2023
2023
Volunteers McKenzie Cameron, Mia Owen and Amalia Garzon roll up rope on to a stake which is used as a guide for planting crops. Here, beet plants were placed into the ground and the rope allowed volunteers to keep them in a straight line.
Words by Lauren Hodges | Photos by Isaac Wasserman
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Early on Saturday morning, I pack my garden gloves, water bottle, and hat in my bag before heading out of my Eugene apartment near the University of Oregon to catch a bus. With my muddy garden boots in hand, I walk seven blocks to the bus stop on Franklin Boulevard. Students chatter noisily. Cars stream by. The noise doesn’t bother me. This bus takes me to a place I think of as my quiet little oasis.
After a 40-minute bus ride, I get off on Coburg Road, another noisy place full of traffic on the north end of Eugene. I walk around Saint Thomas Episcopal Church to the garden, where gigantic bok choy, sprouting lettuce, and piles of leaves greet me on this early-spring day. The stillness of the garden envelops me like a warm, weighted blanket compressing all the stress and worry from my shoulders. I can’t put my boots on fast enough. My hands itch to touch the soil.
The GrassRoots garden, operated by FOOD For Lane County, is a two-and-a-half acre garden that depends on volunteers to function, but volunteers like me don’t often leave empty-handed, or empty-bellied. Volunteer cooks in the garden’s kitchen provide everyone with fresh lunch each Saturday and volunteers are more than welcome to take produce home. The garden’s goal is to address root causes of hunger and malnutrition by promoting community and individual self-sufficiency, according to the FOOD for Lane County garden website.
This green retreat provides me many things: an escape from my obligations, engagement with soil and plant science, socialization with people who value the garden as much as I do, and a connection with nature and my food.
Rainbow chard grows at the front of the garden, providing a colorful greeting to volunteers and community members. A newly installed green irrigation hose runs between the plants providing them with ample hydration without wasting water.
Gentle hands plant beets which are are moved into the ground where they will grow throughout the summer. A 2-inch hole is created, the plant is places inside the hole, and then softly covered with soil.
The food grown in the garden is just one part of this natural food and compost cycle. Everyone and everything has a role to play.
- The plants are food for the volunteers.
- The food scraps become compost.
- The compost is laid in the garden to help the plants grow.
- The volunteers work to create the perfect habitat for the plants.
- And the whole cycle begins again.
Witnessing each step of the cycle is gratifying, knowing that I am an integral part.
A Peaceful Garden Vacation
When I arrive, Emily Johnson, the director of the GrassRoots garden, gives volunteers tasks: some of us use wheelbarrows and shovels to move compost from towers of decaying leaves by the entrance to the rows of garden beds that dominate the plot’s two and a half acres. At the beds, another group of volunteers stomps on the leaves, compacting them to create a layer of nutrient-rich compost for the budding plants. I’m moving compost this morning – my energy and thoughts focus solely on the task at hand.
With my boots on the earth, hands in the soil, and dirt under my nails, I feel like a child again. I don’t care about the stains on my pants or about my rent that’s due in two days. The sounds of wheelbarrows and shovels hitting rocks in the dirt drown out all the responsibilities rattling around in my head. It’s as if the plants take in my stress and release tranquility, much like they absorb carbon dioxide and emit oxygen. A photosynthetic exchange of relaxation.
Dirty Hands(-On) Learning
In the garden, things move slowly. Baby plants grow at their own pace – not worried about meeting a deadline. Soil microorganisms move meticulously to ensure that the soil is healthy and can house seedlings soon to be planted. I stop to watch earthworms slither through the dirt. The paths they make aerate the soil to allow water to trickle through. Watching them wriggle over the soil, trying to find a spot to dig into the soil after my shovel uncovers them, I say a silent “thank you” for their hard work. They manufacture soil so that plants can thrive here.
Photo by aj miccio.
