November 2008

by John Cannizzo, GreenTeam director, New York Horticultural Society

Has this happened in your gardening? You feel an experience being drawn out longer and longer? Until you quiver like a violin string?

In gardening, past is linked to present by an unbroken chain of flowing events. Subjectively this finds expression in a curious feeling difficult to describe.

When working as an instructor it is important not to confuse two things: solving a problem, and stating a problem correctly. It is only the second that is obligatory for a teacher.

For example, why can’t a person live so as to avoid losses and misfortune? Why have the forests been cut down? Why do people hinder each other in general? On the street is a brown arborvitae, a broken clay pot, a string of cold Christmas lights. Best mix your container "soil" yourself: peat moss, manure, sand, 3 + 2+ 1. Hercules mixes. I carefully untie the juniper. If there is sun better use juniper than arborvitae. It is more forgiving.

Week before Thanksgiving, the year of September 11th, funding for most programs was withdrawn. If not for the inspiration that made us turn toward income generation, the internship program would have been another casualty.

An older woman stops to ask us what we are doing.

“I wish that I could get my gardener to use organic soil amendments. She insists on chemicals.”

At the office is a message from a managing agent inviting us to bid. It’s an East End Avenue contract. This for us is almost undreamed of wealth – security for one year.

James and I submit a proposal. The board of directors requests a presentation. Some are uncomfortable with hiring a program of ex-offenders.

Have you ever had the feeling (though you cannot see them) someone has just silently walked into the room? It was the woman that we had met on the street – chairman of the board. We recognize each other immediately. She insisted that the board hire us regardless of background.

That was our first important commercial contract. It was also our first healing garden. In time I found out that the woman that insisted on hiring us lost a son on September 11. The garden was her therapy.

*All photos courtesy of John Cannizzo