Sections
Neighborhoods
Features
Follow Us
NHI Newsletter
Legal Notices
Some Favorite Sites
- 5 Snacks After 10
- Abram Katz
- African independent
- At Risk for HD
- Back To Basics
- barista
- Branford Eagle
- Business NH
- Conn Art Scene
- Cornwall-On-Hudson
- Crosscut
- CT Business Litig
- CT Capitol Report
- CT Energy Blog
- CT Enviro Headlines
- CT Green Scene
- CT Law Tribune
- CT Local Politics
- CT Mirror
- CT News Junkie
- CT Watchdog
- CTV
- Design New Haven
- Gotham Gazette
- Hartford Guardian
- Josiah Brown
- Karman Turn
- La Voz Hispana
- Laurel Club
- Len's Lens
- Magrisso Forte
- Media Attache
- Media Nation
- Medical Intelligence
- Middletown Eye
- MinnPost
- My Left Nutmeg
- NBC Connecticut
- NH Advocate
- NH Register
- NH Review of Books
- NH Youth Map
- Northampton Media
- OneWorld
- Only In Bridgeport
- Oral History Project
- Reddit NH
- Road To Greenness
- Saved By Design
- See Click Fix
- Smartpill Design
- Specials In NH
- St. Louis Beacon
- Taste Of NH
- Tom Ficklin
- Valley Independent Sentinel
- Voice of SD
- VT Digger
- WFSB-TV
- WPKN Today
- WTNH
- Yale Daily News
- YourCT
Government/ Community Links
- Advocate Calendar
- Agency on Aging
- Animal Shelter Volunteers
- Arte Inc.
- Arts Council
- Beth El Keser Israel
- Bike New Haven
- Chamber of Commerce
- Children's Museum
- City of New Haven
- CitySeed
- Citywide Youth
- Community Loan Fund
- Community Mediation
- ConnCAN
- Creative Arts Workshop
- CT BAEO
- CT Tech Council
- Dariba Referrals
- Data Haven
- Elm City Cycling
- Elmseed
- Empower NH
- Friends Of Wooster Sq.
- GAVA
- Habitat For Humanity
- Info New Haven
- IRIS
- Jazz Haven
- Jewish Federation
- Job Finder
- Junta
- Labor History
- LEAP
- Legal Aid Network
- Literacy Coalition
- Magrisso Forte
- Mary Wade
- Music Haven
- New Haven 828
- New Haven Chorale
- New Haven Reads
- New Life Corp.
- NH Bulletin
- NH Land Trust
- NH/Leon Sister City
- NHS
- Orchestra NE
- PAR
- Parents Available to Help
- Pat Dillon
- Peace News
- PechaKucha
- Planned Parenthood
- Police
- Promoting Enduring Peace
- Public Allies CT
- Public Library
- Public Schools
- Public Works
- Rainbow Girls
- Register Calendar
- REX
- ROOF
- SAMA
- SCSU Events
- Share Our Voices
- Shubert
- Solar Youth
- Soul-O-Ettes
- Squash Haven
- United Way
- Urban Design League
- Urban Resources Initiative
- Ward 25 Blog
- Ward 26 Blog
- Westville Chabad
- Westville Renaissance
- Westville Synagogue
- Workforce Alliance
- Yale Events
- Yeshiva NH Shul
- Yeshiva Of NH
- Youth Continuum
Visiting Hands Help Chinese Gardens Bloom
by Allan Appel | Aug 25, 2010 3:19 pm
(6) Comments | Commenting has expired | E-mail the Author
Posted to: East Rock, Gardener Of The Week
They arrived in New Haven only in April. They will return to their home in Luzhou before the end of the year. And yet the garden where they are growing “ghua” or melon and enough other Chinese vegetables to feed several soccer teams is as big as a soccer field, and more beautiful.
Meet Xiaoping Li (left in photo) and Yonggui Diao, part of a crew of perhaps a dozen largely Chinese people of grandparently age who are temporary tenders of one of the New Haven’s most remarkable gardens.
The couple came from their home in Luzhou, a city of some five million people in Sichuan Province, to New Haven this spring to visit and help their son, a post-doctoral student in biology at Yale, tend his 2-year-old child.
Through an unwritten arrangement, along with the apartment they moved into came the responsibility from those who left to tend a section of the garden.
They obtained some seeds, planted them and joined a team of what they described as about five or six families adding up to 10 or 12 people who tend both designated plots as well as the garden as a whole.