Volunteers carry wheelbarrows full of decaying leaves to the back of the garden and dump the leaves between the plots. This creates a foot path for people to walk on which minimizes soil compaction from trampling feet.
Fresh compost is transported from Emily Johnson’s truck into wheelbarrows which are carried by volunteers to the back of the garden. The compost food scraps come from Capella Market on Willamette Street.
After dumping the fresh food scraps onto the older piles of compost, volunteers cover the scraps with dead leaves. The leaves trap moisture and heat which boosts the decomposition process creating, rich compost that can be used when planting fall crops.
Soil is so much more than dirt. A billion organisms in a single pinch of soil make it one of the most diverse habitats on Earth. For all of this complexity, healthy soil contains just four things: water, minerals, living and dead organic matter, and air.
Plants have created the perfect adaptation so that their growth will help the next generation of crops. They are self-sustaining because they know exactly what they need. Plants punch down holes with their roots, then they die and decompose, but the holes they create remain. Large holes from thicker roots drain water with the force of gravity and tiny holes from thinner roots hold water against the force of gravity. This gives plants the water they need, the air they need, and stores water for future plants.
Healthy soil needs both living and dead organic matter – any carbon-based compound that lives in nature. Most of this organic matter comes from compost, which might look like a stinking pile of dead, unwanted things, but it’s actually a gold mine for gardeners. I think about this as I put dead leaves on the pile of fresh food scraps. Emily tells me and the other volunteers the elements needed for compost. “You need carbon [which comes from the leaves we’re putting on top of the food scraps], nitrogen [which comes from the decomposition of the food scraps], water [which comes from the juices from the food scraps], air [which is why we crumble up the leaves so that there is air in between them], and time,” Emily says.
Boy Scout volunteer Jackson Morris transplants tomato plants from small containers into a garden bed at the two-and-a-half-acre GrassRoots garden in Lane County, Oregon. The garden serves the county’s food needs and relies on volunteers for much of the labor it takes to grow the garden.
Creating Community
I first came to the garden after hearing about it in a newsletter from the UO’s Student Sustainability Center. It was the middle of winter, and I was feeling lonely and isolated from spending all my time in my apartment or buildings on campus. Going to the garden on Saturdays felt like an opportunity to get out of my slump. It worked. Working in the garden immediately lifted my spirits. Just being in nature brought me happiness, but it was the people in the garden that kept me coming back weekend after weekend.
From the outside, it would appear that the garden’s goal is to grow food and promote healthy eating. The garden is so much more than a space for plants. It’s a place for people, too.
The garden is so much more than a space for plants. It’s a place for people, too.
But the garden is so much more than a space for plants. It’s a place for people, too.
Barbara Nakai, a volunteer who I often see at the garden, says “My favorite part about coming here is the goal of the garden. They do things slowly and sustainably.” Barbara is retired and visits the garden to volunteer whenever she has the chance.
As we work, other volunteers and I laugh and talk about our lives outside the garden. We connect over shared interests, jobs, and classes, growing a little bit closer while we weed side-by-side. Making friends in the garden is easy. Everyone is just a little bit like me. “I need to be grounded in nature to function,” says Charles Spring, a fellow volunteer. Charles is a construction technician inspector working 60 hours a week. The garden provides him with an escape from his job where he’s surrounded by concrete and machines.
I’ve made friends here at the garden and I look forward to spending time with the community of garden lovers every week. Being surrounded by these people reminds me that I’m not a weirdo. Other people here also think earthworms are cute, and some of these gardeners also prefer eating dirty carrots straight from the ground.
Volunteers McKenzie Cameron, Mia Owen and Amalia Garzon roll up rope on to a stake which is used as a guide for planting crops. Here, beet plants were placed into the ground and the rope allowed volunteers to keep them in a straight line.
