An Urban Garden’s Story
Mar 30th, 2010 by Hazel
Today’s guest post is for all those passionate (or aspiring) urban gardeners (and, well, of course… all those interested in urban gardening)! LaManda Joy, a Chicago vegetable gardener and avid blogger, brings us her tale of creating a fruitful vegetable garden right in Chicago! Her blog, theyarden.com, chronicles the joys and challenges of urban gardening and reflects the skills and passion of its veteran creator.
Follow LaManda Joy on Twitter @TheYarden and at Facebook.com/TheYarden.
In 2006, after seven very long and gardenless years, my husband woke up one February morning and said, “Let’s go look at houses!” What he really meant was “Let’s go look at yards!”
Finding a sunny yard that isn’t shaded with 100-year-old trees or an apartment complex looking down on it is a bit of a trick in Chicago. We thought we’d seen all the neighborhoods – and were sadly disappointed – when we stumbled upon a secret nook in Chicago’s 40th Ward.
Long story short… we ended up “buying a yard with a house attached to it” with the sole, myopic purpose of putting in an amazing vegetable garden where we could grow heirloom vegetables, entertain and develop a community of neighbors and friends.
We wanted to install a privacy fence and a deck area over the concrete slab in the back as well as a “boardwalk” to cover an existing, but unsightly, concrete path from the front gate to the concrete slab. We also knew we wanted some “climbing area” for wisteria and sweet autumn clematis…
As you will see here we solved the “climbing area” issue with a pergola. The wisteria is barely visible behind the red chair – it is much more robust three seasons later…
This also created a nice sitting area that is the bridge from the “deck” to the garden… you will notice we bought some very inexpensive burlap and wove it between the slats of the pergola to create a shade canopy (you can see the overlap hanging down on the left side). This worked out to be a great solution to this sunny spot and a favorite sitting area for my husband. As you can see, I prefer the hammock
We liked the pergola so much we ended up putting a matching one by the front garden gate.
This pergola, too, has ended up being a lot of fun! We use the supports to train beans or vines. One year we grew Chinese yardlong beans up and over the pergola so you had to walk through them like the long rags in a carwash. We called it the “snack and slap” and laughed a lot whenever we had to walk the beany gauntlet.
Along with the raised beds, which you see partially in the photo above, we also put in a trellis for more vertical growing space and to block the view of a work area with a very large telephone pole (ah the joys of urban living!)
All of the construction was done with untreated cedar. It smelled great and sometimes still does on a very warm day. However, knowing then what I know now, I would have chosen a recycled wood-like material to avoid having to stain. But, ces’t la vie… perhaps that’s a solution for The Yarden 2.0 – if we can ever find a yard like this again in Chicago!
ABOUT LaMANDA JOY
Awarded honorable mention in Mayor Daley’s Landscape Competition for 2009, LaManda Joy’s 1,700 square foot, heirloom organic garden in Chicago’s 40th Ward is a laboratory and teaching ground for friends and neighbors. LaManda speaks and writes about diverse aspects of a self-sufficient life in the city, Chicago WW2 Victory Gardens, canning and other related topics.
