The concept of social gardening

ON GARDENING

Showy Stonecrop (Sedum spectabile ‘Autumn Joy’) This herbaceous perennial grows from a tuber root rhizome, and develops simple, toothed leaves on erect, unbranched stems. From summer until frost, it creates star-shaped pink flowers in flat cymes about 6 inches across. In the many-flowered cymose inflorescence (also known as determinate inflorescence), each floral axis terminates in a single flower. The generic name’s synonym is Hylotelephium, and the specific epithet spectabile means “showy.” Native to China and Korea, and a member of the Stonecrop plant family (Crassulaceae). PHOTOS COURTESY TOM KARWIN

Bolivian Fuchsia Fucshia boliviana ‘Alba’) This evergreen shrub grows in part-shade up to 15 feet tall and can be controlled with seasonal hard pruning. In late summer and autumn it creates drooping corymbs with white tubes and scarlet petals. The species’ flowers have red tubes and scarlet petals. After flowering, it bears small red-purple, edible fruit 10-26 millimeters long. Propagation is by seed or cuttings. Cuttings at the start of the growing season grow readily! Native to southern Peru, Bolivia, and northern Argentina and a member of the Evening Primrose plant family (Onagraceae)

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Gardeners often work alone, focusing on the multiple tasks of this activity, planning improvements, appreciating natural processes, benefitting from physical exercise, and perhaps meditating about a range of thoughts.

Sole gardening can be a rewarding activity, but gardening also can involve others. Let’s consider the various forms of gardening as a social activity.

Today’s photo gallery, a complement to this column’s topic, features a few of the plants now blooming in my garden. Gardeners will recognize that the fall season will begin officially in two days, while plants follow their natural cycles and ignore the calendar.

We will begin our discussion of social gardening by exploring the concept, followed by providing a brief overview of opportunities to pursue social gardening in the local community.

First, let’s distinguish gardening as a social activity and garden volunteering. Volunteer work means doing something without being paid. There are many garden-related businesses, some of which include hands-on gardening.

Examples of hands-on gardening include landscapers, garden maintainers and agriculturists, as well as related specialties such as arborists, hybridizers, propagators and others. People in hands-on gardening businesses hopefully enjoy their work, which can also include social aspects.

Gardening as a purely social activity includes all forms of hands-on gardening without pay. Earning money can be — and should be — rewarding and satisfying, but social gardening has other forms of reward.

The rewards of hands-on social gardening include all the gains from working alone, as noted above, plus drawing on other gardeners’ knowledge and experience, exchanging plants, helping another gardener accomplish his or her goals, and contributing to the local community’s horticultural or natural world.Horticulture is the science and art of growing fruits, vegetables, flowers or ornamental plants, and hands-on gardening in the natural world involves protecting the environment. Our definition of social gardening includes both categories.

Garden societies

Local garden societies offer good opportunities for learning from other gardeners and offering your knowledge, skills and energy to people interested in the garden society’s orientation. Garden societies might emphasize a specific plant genus or gardening in general.

Garden societies’ meetings provide occasions for gardeners to meet friends, exchange ideas, manage the society’s operations, and appreciate a presentation by a society member or a visiting specialist.

Garden society activities could include hands-on gardening, including plant exchanges, tours of members’ gardens, flower shows, and plant propagation and sales.

A future column will include a survey of garden societies in the Monterey Bay area and references to regional or national societies.

Social gardening in the community

The local region includes numerous volunteer organizations, many with substantial educational, community and environmental values. The Volunteer Center of Santa Cruz County offers many programs of value, for example. We encourage readers wishing to enrich the community and their own growth to explore the range of volunteering options.

An online information resource is Environteers (environteers.org), founded by Andy Carman to offer environmental volunteer opportunities in Santa Cruz County.

The current list of opportunities includes 29 environment-oriented organizations, including at least eight that target our focus on local opportunities for hands-on social gardening:

• Santa Cruz County Chapter, California Native Plant Society

• Common Roots Farm

• Farm Discovery at Live Earth

• Groundswell Coastal Ecology

• Homeless Garden Project

• Life Lab

• UCSC Arboretum

Interested readers could learn about these and other groups by clicking on the links provided on the Environteers website.

One example close to my experience is the UCSC Arboretum (arboretum.ucsc.edu), which posts this information about its volunteer opportunities:

“The UC Santa Cruz Arboretum & Botanic Garden relies on 100+ volunteers year-round to keep this place growing! By volunteering, you become part of a community that directly supports the Arboretum’s mission: to connect people with plants. No matter what group you work with, you will learn by working side by side with home gardeners, experienced and amateur naturalists, active and retired professionals, as well as people who are just beginning to explore the world of plants.”

The website describes several volunteer opportunities, including hands-on gardening, and invites interested persons to complete a Volunteer Application.

Organizations that offer opportunities to volunteer time and energy to their missions also invite financial contributions to their work. You could do both!

Enjoy your garden.

Tom Karwin is a past president of Friends of the UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and the Monterey Bay Iris Society, a past president and Lifetime Member of the Monterey Bay Area Cactus & Succulent Society, and a Lifetime UC Master Gardener (Certified 1999-2009). He is now a board member of the Santa Cruz Hostel Society, and active with the Pacific Horticultural Society. To view photos from his garden, https://www.facebook.com/ongardeningcom-566511 763375123/ . For garden coaching info and an archive of On Gardening columns, visit ongardening.com for earlier columns or visit www.santacruzsentinel.com/ and search for “Karwin” for more recent columns. Email comments or questions to gardening@karwin.com.