Connecting with My Roots
I find my knees crackling like those of an old man when I stand up after weeding. My feet twinge and my stomach growls. To hold me over until lunch, I grab bits of the kale or lettuce growing in the garden for a little snack. These salad greens taste best when they come straight from the garden. If I’m lucky, I can find a green onion growing nearby – a sweet and spicy treat to munch between wheelbarrow loads.
Working to create the ideal habitat for seedlings makes me appreciate all the labor and love that goes into making the food that I so often take for granted. Seeing the kale plants flourish reminds me of their magical ability to turn sunlight and water into tasty and nutritious food. I feel like an assistant, doing menial tasks to create a habitat for the real stars of the show: the plants.
It’s easy to see fruits and vegetables as just nutritional requirements we get from the supermarket, where food is arranged in displays along geometric aisles so it can easily be grabbed and placed into a plastic produce bag. Shopping this way has disconnected us from the intensive time and labor that goes into producing our food. But when I’m working in the garden, I feel a sense of wonder, watching all the elements work together to produce the foods I need.
The huge triangle by the kitchen rings and one of the cooks yells, “Lunch!”
Volunteers in the kitchen, like Julianna Clevenger, begin cooking at 9 a.m. to ensure that lunch is ready for the garden volunteers at 1 p.m. Lunch usually consists of several soups made from produce grown in the garden. Julianna is preparing tomato bisque, potato and leek soup, and a black-eyed-pea and carrot stew.
Veronica Dominquez and the other kitchen volunteers hurry to put all the food for lunch into bowls to set out on the picnic tables. Veronica prepared a spinach and garbanzo bean salad for the garden volunteers to enjoy after working hard all morning.
Volunteers in the kitchen frantically prepare all the food for lunch time. A staple item for lunch in the garden is pasta, which they often prepare with butter, garlic, and parsley.
The warm lunch we receive connects us even more deeply to the food. Cooks in the garden’s outdoor kitchen work for hours to prepare the day’s meal from produce grown in the garden: potatoes and leaks in the soup, peppers in the hot sauce, and apples in the homemade applesauce. Minutes before lunch, the kitchen is a madhouse. Kitchen volunteers run around trying to get everything ready as volunteers line up by the kitchen.
While sitting on a bench eating my share, I realize that the work I’m doing today will help provide future volunteers with lunch. I’m an integral part of this cycle of growing food, eating food, composting those food scraps, and using it to grow food for future lunches.
Every Saturday loaves of bread are provided for volunteers, who often dip it into soup on cold days and eat it alongside salads on warmer days. The bread is also used in the kitchen’s homemade bread pudding, often served with homemade applesauce.
Returning to Life Outside the Garden
After working for five hours, the bus ride home is a welcome rest for my throbbing feet and aching knees that feel like they’re being pricked with needles.
Despite the pain and exhausting work, I keep coming back. I wake up every Saturday excited to escape from my responsibilities, to get my hands in the dirt and learn about the intricate processes happening under my fingers, to see the friends I’ve made here, and to strengthen my relationship with food and where it comes from.
There is no doubt in my mind that this garden is a place I will return to as long as I’m in Eugene. And when I’ve moved away, and I have a garden of my own, I will remember this garden as the habitat that gave me everything I needed to flourish.
Once all food is placed on the picnic table, volunteers line up and food is served. Each volunteer walks away with at least 2 bowls of food and will likely come back for dessert or seconds once everyone has gotten their share. There is never a shortage of food for the volunteers in the garden.
SOURCES
Emily Johnson, Director of GrassRoots Garden
Harper Keeler, Senior Instructor I at the University of Oregon School of Architecture & Environment, Director of the Urban Farm Program
James Cassidy, Senior Instructor II at Oregon State University College of Agricultural Sciences, Faculty Advisor of the OSU Organic Growers Club
Biology Online. (2022, July 16). Organic Matter. https://www.biologyonline.com/dictionary/organic-matter
FOOD For Lane County. (n.d.) Gardens. https://foodforlanecounty.org/go-learn-more/other-programs/gardens/
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