The First Post

 

Howdy, folks. This is the first post on the blog and, to be honest, I don't know how to start things off. I tend to jump in and my initial thought was to just start posting native plant and gardening-related stuff. But maybe a brief "hello, world" is in order?

Hello, world!

Good enough? No? Hm. Ok, go check the "about" page (expand the menu at the top right). That'll give you all the details. But in a nutshell, this blog is about:

• Gardening (for all sentient beings, not just people, and for the community, not just our family)
• The importance of native plants 
• The danger of invasives
• The trials and tribulations of a one-time vegetable gardener turned food forester and native plant advocate

A little about me

I've gardened pretty much all my life. Growing up, we had a massive vegetable garden. We preserved a lot of what we ate and sold the excess by the side of the road. We picked blackberries in the heat of Georgia summers and stockpiled firewood all year long so we could heat the house in the winter. 

While I've grown vegetables since I was little, I've never given much thought to things that weren't so practical. Flowers were nice, but they were extraneous. And we didn't give much thought to native plants unless they provided us with food (or we had to remove them from our traditional garden as weeds). 

Over the years, I've moved from practical planting to feed my family to a quasi-permaculture mindset to an appreciation of why native plants are so critical. Dāna Gardens is the result of that ongoing evolution. It's a mini-food forest (non-native fruit trees like loquats and pomegranates combined with veggies and herbs), combined with native plantings to support pollinators and wildlife, as well as cut flowers because beauty is its own reason to exist.

This blog is the chronicle of the garden's development and my own learning as I get to know native plants and wildlife more. Come along with me if you'd like :)