A Growing Legacy

Grand Gardens is celebrating it second anniversary, and it is Fall planting season at the Gardens.Here are two of the dozen growers with plots at Grand Gardens: Barbara Klepper and Roy Kaplan. Grand Gardeners are busy planting collards, kale, squash, arugula, peppers, tomatoes, bok choy, cabbage, cauliflower, and especially broccoli. The lovely seedlings in the image are Barbara's Springs Coast Calabrese Broccoli seedlings - grown from local seeds going back 10 seasons. Springs Coast Calabrese Broccoli is a distinct variety that has been cultivated in New Port Richey for over ten years by Friendship Farms & Fare - a local urban farm system. Seeds from each new generation are saved in the Friendship Farms Seed Bank, and then used for crops in the subsequent year's planting. The result is broccoli that is uniquely suited to Florida growing, especially in the this region of the west central Florida -- the "Springs Coast Watershed.* Grand Gardens follows organic growing methods and permaculture principles.It is a participating garden in the New Port Richey FarmNet and offers seeds, seedlings, and fresh produce to the public. Plots at Grand Gardens are available to the public for a modest contribution.

A watershed is the distinct ecological region, defined by the area of land where all of the water that is under it or drains off of it goes into the same place. John Wesley Powell, scientist geographer, put it best when he said that a watershed is: ³that area of land, a bounded hydrologic system, within which all living things are inextricably linked by their common water course and where, as humans settled, simple logic demanded that they become part of a community."