Garden Workshop Teaches How To Put Down Roots

Putting your hands to soil to plant garlic. Chewing on a leaf of fresh oregano. Noticing the sun on your face. At ​“Rooted Youth,” a collaborative event between the Dixwell art center NXTHVN and the garden-creation outfit Root Life, held at the Goffe Street Armory Garden, participants learned about how these simple experiences can open up broader pathways to understanding more about our relationship to our environment, and how we can adapt to climate change.

Inspired by artist Saya Woolfalk’s exhibition at NXTHVN, ​“Rooted Youth,” held on Saturday, was billed as ​“an immersive experience for young individuals seeking to strengthen their bond with nature and themselves amidst the digital age and urbanization. Through guided mindfulness, meditation, and discussions in natural settings, participants will learn presence, grounding techniques, and the importance of plants and ecosystems.”

The Goffe Street Armory Garden started in 2017, the idea of Nadine Horton, then chair of the Whalley-Edgewood-Beaver Hills Management Team. It came about thanks to a joint effort of the city and Gather New Haven, then called the New Haven Land Trust (read an Independent article about that).

Since then, the garden has bloomed into a vital community space, with a tight core of about 20 volunteers growing 40 different crops of vegetables, fruits, and herbs, some of which they cook and eat on site, some of which they take home, some of which are donated to churches, community centers, and other food pantries around the city. They run programs in conjunction with several nearby institutions, from NXTHVN on Henry Street to Yale’s School for the Environment and School of Medicine, and the garden organizers have started yoga and meditation programming and a book club (read an Independent article about that).

Dishaun Harris, a.k.a Farmer D, has been an urban farmer for 13 years and has worked with the garden from its inception. He grew up in Newhallville, went to college in North Carolina, and interned at Common Ground High School. He has started Root Life, a garden-creation and consulting business based in the garden. 

And Saturday he was on hand for NXTHVN’s programming, to give people a taste (and whiff, and feel) of what the garden has to offer, and in a light yet deep sense, to show people how to connect with the environment around them.

Jay Kemp, NXTHVN’s apprentice program manager, explained the connection between the garden and the Dixwell gallery’s latest show, ​“Field Notes from the Empathic Universe,” an exhibition of work by artist Saya Woolfalk suffused with spirituality that was ​“all about how human bodies are connected to nature.” 

“It’s so easy for us to connect with anxiety and depression,” Kemp said. ​“Can we identify with nature?” With activities that help ground and center us? ​“We’ve talked about breath work,” he said. Working in the garden, connecting with nature, could be ​“just as restorative as sleep.” 

Harris quickly agreed, explaining that he thought of the garden in part as a ​“recess space” for neighborhood kids, a place to ​“run around and touch stuff.”

“We have all of our young people with their hustle culture,” Kemp continued. ​“We don’t give our young people time to play, explore,” and ​“get grounded — acknowledge how important our connection is to nature.”

Harris has been ​“teaching urban farming since I’ve been doing it,” he said, diving into the nourishment it provides, in terms of food as well as spirit and community. ​“There’s a lot of things that connect us to nature,” he said. ​“We are nature.”

He began his tour by gesturing down the block, noting the prevalence of street trees. ​“You won’t see this” in other cities, he said. He then mentioned that a few of those trees — such as mulberries — provided food. ​“There’s a lot of free food” growing out there, if you knew what to look for. 

Gesturing to the ground at his feet, he described how we were ​“walking over medicine. Pay attention as you’re walking. Look down.” With the important qualifier that one had to make sure the soil plants grew out of was safe to eat from (interested New Haveners can get their soil tested for free here), he identified a few species around him that were edible and loaded with nutrients: clover, plantain, violet, yellow dock. He looked up the specific information about each one on his phone.

“I encourage people to incorporate technology” into their urban farming, he said.

