Urban Gardens

I just received an e-mail from Kevin "The Green Man" Songer at Avid Group with a photo of an urban garden designed by his wife, Judy. It's really quite incredible (and I'm completely inspired to step my gardening efforts).

Here's a snippet from his e-mail:

Attached is a photo of an urban backyard culinary herb garden in San Marco, designed by my wife Judy. Judy’s passion lies in designing and creating organic, low maintenance and productive urban gardens. Urban backyard gardens not only create a sense of space, but they provide an easy way to create exciting mealtime dishes, full of exotic, healthy flavors. Most are very drought tolerant and easily survive Florida’s brutal summer. Though the garden pictured is an informal garden, it is just as easy to create a formal layout – depending upon the owner’s preference. The beauty of the urban garden concept is that it can be created with only a few packets of seeds, a weekend of ground preparation and a gentle watering in. Urban gardens are a great place to use recycled items such as broken concrete for stepping stones, discarded bedframes for plant supports, etc…. My favorite urban herb
garden dish is “papas fritas con romero fresca” - or fried potatoes and fresh rosemary.

Urban gardens provide wonderful habitat for butterflies and hummingbirds, add a wonderful scent to the air surrounding your home and thrive on neglect (most herbs originally grew as weeds).

I can grow weeds. No problem. I can speak from experience on growing herbs: They literally take care of themselves. In the course of 4 months, I've killed and revived a basil plant, uprooted and re-rooted cilantro, watched dill flourish (and nearly overtake) my container garden, and overwatered and underwatered them all nearly to decimation. If I can do it (and grow useable herbs) you can, too.

This is such a sustainable approach to your back yard. Have it give something back to you for once.