The garden is comprised of two rectangular plots of cabbage, peppers, cucumbers, tomatoes, Chinese beans, pumpkins and much else growing in rustic profusion in a grid of wild-looking twig-made frames on Division Street between Prospect and Mansfield.
The frames are called “jiazi,” Li said through a translator. They are made from the twigs and small branches fallen from the trees shading the garden.
From them hang pretty much everything that is growing in wild profusion: “huaghua” or cucumber and “kooghua,” a bitter melon (pictured).
“Ghua” in Chinese means melon. The north and eastern borders of the plot sprout splendid jiazi growing “sighua” another kind of melon.
Li and Diao explained that the yellow flowers that jauntily wave above the vines are not the hibiscus they might appear to be at a distance, but belong to the “sighua.”
On the south end a “nanghua,” which the translator called a pumpkin, grows from a twig made trellis.
A Chinese vegetable garden traditionally has nothing but vegetables, no flowers.
In this thriving communal garden, some of the rotating gardeners, like Li and Diao, are not even vegetable gardeners at home.
“We have a flower garden and only inside our house,” they said.
So how could they help take care of a vegetable garden, one so immense that a large second plot down the hill toward Mansfield equals the eastern one in size?
“It’s natural to us,” Li responded. In her view Chinese people in general are natural gardeners.
“But there are skillful gardeners and bad ones,” Diao added.
Li is clearly among the skillful. She was particularly proud of her “tianjao” or green peppers and the “quizi” or eggplant.
Both retired now, they put in several hours a day in the garden right after breakfast, they said. They enjoy the leisure and especially the vegetables, which they cook.
Because of the language barrier, most of these older Chinese people do not get out into the city much, according to a younger Chinese man who at around 8 in the morning came by on his way to catch the bus south on Prospect.
“It’s a way for them to socialize,” he said.
Indeed Li said they eat mainly at home, from the bounty of the garden. They have gotten out a bit, and enjoyed pizza. She pronounced it “delicious.”
Li and Diao seemed to view the garden as a place set aside by Yale University as an aspect of its relationship with their son.
They live in the tidy brick apartment complex a block by the edge of Yale’s campus, as do many Asian graduate students and their visiting family members.
One recent morning, as the younger people were catching the bus to Yale and other destinations, Li and Diao were walking along well grooved paths among the rows of bean, melon, and mustard on their jiazis.
The couple’s backs were slightly bent from the heavy buckets of water dangling from their arms.
“The season is changing,” Li said. “The cabbages are going in.”
To suggest a gardener of the week, email us here.
Previous Gardeners Of The Week:
Post a Comment
- Commenting has closed for this entry
Comments
posted by: JB on August 25, 2010 5:51pm
Thank you for writing a story about this amazing garden. I drive past it several times a week and each time I do, I’m stuck by how beautiful it is. I especially love the structures made out of twigs.
Go take a look. The sunny portion is located right on prospect, but there’s also the more hidden shade garden down Division.
Morning is an interesting time on that stretch of Prospect. You’ve got the spectacular garden with its cultivators working away, and you also see many Asian grandparents pushing strollers and taking young children for walks right around the Divinity school. It’s an intriguing N.H. subculture.
posted by: Sepblues on August 25, 2010 6:48pm
Love this “Garden of the Week” and the weekly feature… keep it up!
posted by: HewNaven?? on August 25, 2010 8:18pm
This is absolutely amazing! I have marveled at this garden all summer long. What Li and Diao have demonstrated this year is that New Haven residents can indeed grow an adequate supply of food even at a relatively old age! Producing food does not require a high-level of skill or an intensive amount of time and energy; just dedication, love, and a bit of ancient wisdom.
My hope is that this garden will become a model for urban farming in New Haven.
posted by: juli on August 26, 2010 1:33am
i love this garden, and have much to learn from them.
thanks for adding this feature, NHI!
posted by: christopher schaefer on August 26, 2010 7:09am
I have Chinese neighbors who have a small Chinese vegetable garden in their back yard, with some features similar to the garden described here. (Let’s see, I also have neighbors from Portugal who have an Old World-style wine-grape arbor, neighbors from Puerto Rico who grow Latin American hot peppers, neighbors from…)
posted by: Hood Rebel on August 26, 2010 2:02pm
It is truly fascinating over the years having walked by and watched this garden develop from a tiny plot of land several years ago to this amazing space. The gardeners sometimes carry buckets of water, vegetables and whatever else back and forth across Division St sometimes balancing these items on their shoulders at both ends of a stick. Language seems to be a barrier though, because they rarely respond when I’ve tried talking with them to find out what they’re growing.
