If you are interested in working on community garden projects, or purchasing and tending a plot in a community garden in the East Madison area, please use this calendar below to find locations and times of others working in the City and to find out how to get involved!
An Official “Grand Gardens” Poem
From this Ground
by Wendy Buffington
Four live oaks climb the sky.
Limbs rise from this ground,
reach to Earth’s points–
east, west, north, south.
Nearby, the Pithlachascotee’s mouth
opens to the Gulf, winds past
this patch of grass. Though unseen
from here, its breath brushes our cheeks,
rustles the leaves of the live oaks.
We all leave our mark–Calusa,
Seminole, African, Spaniard, and Anglo–
in shell mounds on river banks,
in graves, bones, stories painted in caves,
the golden waves of grain
planted in rows by long-gone hands.
We are grains of sand. Today
we affirm our place in history–
caretakers of Earth’s star-born mystery.
We offer these brick-lined beds, pledge
to tend tender snow pea pods,
silk-throated loquat blossoms,
frilly carrot greens, the sweet orange root.
Our reward will be a harvest
of grapes and sweet potatoes, eggplant
and passion fruit, tomatoes full red on the vine.
Join your hands with mine. Dig joyfully
in this worm-rich dirt, as we move through time
one with the Earth, our human tribe.
Wendy Buffington is the official poet of the Grand Gardens