Daily Sun Gardening Etcetera 4/16/11

Roots and branches: Connecting our community through our gardens

As spring dithers toward Flagstaff in its customary haphazard fashion, no doubt your garden has begun to show signs of life again. Daffodils sprout downtown, neighborhood trees bear buds, and brave little shoots of green appear in the semi-wild landscapes of the exurbs. Birds are calling, chipmunks are stirring, and even a few lizards are basking briefly in the sun.

Another sure sign of spring is the Arizona Native Plant Society's open invitation to enter the Flagstaff Garden Competition and Tour. This annual event is an opportunity for local gardeners to celebrate the best in ourselves -- our love of living things, our creativity, and our determined pursuit of beauty and bounty.

These are trying times for all of us with more than enough issues and stresses to keep us at odds with one another. Preparing and sharing our gardens brings us together, encouraging friendliness and harmony in our neighborhoods and throughout greater Flagstaff. The event is billed as a "competition," but it has become more of a collaboration, a community-wide celebration of how dreams and possibilities become inspiring realities through effort, experience and heart. The high point of the contest is a self-guided tour that includes all the gardens entered in the contest. Folks have the chance to meet each other, tell stories and swap gardening advice. Old friendships are renewed and new ones begun, based literally on our common ground.
There are three categories for entries: Best Edible Landscape (vegetables, herbs, other edibles), Best Native Plant Garden (mostly native plants) and Best Special Interest Garden (gardens with a theme such as memorial gardens, child-friendly gardens, traditional culture gardens, etc.) Judges will look for appropriate adaptations to each garden's specific microclimate as well as for water conservation strategies, pollinator-friendly planting and practices, hardscaping and paths, and features such as ponds and sculptures. Both Native Plant and Special Interest gardens should be well-established in order to demonstrate that they can survive Flagstaff's climate year-round.

Considering Flagstaff's challenging climate, creating an "Edible Landscape" here may seem like a fool's errand. Yet people have grown food here as far back as AD 600. Growing conditions have varied over those 14 centuries just as they still vary wildly from year to year. It was probably a prolonged drought in the 13th century that led to a 600-year halt in local farming. Nevertheless settlers in the 1800s grew much of their food both on isolated homesteads and in the fertile floodplain of the Rio de Flag.

Determined gardeners continue to raise food throughout the Flagstaff area from the potato plots of Fort Valley to the bean fields of Doney Park. Success has come from patient observation of conditions at their own particular site, careful experimentation and the trading of advice, cuttings and seeds. Today, we have it even easier with the availability of many hardy vegetable varieties, drip irrigation systems, and season-extenders such as Walls O'Water.

It's actually native plant gardens that are a relatively modern idea in the Flagstaff area. For inspiration and encouragement, visit the colorful display of native flowering plants produced by Dorothy Lamm at the main branch of the Flagstaff Public Library during April, or during May at the east side library on Fourth Street. From July 1 to Aug. 15, a different display about the contest created by Tim and Linda Rodriquez will be on view at the main library.

The deadline to enter the contest is July 15. Gardeners will show their gardens to the judges during the weekend of July 23 and 24. On Aug. 10, there will be an open preview of all the gardens at the annual Extravaganza, a free evening event that includes a slideshow and awards ceremony. Our ever-generous sponsors who provide awards for the Extravaganza include the Arboretum at Flagstaff, Flagstaff Native Plant and Seed and Warner's Nursery. Also at the Extravaganza, maps for the Aug. 14 public tour will be available for $5.

For questions or to enter the contest, please e-mail susan@susanlamb.net with "Garden Contest" in the subject line. If email is not available to you, please phone Dorothy at (928) 779-7296.

Susan Lamb is a local writer and naturalist (www.susanlamb.net). Dana Prom Smith is the coordinating editor of Gardening Etcetera. He blogs at http://highcountrygardener.blogspot.com and can be contacted at stpauls@npgcable.com.
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