A Message from Vidya Tikku, General Manager The Trustees Mobile Farmers Market -- part of our Boston food-access program -- began its third season this May. The Mobile Market brings fresh, organic vegetables, fruit, meat, eggs, cheese, milk and other farm products to Boston neighborhoods. Most of our customers use food stamps, which means they are automatically enrolled in Massachusetts Healthy Incentives Program (HIP). Through HIP, our customers can earn an extra $40 to $80 per month to spend at farmers markets.  In 2018, its second season, the Mobile Market grew exponentially. We reached several times more customers than we did the year before, and our sales quadrupled. We hope to continue that growth in 2019. This year, we began operations a month earlier than we did last year. In addition, we've added more weekly stops, and the range of fruits and vegetables available to our customers will be more diverse than ever before.  The Trustees Mobile Farmers Market season runs through December 2019. To find our schedule and more information about us, click here. The South End Garden Tour is just around the corner! – Peter Bowne, Engagement Manager for South End & Lower Roxbury Please join us on Saturday, June 15th for this annual neighborhood exploration through the alleys of the South End to private gardens open on the day of the Tour only! Running from 10 AM - 4 PM and starting at the South End branch of the Boston Public Library, this year’s tour concentrates on the area from Rutland Square to Northampton Street between the Southwest Corridor Park and Tremont Street. In addition to the private back yard gardens, this year there are two amazing roof deck gardens. Wear your comfy shoes and get ready to climb some stairs! Tickets are $24/$28 (member/nonmember) in advance and $28/$35 on the day of the Tour.  Save money and buy your tickets online in advance at thetrustees.org/SEGT. Volunteer for two hours and receive a free ticket! For more info: Peter at 617.869.6720 or pbowne@... Photo credit: Carl Kraenzel     Garden Tips: What to Plant Now – Michelle de Lima, Engagement Manager Did you get a slow start in the garden, or still have spaces to fill? It's not too late! Some of the tasty crops you still have time to get in the ground are: Seeding: cucumbers, winter squash, summer squash, zucchini, melons, basil, lettuce mix, carrots, beets, radishes, cilantro, dill Transplanting: tomatoes (look for ones with 80 or fewer days to maturity), sweet and hot peppers, eggplant, tomatillos, squashes and cucumbers, annual and perennial herbs Beyond planting, June is a great time to stay on top of other garden tasks: Regular morning watering of new seeds and seedlings Occasional fertilizing of demanding crops like tomatoes and peppers Weeding—get them while they’re small! Trellising tomatoes, cucumbers, and other vining crops Make sure to mulch! It will keep your soil healthy, moist, and weed-free   Stewardship Updates – Jeremy Dick, Stewardship Manager May is a busy month for the stewardship team, full of routine maintenance like mowing and perennial border care, leading volunteer projects, and plant sales. Group volunteer projects this month included Levi Strauss at Nightingale Community Garden, Breckinridge Capital at Worcester Community Garden, and two days with Norfolk Aggie high school students, part of larger internship program with a number of Trustees properties. We also worked with individual volunteers on greenhouse work and property maintenance at City Natives.  Plant sales this spring were incredibly successful due to more open retail hours, better outreach, and a big effort to organize and label all stock. Throughout May, we increased our plant sale revenue by more than 50%, and all those funds directly support our community garden operations. Many thanks to all who made it out to the nursery.   Blue Cross Workplace Community Gardens – Annabel Rabiyah, Blue Cross Garden Coordinator and BCG Program Assistant I’ve been working as a grower and educator in Boston for the last 5 years, and you might also find me hosting restaurant events throughout the city through Awafi Boston. I’m excited to support community gardeners at Blue Cross Blue Shield offices in Quincy and Hingham this season and to continue working in my Boston community to coordinate and lead programming in the gardens.  At this point the Blue Cross gardens are almost fully planted, with greens, tomatoes, peppers, squash and more. We are experimenting with different cucumber trellis designs and brought in some native perennial berry plants--which hopefully will feed gardeners, and not just the birds! Along the Hingham garden's fence, we planted some native honeysuckle, which will hopefully creep up and cover the back wall of the garden.  This rainy season was a challenge for Quincy gardeners, whose plots are right along the Neponset marshlands and have been drowning in the nonstop spring rains. Inspired by local no-till farmers working in wetter soils, we decided to dig trenches and make semi-permanent raised beds in the plots. The water collects in the furrows, which were covered with wood chips, and the beds were piled high enough to stay try. So far, the results have been really impressive!   Upcoming Events Build Healthy Soil & Compost Saturday, June 8 | 11AM-12:30PM  Lenox & Kendall Community Garden | Tremont Street, Roxbury  South End Garden Tour  Saturday, June 15 | 10AM-4PM  South End Branch of the Boston Public Library  Summer Solstice Celebration  Friday, June 21 | 6-9PM  Leland Cooperative Herb Garden | 4 Leland Street, JP  Summer Pruning  Saturday, June 22 | 10-11:30AM  Berkeley Community Garden | 500 Tremont Street, South End  Know Your Weeds  Sunday, June 23 | 11AM-12:30PM  Minton Stable Community Garden | 100 Williams Street, JP  Wild Plant Medicine  Wednesday, July 10 | 6-7:30PM  Kittredge Green | 1 Linwood Street, Roxbury  Jamaica Plain Garden Tour  Saturday, July 20 | 9AM-2PM  J.P. Licks | 659 Centre Street, JP Progress Report Thanks so much to all who are supporting the gardens through Trustees membership! We hope you get out and enjoy some great properties and programs this summer!   | Forward to a Friend | Visit our website 200 High Street, 4th floor, Boston, MA 02110 | tel: 978.921.1944 Trustees © 2019 All rights reserved.

