How to Build a Garden

It’s hard not to admire a brand new garden. Freshly-built raised beds, evenly-coiled hoses and neatly stacked tools are an inspiring sight to gardeners and food enthusiasts alike. How can tomatoes not thrive when planted in raised beds out of newly-hewn wood? Don’t peas always grow better on carefully-crafted trellises? Being a FoodCorps volunteer means I’ve seen and helped out in numerous gardens this year built at nearby schools, for communities and in greenhouses.  

It would be easy to get the impression that this is the only way a garden should be; fresh, pristine and organized. But although they look inspiring, these beautiful gardens are intimidating. The cost of lumber, potting soil, tools and materials adds up, and keeping a garden site looking like new can seem an insurmountable task for a new gardener. 

This is why I am especially excited about the garden that we’ve started at the Boys & Girls Club in Lame Deer. Since I’m here for only a short time, I don’t have much access to grant money. The Club has limited funds, which means we are building this garden on the cheap- and through the wonderful generosity of the local Extension Office. 

Our garden is made out of recycled (untreated) shipping pallets we found in the backyard. There is nothing fancy about them. They are heavy, rugged and full of splinters. I've spent hours pulling rusty, bent nails from their boards. They are filled with a mix of potting soil and red clay scavenged from a nearby hillside. They are lined with landscaping cloth, cut with children’s scissors and attached with my office stapler and plundered staples. No fancy tools necessary here!

We have 30 strawberry plants growing in the pallets along with some garlic, lettuce and onions. I water them with a kitchen pot because there isn’t a working spigot outside, and no one in town sells appropriate watering cans. We’re starting tomatoes and sunflowers in used milk cartons donated by the school, as well as every feasible container I found in my house. There are marigolds growing in a coffee cup and thyme emerging from the salt shaker. Starts are crowded onto my windowsill and front porch since we have no greenhouse. We’ll fertilize with my homemade Bokashi compost and what we can afford to buy at the hardware store. 

There is nothing fancy about this garden. This setup means more work, no doubt about it. My hands are still healing from the splinters acquired from working on the pallets. My back aches at the thought of carrying that watering pot out to the plants. But all of these inefficiencies make this garden even more relevant. This is not a community where people are going to buy fresh lumber for beds, or nice hoses to water with, or bags of new soil. Gardens are pieced together out of whatever materials are available. The extra labor is worth it if it saves money and gardeners can get a couple of fresh vegetables for their efforts.

The Boys & Girls Club garden isn’t just about bringing fresh food to Lame Deer’s kids. It’s about demonstrating to this community that gardening doesn’t mean colorful pottery or shiny new shovels, smooth green hoses or sharp clippers. This garden says that gardens don’t have to be an expensive or fancy affair. The strawberries will grow just as well in the pallets as if they were in beds built by carpenters. Lettuce does just fine being watered out of the pot as long as it doesn't get flooded. Our rickety pallets probably won’t last more than two years, and the Club may not always have volunteers willing and able to carry that damn bucket of water. But if all this garden does is illustrate to Lame Deer how accessible gardening can be, than it will be effort well-spent.