Easy Gardening

For many people, gardening is a love affair with the good earth. Gardeners delight in running their fingers through the soil, planting crops and beautiful flowers and conquering weeds. Gardening can be meditative, aesthetic and even competitive as the residents of Garrison Keillors Lake Wobegon demonstrate during their annual tomato-growing contest.

For me, gardening is a spectator sport. Ive already done my time. Growing up, we always planted a large vegetable garden. My grandmother, who lived around the corner, had two gigantic gardens. Read more…

Homes in Orchard Hills
   
Ernest Batterson, a Kalamazoo architect responsible for such diverse designs as First United Methodist Church and the old Douglass Community Center on Ransom, designed a home in 1928 at 1405 Long Road for H.D. Firth, a land developer. For $25,000, he created a stone house reminiscent of a French chateau, with concrete steps flanking a fountain as they ascend to the front door centered on the symmetrical faade.
   
That same year, Robert Seyforth, a celebrated Chicago architect, designed the Federal Revival home at 1550 Long for city commissioner Bartlett Dickinson. Seyfo Read more…

Everyone can plant a garden.

Even if you live in a condo or apartment and dont have space, you can find affordable containers in all sizes, colors and shapes to fit your style and available gardening space.

Look around for ways to express your personality with containers. A worn boot can be used to hold a small herb garden. Old galvanized pails, crocks, bicycle baskets, tin pitchers, bait buckets and assorted less-than-perfect pottery bowls make great homes for an assortment of annuals.

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KALAMAZOO Kalamazoo nonprofit Fair Food Matters has announced recipients of its 2011 Community Garden Grants.

All 16 community gardens are located within Kalamazoo County and will receive between $350 and $850 to purchase raised beds, plants, seeds, garden tools, fencing and other supplies.

The grants are funded by the Kalamazoo Community Foundation and the Irving S. Gilmore Foundation.

The focus of the program, according to a press release, is to provide healthy, fresh food to neighbors and friends, to encourage physical activity and strengthen neighborhoods by sharing work, food and fellowship.

Below are the gardens awarded grants.

Beauty from Ashes Community Garden, West G Ave. Read more…