Giving gardens to the needy
Dan Barker
Adapted extract from the Sun (USA), monitored for the Institute by Roger Knights.
'Barker builds gardens in the back yards of recipients - at no cost to them'
Dan Barker, a poet and novelist, has been giving away vegetable gardens in Portland, Oregon, for seven years. Funded by private foundations and trusts, Barker builds gardens in the back yards of recipients - at no cost to them. He constructs soil frames, brings in a trellis, seeds, fertiliser, tomato cages, pest controls, instructions, advice and cooking tips. Barker does his work in the needier neighbourhoods, where the proceeds - material, psychological and spiritual - can make the greatest difference. To date, Barker has built more than 525 gardens. Barker writes:
'when you plant, use three seeds - one for you, one for your neighbour, one for God'
The charitable trusts and foundations want to know if the gardens work. Do they dissolve the current anguish ripping the dignity from the impoverished? I can't say with certainty that one gang kid has been deflected from his run toward a violent end or prison, or that I've passed out sandwiches to people who have no reason to vote, or given shelter to homeless families. But I've saved thousands of people considerable money, time, and trouble, trips to the doctor, despair, sessions with their therapists, longing for death. I tell the gardeners that this is the store you don't have to go to. You get hungry, come on out and pick yourself a meal. When you plant, use three seeds - one for you, one for your neighbour, one for God. They always laugh when I mention God, or silently let the word slide on by. I go home knowing that I've planted the possibility of self-caring. But the donors want a figure; I tell them each garden is capable of producing at least $500 worth of food a summer, if you don't count gas, time, etc, and that 95 per cent of the gardens are productive the first year, 85 per cent the second - I don't keep track after that, though often I run across a garden still producing after five or six years. Some people even load their gardens onto trucks when they move.
What is more difficult to convey is the health and joy alive in a seventy-year-old woman showing me her beans and tomatoes, or the pride of accomplishment beaming from the face of the twelve-year-old son of an ex-prostitute who put him in charge of the garden. Or the envy of neighbours - I put down a garden and the next year two or three neighbours will call for theirs. We're strictly word of mouth. I wouldn't know how well it was working otherwise. There's never been a shortage of recipients, only a shortage of money, time and energy.
The original idea was the diaspora of the perpetual garden, a way to reverse what is so celebrated now, the deprivation of the many for the gain of the few. Too ambitious a thought. The free market/welfare system victimises those unprepared for its complexities; it's too large, too pervasive to be countered by something so small as a garden, extended metaphor or no. Still, the notion contains the whole cycle of life, incorporating use of local materials (dairy and racetrack manures, construction subsoil, compost, surplus seed), reducing use of fossil fuels, reconnecting people with life - thus serving all.
Everything necessary is already in place: parks departments have tractors, trucks, working space, and greenhouses, much of the time underused; thousands of people desire to be of service to their neighbours, workers could be recruited from extension agents and agricultural programmes. All we have to do is put it together and get it paid for. One announcement on TV and there would be no end to the requests for gardens. People in need want all the help they can get. They will be the ones, and are the ones, who quiet the neighbourhood. They will endure and will invite peace from others.
It's taken me seven years to get the project into the black, and it couldn't have happened without the goodwill and generous hearts of my wife and friends. We lift ourselves. Accolades go to the foundations and trusts that have sponsored and believed in the work. They call it charity, but it is simply service, a providence that can even be employed by the recipients, as shown by several older women who wanted - and got - double or triple gardens so they could provide vegetables for the entire neighbourhood.
'Don't you think trying to lift the weight of suffering by one micron is real?'
They ask me why I do this, and I say it needs to be done. Don't you need a vegetable garden, one you can get to, one you can use without too much physical effort to maintain? There, now you've got one, good luck, happy to do it. Or, once, when I was tired and being interviewed, the young reporter asked 'Why?' and I said 'I'm out to change the world.' And when she asked, 'what do you do in real life?' my tact left me, and I replied, 'Don't you think giving away gardens is real life? Don't you think trying to lift the weight of suffering by one micron is real?' To affirm the good in you, in life; the Tao speaks of neighbours who do not tread on each other, but live their lives in quiet wonder, grow old and die. And the way to affirm the good life is to deliver it. If such an act challenges the men on the corner, good; shovels are easy to come by.
What is bothersome is not that giving away gardens is so wonderful, but that it is so rare.
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