STILES AFRICAN AMERICAN HERITAGE CENTER
Saturday Afternoon Tea
Plant Exchange & Mother’s Day Cards honoring
Madam CJ Walker’s contributions to the beauty industry
During the 2nd spring tea of the year, the Front Range Chapter of Wild Ones brought donations of native plants and helped us plant them in the ‘hell strip’ around the Stiles African American Heritage Center. We agreed on the approach of responding to the space, working with the existing plants & filling in the open ground. The weed cloth removal effectively rid the garden of the most aggressive weeds, pulling them out of the compacted clay by their roots. Thirty years of decomposed fallen leaves interspersed with the pea gravel that was used to hold down the weed cloth was an effective medium to amend the soil. While there are plants that we will replace, like the Russian Sage, we felt it was best to leave it as a place holder until we diversified our collection of plants to fill the spaces. We plan to steadily dig it out and share with neighbors, inviting them to grow something for pollinators. We look forward to the day we can share native seeds and thinnings as freely.
When we think of ‘community garden’, we envision plant people coming together to tend the garden in community. We feel that it is important there is no “Master Plan’ so that folks who are interested in the project may actively engage in diversifying the plant population & freely harvesting the fruits and seeds produced to grow in their own spheres. We also like respecting the plants themselves. Plants express mobility in a surprising range of ways, considering they are rooted organisms. We intend to allow spaces for the plants to grow as they wish and walk around the garden as they will. When some become too aggressive, we pass them on to neighbors along with hints on how to grow them.
Visit Front Range Wild Ones for resources on planting native
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