He moved to one of the garden boxes, in which he had spearmint, strawberry, and raspberry growing together. Though the raspberry and strawberry plants wouldn’t fruit again until next summer, he pointed out that these species were thriving even as daily temperatures were dropping as we headed into winter, and that it could make sense to eat, say, the mint leaves now.

“If something is growing in this weather,” perhaps something in it ​“can help you survive the winter” as well, he said. In season, he continued, raspberries were a ​“superfood in their own right,” and tea could be made from its leaves any time. And ​“it is abundant in New England,” to the point that it can be invasive. In a box with mint, however — another aggressive grower — the plants could achieve a kind of balance. ​“You can harvest it without hurting the ecosystem” and ​“they grow until the snow comes.”

He used the raspberry-strawberry-mint box as an example of ​“companion planting” (akin to the classic indigenous Three Sisters plants of corn, bean, and squash). ​“It’s like a family, or a team,” he said. ​“They help each other grow” by introducing an abundance of nutrients into the soil, providing structure and shade, and sometimes, by offering protection. The scent of mint, for example, can mask the scent of fruits growing nearby, so that animals that might otherwise eat the fruit don’t know it’s there. Planting oregano or basil next to tomatoes can do likewise. Responding to questions, Harris also got into plants that did not grow well together: onions and watermelon, garlic and okra.

“There are plants that don’t work well together,” Harris said, ​“but that can be strategic,” allowing the natural creation of garden borders. ​“There’s a value in every plant and it’s here for a reason. It’s about learning how to use it — to see the value and work with it.” Even invasive plants; Harris explained that a weed is just ​“a plant that you don’t want growing in a space you had designated for something else.” He took chickweed as an example, which many people consider a nuisance. ​“But is it really?” he said. It had several health benefits, and ​“people can put it in a salad.”

Why, then, weren’t more salads like that? Part of the answer, Harris said, lay in the way we usually get our food. Most of the plants he had been talking about had a very short shelf life. They needed to be eaten very soon after being picked. Our modern systems of food production, meanwhile, rely on foods to have long shelf lives. But there was a tradeoff there in the abundance of nutrients you could ingest.

“You won’t get something so nutritious on our plates,” he said, ​“because it doesn’t work with the industrial system that we have.”

Harris continued through the garden. Herbs like sage, rosemary, and lemon balm made for good aromatherapy and tea. Goji berries, which he had growing along the fence, were another uncommon yet nutritious and delicious fruit. Various species of greens and onions grew well together. And though it was ​“pushing it,” it wasn’t too late to try planting garlic for next year.

He produced a box of garlic bulbs that he instructed participants to help him plant, about eight inches apart. As a helpful guide, he explained that a fist bump (the width of a fist) was about four inches, a thumbs-up sign about six inches, and the ​“hang ten” gesture (thumb and pinkie out) was about eight inches. Garlic ​“likes to go through a phase of being cold” and ​“their sense of timing is with the weather.” Many plants worked this way. 

A big lesson about adapting to the changing climate was embedded in this; as New Haven grew warmer, certain plants would become harder to grow, and others would become easier. Some greens that had been annuals would become perennials.

“We just have to transition,” he said.

As participants planted, Harris encouraged a sense of awareness about what they were doing. ​“I want you to touch the earth,” he said. When they were done, he had a few more questions.

“How do we feel right now? Feeling that warm sunshine is everything. Seeing so much green,” and in fall, ​“seeing the oranges,” a color that he described as a ​“joy frequency.”

“All these things are affecting us,” he continued. And at the armory garden, ​“everyone is welcome. I encourage people to tap in.”

See below for other recent Independent articles about New Haven’s many gardens and gardeners.

• Gardeners Time Travel At Pardee-Morris House
• Barnard’s Classroom Garden Springs to Life
• A Dream Grows In An Armory Garden
• On Service Day, Albertus Tends Its Garden
• Farmer Savage Preps For Mushroom Season
• Kid Gardeners Grow On Clinton Ave
• Whitney Gardeners Dig In On Leek Landfall