First Ground Community Garden

First Ground
Growing with gifting in mind

A garden that gives itself away.

Robin Wall Kimmerer writes that the serviceberry never hoards its fruit. It gives it, and the abundance keeps moving. I'm building a real garden around that idea, one designed to give its harvest, its plants, and its seeds onward instead of keeping them. The honest question is whether people will give to something whose whole purpose is to give itself away. Come find out with me.

Give to the experiment See what it gives back See the garden design
How it started

It started with a download, and four trees I never planted.

A while back I got a clear, inner knowing that one day I'd own a farm. This message coincided with my taking a step back from a career in public health, founding Farm Fresh Glow, and developing relationships with farms for local sourcing and summer programming. As I processed the message I so clearly received, I was perplexed. I saw no path to owning a farm any time soon. Then I found the lesson standing in my own yard. As I walked my own modest property, I found four serviceberry trees growing along the fence line, mature, fruiting, and there the whole time I wasn't looking.

Robin Wall Kimmerer has written a whole book about that tree, about gifts and the abundance already around us. Finding the trees I was too busy to see was a homecoming to nature, and to a way of thinking I had somehow never turned on my own ground.

So instead of waiting to buy a farm, I decided to learn the land I already had. I tested the soil, mapped the light and the water, and designed a real garden for my Baltimore backyard.

Then I wanted to try something with it. Not to grow a supply of things to sell, but to see if a garden could live by the gift economy, giving more than it keeps. This page is that experiment, and here is exactly what comes back.

What comes back

What the garden gives away.

This is the point of the whole thing, so I want to be specific about it. Not a vague idea of generosity, the actual streams, and where each one goes.

01

The harvest, season by season

SpringServiceberries as they ripen in June. Chamomile and the first cutting herbs. Spinach and lettuce.
SummerBlueberries. Lavender. Squash, beans, cucumber, basil. Mint.
FallFigs. Pawpaws, once the trees mature. Shiitake mushrooms from the logs. Broccoli, cauliflower, and the fall greens. Ginger and turmeric dug from the deck pots.
WinterFreeze-dried fruit, herbs, and flowers held from every season before it, given away all year.

Some feeds the camp kids' lunches, cooked from that morning's field. Some goes to neighbors.

02

Kept for the whole year

The harvest is freeze-dried rather than left to spoil, so fruit, herbs, and flowers hold nearly their full color and potency and keep for years without refrigeration. A July picking becomes tea blends the camp kids carry home in December. It is what lets a summer garden give in every season.

03

Plants passed on

The perennials get divided, coral bells, hostas, iris, and mountain mint split into new plants. Cuttings of mint, honeysuckle, and fig get rooted. Those become free plants for other people to start their own gardens.

04

Seeds shared

Seed saved from the coneflower, calendula, chamomile, aster, and vegetables, dried, packeted, and given away, to the camp kids to take home, to neighbors, and to a local seed swap.

05 · the flagship

Camp Serviceberry

The biggest thing the garden feeds: a free, full-scholarship farm camp for kids, built on the same soil, skin, and self the garden is. Read about it →

06

Back to the living world

The garden leans on plants native to Maryland, so it feeds the bees, butterflies, and birds that belong here. Coneflower and aster and goldenrod for the pollinators, berries and seedheads for the birds. It gives back to the life in your own yard, not only to people. (The rain garden also filters the rain before it drains away.)

The flagship · where the gift reaches kids

Camp Serviceberry

Where soil, skin, and self take root in community.

A free, full-scholarship three-day summer day camp for kids, on a farm. They get their hands in the soil and learn what's growing. They cook what the field gives that morning. They learn how their skin works, how chamomile calms it and what lavender does, and make small things to give away.

On the last night, they host the people who love them and serve them dinner from the garden. A child giving a feast away. That is the gift economy completing its circle.

The garden is what makes it possible. Its produce and herbs go into the camp kitchen. Its cuttings and seeds go home in the kids' hands. Everything I figure out growing it is what I have to teach.

Part of every gift to this page keeps the camp free, so that no child is turned away over money.

Curious about next summer? See the flyer from the last camp to get a feel for the three days, and reach out to learn more.

Where the gift economy takes root

The garden it all comes from.

Six places, each drawn as a planting plan with every plant in its place. These renders show what they become at peak season.

The sun garden and bench
The sun gardenBench, coneflower, aster, and goldenrod, between the serviceberry and the fig. Two pawpaws in the side yard beyond.See the plan →
Raised kitchen beds
The kitchen bedsBlueberries, lavender, chamomile, vegetables.See the plan →
Woodland walk
The woodland walkFerns, coral bells, and shade groundcovers along the fence line.See the plan →
Rain garden
The rain gardenIris, lobelia, and Joe Pye under the oak.See the plan →
The tender garden
The tender gardenLemongrass, citrus, ginger, and the mints, potted on the sunny upper deck.See the plan →
Shiitake logs under the deck
The log patioShiitake logs in the deep shade under the deck, where nothing else will grow.See the plan →
Give something other than money

A gift economy runs both ways.

If the garden only takes money and gives back plants, that isn't a circle. So gifts in kind are welcome, and some of them are worth more than a check. Here is what the garden actually needs.

Plants and divisions

A split off your coral bells, hostas, iris, ferns, or coneflower. The same plants this garden will divide and pass on to someone else in a few years.

Seeds you saved

Anything native to Maryland, and anything you have too much of. Coneflower, aster, calendula, chamomile, vegetables.

Wood, chips, and logs

Lumber for the raised beds. Arborist wood chips for the paths. Hardwood logs, oak or maple, for growing shiitake.

Compost and soil

Finished compost, leaf mold, or a load of good soil. The beds need several cubic yards, and it is the largest single cost.

Tools and pots

Spare hand tools, a wheelbarrow, pruners, terracotta pots, a bench that wants a new home.

Hands and knowledge

An afternoon of digging. A lesson from someone who has done this longer. Time given is the oldest gift there is.

Tell me what you have before you send it, so nothing is wasted and everything finds a bed.
See the full list of what the garden needs →

Offer a gift in kindOther ways to give
The garden from above
First Ground  ·  a gift economy garden in a Baltimore backyard  ·  a Farm Fresh Glow project