 

The Trustees Boston Community Gardens staff is pleased to offer regular retail hours at City Natives nursery this spring! At City Natives, we grow and sell plants native to the eastern United States and Canada, offering a wide selection of native plants, trees, and shrubs well-suited to Boston’s urban and suburban gardens. In the spring and autumn, we also offer an array of heirloom and hybrid vegetable and herb seedlings, including medicinal herbs and compact and disease-resistant vegetable varieties. Our plants are sustainably grown and not treated with pesticides.

 

Stock lists:
http://bit.ly/citynativesannuals2019
http://bit.ly/citynativesperennial2019

 

City Natives is located at 30 Edgewater Drive in Mattapan. Street parking is available on Edgewater Drive and Mattapan Square bus and trolley lines are a very short walk away.

 

Retail hours:
Tuesdays from 9AM-2PM (April, May, June, July, September) 
Thursdays from 4-7PM (April, May, June, September) 
Saturdays from 8-11:30AM (April, May)

Staff knowledgeable about both native plants and vegetable varieties may not be present at all sales hours, so if you need consultation, please contact citynatives@... in advance for best service. 

In addition, we are pleased to announce the annual spring sales events;

May 18 at City Natives: https://www.facebook.com/events/1156982607815116/

May 19 at the Berkeley Community Gardens: https://www.facebook.com/events/383757952477487/

 

 

