Ariadne Garden
Click here to send an e-mail to Kim McDodge, the Site Manager for Ariadne Garden.
This place has been in gardens since the two houses that once lived here caught fire and burned down. It has been feeding neighbors for many years. In 1993, it changed hands, was fenced and made into the formal garden it is now.
The design, an old Hopi pattern of Mother and Child - two nesting mazes - was set, the blackberries pulled and mulched onto those beds. A neighbor farmer between farms was hired to set our habits and we became what continues, a CSA (community supported agriculture) which grows 10 shares of vegetables thru the season and some thru the Winter. Four of those shares trade to the Gardeners, 2 are gifted to the Elders living on this street and we sell 4 to anyone who comes by to pay our bills which are water, taxes, insurance and compost.
Ariadne has a goal - our purpose: to care for her thru generations with beauty; our quality of life: to keep her so well that we can offer out our skills with pride; our provisions: to care for her soil, tools and seeds, money, all with an eye toward perennial regeneration; and our future: to keep her water and mineral cycles flowing fully, her soil rich with the complexity it needs to sustain itself, knowing our lives depend on this. We make decisions using a holistic framework which gently ties our moves to the place through every cycle - water, sun, mineral and community.
We care for the soil food web here, that vast array of communities that keep our soil alive and working wonders with us. The micro-organisms quietly protect the roots of the plants and seeds we put in the ground. Fungi weave long hyphae, spaghetti - like strings, around our roots so the suckers cannot get to them, also sequestering toxics for the microbs to chew and change. Beneficial bacteria, protozoa and nematodes eat others that will feed off and suck the life right out of our plants. These beneficials bring a variety of foods to the plant which cannot get to clumps of compost and pick them up. The plant makes cake-like food for the tiny workers so they will stick around to help. If they don’t help, the plant won’t feed them anymore, will be less viable, not be able fend off disease and to feed us.
We are open Tuesdays and Saturdays from 10 to 1: during the season - Mid April thru Oct - for U-pick and visits. We try to converse about gardening and culture. We offer fresh brewed actively aerobic compost tea on Saturdays for seeding your pile or garden beds with complete herds of beneficials. As well, we sell and loan copies of the Soil Biology Primer and CDs from Corvallis’ Soil Foodweb Inc. Drop by and look anytime.
‘We’ are an assortment of volunteers and community service workers, from the neighborhood, from the wider Albina area and some from other places of our great City.
Kim McDodge, head gardener
503 284-7116
Visit DesperateAg.net & OSALT.org
Ariadne (airy ADD’ knee) is a mythical maiden and wife
