About

History Of the Garden

In 2001, a bunch of greenhorned college students broke the soil, with glee, in the grass adjacent to the parking lot of Daugherty Palmer Commons (DPC). The community garden was a St. Mary’s Project of one Garrett Kelly. Of all things, the project was a study in Philosophy, in which Kelly searched for practical applications of all the abstract concepts of our education (see excerpts below). Kelly organized a Horticulture club, which was integrated in 2001 into Student Environmental Action Coalition (SEAC). As of 2006, a new club was entrusted to coordinate the community garden. This Community Gardening Club was initiated by one Yang-Yi Chen as Sachem, and closely joined by one Benjamin Hancock as Sagamore.

Excerpts from Kelly’s SMP essay:

Statement of Origin
I never made a clear decision to garden. During my junior year in college I was grappling with an increasing student body at the school. The increased numbers were causing housing problems for current and incoming students alike, as well as swelling class sizes. The very personal nature of education that students and professors had found in the past became difficult to achieve, and the quality of education has suffered as a result. At the same time vandalism on campus increased. I interpreted this as a sign of alienation resulting from the increased number of students.

There was one specific text I read before beginning this project that gave me a hint that a garden could be the right thing for me to do. Candide by Voltaire was assigned in my legacy class. At the time I was having a lot of trouble understanding how philosophy could be practically useful in everyday life. Reading the troubles of Candide and his search for fortune, wisdom, and peace articulated my opinion of canonized philosophers and their importance for my time. The only idea that settled the matter was that in the end what we want is to tend our gardens. The story of Candide has a pretty ineffectual philosopher, whose philosophy comes out like a wisdom placebo. Before I began this project I could feel my work in philosophy going the same way and I had to avoid that. The garden has done a lot for me, and most important to me has been the opportunity to do work I have genuinely cared about. [...]

Conclusion
[...] Gardening is successful when it is creative and cooperative. Shaping and arranging beds must be done in cooperation with the texture of the soil and the weather conditions. Plants seek a certain shape and require specific conditions for health and well being. It is the gardeners challenge to find the arrangement of plants that will best benefit their natural inclinations. This arrangement includes a responsibility to the other forms of life present in the garden. It is intuitively true that life creates more life and is a matter of observation and practice to realize the patterns playing out in the garden. Gardening as a practice puts the will of the gardener into the soil plants and other communities of life. Because of this, the personality of the gardener will be manifest in the garden. Gardening though is not done by the gardener alone. The personalities of all living things in the garden will manifest in the gardens objective existence. This is why Steiner says that in subjectivity there is the deepest objectivity.

The wisdom of the garden will be as different as all who come to it. Each participant has their own experiences to share with the garden. The shape and tone of the gardens beginning bear the marks of my enthusiasm and inexperience. The plants were too close together and there were too many of them. The care for them lacked structure, and the production was sporadic. There is truly a need in the St. Mary’s community for this garden to exist, so the community and the garden will find a way to live together. There are plenty of people among the students, more capable then my self, who have much to learn from this garden and much to teach it in return. For the entire duration of this project I have been seeking to create the community as well as the garden. By practicing intuitive gardening I see that is foolish. The garden itself is that community, nothing else could be the case.