A couple weeks ago, I had the pleasure of visiting the garden of new friends in the neighborhood, WT and Erich; I met them at our last WHA blogger social. They are the forces behind Gardenfreude, a terrific Astoria blog about food, health, gardening, design, and knitting. I hear they are excellent knitters and make some amazing sweaters and things over the winters (I, on the other hand, can make a scarf and a hat, but that’s about it). They are also passionate gardeners, and we three connected over gardening and food especially.
Their garden is quite large, especially for NYC standards. They have an arrangement with their neighbors to use their yard, which gives them a lot of land to work with. In face, they currently only use half the yard, but have gotten the green light to use the rest of the space, so they have plans to expand next spring.
They actually started with just one container, given to them by their landlord. Their garden grew to multiple containers.
It was cool to see they were growing Sylvetta arugula, a beautiful and delicious heirloom arugula, which I grew this year, too.
Next door, they grew a whole variety of things, including tomatoes.
And beans and cucumbers. I tasted one of their dragon’s egg cucumbers and it was delicious.
A couple of less conventional plants that caught my eye were comfrey and amaranth. I know amaranth as a grain but they grow it for the greens. The comfrey has beautiful bell flowers on it, and plays into Erich’s interest in herbs and wellness. Comfrey poultice is good for healing cuts, bruises, and more.
They are already working on their fall planting, and I’m looking forward to seeing it. And their expanded garden next fall!
I took some additional pictures, which can be found in my Gardenfreude photoset.
Many thanks to Erich and WT for introducing me to their garden. It’s beautiful, guys!
