The next time someone you know claims they can’t grow plants or they don’t have the right space for a garden, share the following story with them.
A member of our team, Jay Genoa, kept hearing about an unusual garden that belonged to some friends of his, Jim and Carol Prouty. The Proutys are originally from a farm in Iowa, but after they lost their home to flooding a few years ago, they moved to a commercial building they own in South Omaha. This building has an alley in the back, and while a concrete-covered urban alley doesn’t seem like an ideal spot for a garden, these gardeners (and their plants) decided to give it a try anyway. Everything in the garden, including the nine-foot-tall sunflowers and the thriving zinnias, grew from seed and whatever meager soil the seeds found in the cracks of the concrete. The Proutys have added no soil and use no fertilizer. They water daily, but that’s about it. In past years, they’ve also grown melons, whose vines covered the entire area. This year, they stuck with flowers. And, if you look closely, you’ll see some amazing agave and cacti in containers too.
It’s funny, isn’t it, how some plants require special soil, precise water, and timely fertilizer to perform well? And we oblige them. And sometimes they die anyway. Then, we see a dandelion growing from a sidewalk or a full-grown Douglas fir emerging from a boulder in the mountains. They manage to not only survive, but thrive in the most impossible of circumstances – impossible to us at least. For these resourceful plants, there’s clearly enough there to make a living and to live it beautifully.