A Message from Vidya Tikku, General Manager Boston community gardeners welcomed spring with a strong showing at our 44th Annual Gardeners’ Gathering last month held at Northeastern University. Nearly five hundred of us gathered to join Mayor Walsh in celebrating our gardeners and recognizing our outstanding achievers of the year. Mayor Walsh was joined by Chief Sheila Dillon, who has provided much- needed access to vacant land and funds for our community gardens through the Department of Neighborhood Development, and Chief Chris Cook who truly champions and brings resources, funding, programs, compost and so much more to our gardens. Aziz Dekhan, who was our guest speaker this year, is the Executive Director of the New York City Community Garden Coalition. In his address, he shared the successes and challenges faced by community gardens in New York, and the role of community gardens in climate change mitigation through real measurements and green infrastructure. I got to spend the day before the Gathering showing Aziz around our community gardens and introducing him to partner organizations like the Food Project and the Urban Farming Institute. Aziz and I hope to continue our collaboration across the two cities, sharing resources, innovative ideas, and potentially even funding opportunities.   I want to thank every workshop presenter and volunteer, sponsors Herbstalk, Fenway Victory Gardens, The New Garden Society, Agricultural Hall, Russell's Garden Center, and Harvard Alpaca Ranch; exhibitors ReVision Urban Farm, NOFA/Mass, Friends of the Boston Schoolyards, Emerald Necklace Conservancy, COGdesign, City Soil, CitySprouts, City Compost, Bootstrap Compost, and Boston Food Forest Coalition.  Finally, it’s never too early to plan for our 45th Gardeners’ Gathering! If you have suggestions or ideas on potential guest speakers, please reach out to me at vtikku@.... Congratulations to all of the well-deserving winners of the 17th Annual Community Gardening awards! Hall of Fame Gardener Willie Brown III of the Ed Cooper Community Garden in Roxbury Hall of Fame Garden Rutland Washington Community Garden in the South End Most Valuable Gardener Althea Wagman-Bolster of West Springfield Community Garden in the South End Rookie Garden of the Year Windermere Community Garden in Dorchester. It was wonderful to honor the CPA grant winners as well; thanks to CPA Director Christine Poff for championing support for our green open spaces.  Thanks to Mark Gardner for the photos! What's Blooming at City Natives – Jordan Takvorian, Steward With a few heavy rainstorms in our wake and warm sunny days becoming the norm, the pots at City Natives are coming to life. The standard springfavorites like Solomon’s seal, bloodroot, nodding onion, and wild columbine are growing rapidly and will be blooming in no time at all. Another charming spring blooming flower is Penstemon. When planted in mass, the white and pink flowers of Penstemon sway in the wind and serve as a siren call to various bees and hummingbirds. Baptisia is another spring favorite with tall spikes of white or purple flowers that eventually morph into hardened seedpods that small children love to break off and shake like a rattle. If you’re looking for something with a bit more heft, feast your eyes upon the Brandywine Viburnum. Aromatic white flowers this spring will yield pink to purple berries this summer and attractive maroon foliage in the fall; truly a treat for all seasons. For those looking to get their summer blooming plants in the ground this spring we have an ever-expanding selection. Shrubs like Clethra offer myriad pink or white sweetly fragrant flowers throughout July and August. Perennials such as lance-leaf Coreopsis or Ratibida coneflower offer showy yellow blooms throughout the summer that are excellent as cut flowers or can be left in the garden to attract butterflies and other pollinators. City Natives sales hours: Tuesdays 9AM – 2PM (April - July)  Thursdays 4PM – 7PM (April – June)  Saturdays 8AM – 11:30AM (April – May)  Full plant lists: Annuals > Perennials >     Spring Gardening Tips: Peas – Michelle de Lima, Engagement Manager This favorite early crop can give you tons of tasty pods to snack on if you get the timing and conditions right! Here are my suggestions: Peas don’t like the heat, so plant before the end of April to give them time to mature before summer really gets going If you’re short on time or space, consider a dwarf snap pea variety like Sugar Ann—your harvest will be a bit smaller, but it’ll be earlier too, and you can forgo the trellis Provide a tall (5-6 ft.), strong structure if growing full-sized vines—they’re surprisingly vigorous and heavy If you miss the spring window, you can try again in late summer for a fall harvest Whether or not your peas mature, you can enjoy the shoots in salads and stir fries Repurpose trellises for cucumbers after peas are done Stewardship Updates – Jeremy Dick, Stewardship Manager In addition to routine maintenance, in March stewardship focused on pruning, getting City Natives nursery up and running, and getting water to the gardens. Fruit tree pruning work included teaming up with volunteer Eric Sargent and professional Ben Crouch to work with gardeners on their own trees at The Southwest Corridor Community Farm and the Leland Cooperative Garden in Jamaica Plain. Routine canopy pruning was done at the Berkeley Community Garden and Savin & Maywood Community Garden, as well as hazard tree removal at Savin & Maywood CG and the Paul Gore & Beecher Community Garden. All three projects were completed by contractor Tree Tech, Inc. Timber generated via these projects has been processed for mushroom logs and firewood, and will be distributed to volunteers and neighbors for use. The greenhouse at City Natives was prepared for the season, including activating the compost heater and rain water irrigation systems.  To end the month, staff coordinated with Boston Water and Sewer Commission to install meters and activate water service to the community gardens. Garden Tour Volunteers Needed We need YOU to make our key community garden fundraisers happen! The South End & JP Garden Tours simply can’t happen without a large crew of volunteers. Plus, volunteers can be paired with a friend and get to see the tour for free! Sign up for the South End Garden Tour hereand the JP Garden Tour here, or reach out to Peter or Michelle with questions:pbowne@... and mdelima@... Upcoming Events Build Healthy Soil  Wednesday, April 24 | 6PM-7PM  Woolson Community Garden | 44 Woolson Street, Mattapan  High Yield Gardening  Saturday, April 27 | 11AM-12:30PM  Minton Stable Community Garden | 110 Williams Street, JP  Spring Perennial Divide  Sunday, May 5 | 10AM-1PM  Southwest Corridor Community Farm | 57 Lamartine Street, JP  Wild Edibles to Know and Grow with Russ Cohen  Thursday, May 9 | 6:30-8PM  City Natives | 30 Edgewater Drive, Mattapan  Small-Space Gardens  Wednesday, May 15 | 6:00-7:30PM  Eagle Hill Community Garden | 341 Border Street, East Boston  City Natives Plant Sale  Saturday, May 18 | 10AM-2PM  City Natives | 30 Edgewater Drive, Mattapan  South End Plant Sale  Sunday, May 19 | 10AM-2PM  Berkeley Community Garden | 500 Tremont Street, South End Year-End Metrics Thanks for helping us achieve our goals! We’ll start fresh next month for the new fiscal year. To purchase a membership to support the gardens or report your garden’s volunteer hours, please email jdick@... or mdelima@.... Thank you!    View this message on our website.  Visit our website 200 High Street, 4th floor, Boston, MA 02110 | tel: 978.921.1944 Trustees © 2019 All rights reserved.

 

Hi all,

Garden Lottery - NEXT WEEKEND- March 23 - 8AM - 10 AM

It looks like we will have 9 spots to put into Lottery.  Help is needed to get new members signed up and help get them all set for spring.  We need at least one person to translate.

everyone gets credited their community hours when you help.  

We look forward to seeing you

The Garden Leadership 

Berkeley Community Gardens
info@...
www.berkeleygardens.org
Post your pictures:  FACEBOOK/Berkeley Gardens

On Mar 10, 2019, at 10:43 AM, David Herman <djherm@...> wrote:

Hi- is it allowed to put a beehive in garden for raising bees? There are many online offerings that make it easy nowadays and they provide the correct non-aggressive, garden beneficial bees.
thanks,
dave