Cultivating Community in a Front Yard Garden

Jun 21

When I started Tennessee Kitchen Gardens in the fall of 2020, I read many entrepreneurial handbooks about the ins and outs of starting a successful business. One important task to tick off, according to the experts, was the development of a mission statement and core values.

So I spent an afternoon with a notebook and pen and I drafted a few points about what kind of business I hoped to grow. Share my knowledge of plants. That’s one. Encourage people to understand our home in middle Tennessee. That’s two. Create beautiful garden structures that reduce the sense of overwhelm when plants feel wild. That’s three. And finally, develop a community of garden-lovers and plant geeks that would put some energy around the first three values.

I then stuck that notebook in a drawer, and though I think of “my why” quite often, Tennessee Kitchen Gardens took off, and I never crafted a perfectly-worded mission statement to paint on our truck and post on our website.

BEFORE

But then Lauren called. She and her kids had started the year before with a small metal box near the mailbox, she said, and it had become a neighborhood focal point. This year, Lauren wanted to take the garden to the next level. There was no HOA, no reason to hide the garden in the backyard. The whole neighborhood was eager to see the flowers sprouting, the tomatoes turning red. They loved their summer walks around the block and the chit chat about pepper varieties. This garden was all about community.

We got started with the design: a front yard garden. Beautiful, intentional, structured but wild. Accessible by the neighborhood, but quaint and special for any lone person who stopped by to visit.

The most important part of Lauren’s garden (besides the plants of course) was the pathway. We wanted to bring people into the garden. We wanted the neighbors to slow down, smell the basil, observe a bug, and comment on the tiny cucumber that might be taking shape. The garden spot was a limited to a small 10X12 ft area near the driveway, so we needed to use the space wisely, but the rolling slope of the yard helped us create a flagstone path that meandered from the street, under a tomato arch, and out to the driveway. Along the mailbox, we edged in a wildflower bed that was already popping with last years scattered seeds: cosmos, sunflowers, zinnias and larkspur. Finally, we created a perch— a large fieldstone boulder served to both retain the gravel on the hillside and provide a seat to a pausing gardener.

When the garden installation was complete, Abi and I spent an evening at Lauren’s to plant the beds with tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, kale, herbs and flowers. The planting session felt like a community event— like the afternoon stop at the pub or pizza shop. Every single car that passed stopped to chat! Everyone wanted to know what we were planting; some told stories about their garden experience, some asked questions about the varieties we like, the soil we mix, and how on earth would we get the tomatoes on those arches?