring out my place, my path forward.

When I focused on my garden, and the community garden I’ve created with my neighbors, I tapped into so many things I hadn’t felt in a while. I woke up every morning feeling grateful for the small piece of the world I get to inhabit. I felt gratitude for the neighbors I get to see every day, and for the business owners, farmers and seed growers I get to support with my dollar. Instead of focusing on the anger I felt for all that I lost (my job, the wedding I planned, the ability to see my family in Chicago), I processed those emotions while I gardened. I could create there, while so much else was out of my control.

That’s why I started this business. I started it to build kitchen gardens all over Boise, Idaho, so that we could all be gardeners. I believe that once you start growing your own food, even just a small portion of it, you become invested in the local food movement. Once you start to watch a seed that was grown locally become a drought-tolerant, sun-adapted plant that thrives in the hot high desert of Boise, Idaho, you will understand the community you inhabit just a little more. To me, it all starts with a seed. That seed will germinate, grow, thrive and proliferate, so that all over town, Boiseans learn that their community is one of resilience and kindness, in so many ways.

If there’s something in you that wants to garden, please contact me. It’s literally all I want in the world, to teach you what I know about growing food and all the meaning that can come from it.