The pandemic year has had at least one silver lining: the upswing in gardening and greater engagement with the outside world.
According to some estimates, 16 million new gardeners took up trowels last year, eager to get their hands in the dirt and make things grow. Not since the Victory Garden movement of World War II, which inspired more than 20 million people to grow their own vegetables, have so many novice gardeners gotten into the act.
In an effort to seize this remarkable moment, LaManda Joy, an ambitious master gardener, author and community gardening organizer, has launched The Great Grow Along, an online symposium for gardeners of all interests and levels of experience. Valley gardeners hoping to up their game might want to Zoom in.
Joy, who lives in Chicago, is the author of two books on food gardening. In 2009, she started a nonprofit organization in the city called the Peterson Garden Project, taking unused plots of land to set up “pop-up Victory gardens.” Its mission was “to recruit, educate and inspire everyone to grow their own food,” she said. The project now has 14 garden sites in the city.
In 2019 Joy opened the country’s first education-based garden center, City Grange. Despite the challenges of COVID-19, she and her team opened a second location in 2020 and are hoping to launch a third in 2022.
Joy said that after the Chicago Garden Show was canceled two years in a row, it occurred to her that gardeners might be motivated to do an online event instead of the more traditional in-person learning experience. She explained that because of the pandemic, City Grange did a lot of online education last year.
“Based on our customer requests and all those years teaching people food gardening, we were able to craft the program,” she said. “I thought we all might want to ‘be together’ as best we could, given the circumstances.”
The Great Grow Along will take place Friday, March 19 through Sunday, March 21. Joy has brought together some of the biggest names in gardening — lifestyle tastemakers, plant gurus and cutting-edge designers — to empower the newest gardening converts to become lifelong gardeners.
There will be more than 40 presentations by a wide range of professionals from all over the country. The 45-minute sessions are divided into six topical tracks: edible gardening, urban gardening, DIY landscaping, pollinators and plants, houseplants and dig deeper. Each track will include fundamentals as well as more specialized information.
The edible gardening track should inspire newbie vegetable gardeners with sessions on the basics of vegetable gardening.
Jasmine Jefferson of Black Girls With Gardens will talk about starting a garden from scratch, explaining everything you need to know about cultivating a successful first garden.
Wendy Kiang Spray, author of “The Chinese Kitchen Garden,” will share tips for growing and preparing Asian vegetables.
Other sessions include the best fruits and veggies for beginners, growing your own spices and starting seeds indoors. It’s definitely time for Valley gardeners to buy seeds, row markers and other vegetable gardening tools. Even in the chilly Northeast, St. Patrick’s Day marks the traditional time for planting peas.
The urban gardening track is geared to those of us with limited space for growing, perhaps just a deck or patio. These sessions will suggest ways to make the most of tight spaces by using raised beds, grow bags and containers. The track will cover the basic how-to’s and as well as creative small-space design.
For gardeners with more space to work with, DIY landscaping presentations include enhancing curb appeal and transforming lawn into garden. This track also features sessions on tree care and maximizing color with a variety of versatile shrubs, including reblooming azaleas. We can all use more color in our gardens.
The pollinators and plants track will appeal to the many Valley gardeners who are passionate about nurturing pollinators and contributing to biodiversity. These sessions include a presentation by Doug Tallamy, an acclaimed author and professor of entomology and wildlife ecology. His talk, “Nature’s Best Hope,” will address how people’s yards and the plants they choose to grow have an important role to play in preserving biodiversity and native animal populations.
David Mizejewski of the National Wildlife Federation will give a presentation, “Gardening for Wildlife, Saving Pollinators One Garden at a Time,” about creating pollinator-friendly habitats. The track will also include how-to sessions for container gardening for pollinators, garden design with pollinators in mind, and 100 plants to feed monarch butterflies.
Indoor gardeners will find lots of useful information in the sessions devoted to houseplants. In addition to fundamental house plant care, the track will offer presentations on succulents, growing under lights and herbal and pet-safe houseplants.
The final track, “Dig Deeper,” includes sessions on soil composition and xeriscaping (gardening to minimize water requirements).
The many chicken-keepers in the Valley will want to check out the session on gardening with chickens. The track also includes “Foodscaping 101,” presented by bestselling author Brie Arthur, who will discuss her signature gardening technique that identifies underused garden spaces, public and private, as places to plant fruits and vegetables alongside and among non-edible ornamentals.
Joy said a big advantage in organizing an online event is being able to bring together experts from all over the country to share their knowledge. But, she added, one of the challenges of a nationwide event is to make the presentations relevant to viewers everywhere.
“We coached presenters to focus on the fundamentals,” she said. “We asked the speakers to make their presentations ‘zone agnostic’ so they would be relevant no matter where an attendee was gardening.”
On Sunday, there will be zone-specific sessions providing information about gardening in various parts of the country.
The Great Grow Along will have a continuous “Green Room Live,” where speakers will be interviewed and provide commentary on the event. A question-and-answer session will follow each presentation. As many as six sessions will be held at the same time, but because the event is virtual, people can catch anything they missed in real time.
This is a real plus for people like me who agonize over choosing which of several simultaneous presentations to watch at live garden symposiums.
The cost for the entire three days is $29.95, definitely a bargain. For more information about the event and to register, go to greatgrowalong.com.
Joy laughingly admitted that creating a workable schedule with nationwide presenters was an “eye-bleeding” experience. She is truly zealous in her efforts to cultivate gardeners. Initially, she said, her team was targeting those 16 million new gardeners. But they found that gardeners of all levels of experience are interested in participating.
“I hope The Great Grow Along will foster a sense of unity among gardeners new and existing. I want to provide the best educational experience possible for people to become lifelong gardeners,” she said.
“We’ve lived through a hard year. Gardening brings people together and so many people want to get involved. I believe the world is a better place with more gardeners in it.”
Mickey Rathbun, an Amherst-based lawyer turned journalist, has written the “Get Growing” column since 2016.