Brunch & Garden with the Garden Posse on Saturday, 11 am

Last spring, we built a garden for the congregation of the Webberville Road Baptist Church - a tiny little church on the East Side with very nice people and a lot of open land. The garden was a great success - Pastor Ealey fell in love with the seven watermelons growing in the melon patch, and he wrote to us, "What you have done helps a lot. I heard a couple of people say. I have tried many gardens,and they did not turn out like this, "I think I will try another one at home."

We returned this week to replant the garden for the new season and found it in disarray - weedy, overgrown, and in need of immediate TLC. We want to get this garden back to its former glory as soon as possible. If we can get a large, motivated group of people together for two hours on Saturday, we know that we can not only restore, but expand and improve this garden into a gem!

Meet us at 1405 Webberville Road, next to TC's Lounge, at 11 am on Saturday. Yes, that's Halloween. It's your chance to do something good before nighttime debauchery.

RSVP to the event on Facebook.

We have all the plants. We just need you! And your tools - hoes, pick-axes, shovels, trowels, etc. Trust us, gardens go in really quick if a lot of people are working on them at once. No experience is necessary.

Oh, did we mention that this is a brunch, too? Bring a dish or baked goods! There is a lot of grass to picnic on.

Tuesday Night: Webberville Baptist Church garden

I have some exciting news to share: The Garden Posse is going to be featured on KRLU's Central Texas Gardener! This is a great public TV show which features lovely gardens and gardeners, and we are pretty honored to be in some way amongst the ranks. They'll be filming us building a garden on November 5 (that's next week, after this coming week), and taking footage of some gardens that we've made. So right now, we're focused on making our existing gardens look the best they can.

On Tuesday we are hitting up the Webberville Baptist Church Garden aka Paradise Angel Garden. It's located at 1405 Webberville Rd, Austin. This is a really, really great garden which has been cared for and treasured by the church community, and we are replanting it for the fall season!

Meet us there at 7:30 pm with tools, seeds, and flashlights. It will be fun!


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This Tuesday: Greetings from Austin Mural garden!

Tomorrow night we'll be digging it up at the Greetings from Austin Mural in South Austin! That's Tuesday, October 20, at 7:30 pm, at 1720 S 1st Street, on the side of Roadside Relics.

This dig's special feature: We might be on TV! A reporter from KVUE has contacted us and is very anxious to film the Garden Posse at work. This will have to be confirmed, but the reporter does seem very keen on it.

We planted this garden last spring, but it needs some fresh TLC. We'll be planting lots of flowers and doing some beautifying. It will likely be quick, easy, and glamorous.

As always, tools, plants, seeds, and flashlights are helpful to bring.

I saw the sign. And it opened up my eyes. I saw the sign.*

We made new signs last night! It's part of our effort to use the new Garden Posse logo (see bottom right) in new, awesome ways. The next step is to get someone to tattoo it on their back. Any takers?

Thanks David, for the artwork and photo, and to Carly, for the logo and stencil!

*"Life is demanding, without understanding." - Ace of Base

This weekend's Garden Posse events

The Garden Posse doesn't restrict its activities to just Tuesday nights. We like to occupy your weekends, too. You can spend some time with us on both Saturday and Sunday.

SEED BOMBS: Saturday, Oct. 10, 10 am @ Cherrywood Green (Cherrywood & E. 34th)

Seed bomb workshop at the Cherrywood Plant and Book Swap! Free plants, free books, and making seed bombs - why would you not come to this (besides for a hangover)? You don't need to bring anything to participate. The Garden Posse will have a small table to make seed bombs, which are a rolled mix of native seeds, compost, and clay dirt. They are really fun to make, and you can take them home to throw in your yard, or your derelict neighbor's yard, we won't tell.

POTLUCK: Sunday, Oct. 11, 2 pm @ 702 West Crestland Drive, Austin, TX 78752

A fan and neighbor of the guerrilla garden on the Crestland Triangle has invited the Garden Posse to celebrate Canadian Thanksgiving! We were previously unaware that Canadians had a Thanksgiving, and are still not sure whether or not this is just a big joke. But hey, it's potluck time. We figure it's a good time to meet the community around one of our gardens. And eat tofurkey. Here's the facebook invite.

Don't forget to keep up with the Garden Posse on our FB fan page, and our Twitter feed. Mmm. Delicious Tweets.

Report from last week's dig

So, the East Austin dig didn't go exactly as planned. Emily arrived at the site, deep in a neighborhood off Springdale and Webberville, to find the field being mowed. As the rest of us arrived, the smell of freshly cut grass filled the air. The lot, which had been identified by a friend and not previously seen by the Garden Posse, was a long, narrow strip of land with a chunk of trash mounded in a forward corner. A decent spot, but our number one rule of guerrilla garden site choosing had been violated by that darn mower: A garden site must be truly neglected, and not actively maintained and mowed. Lawn mowers kill gardens. And obviously, the people who owned this land were looking after it. The site was a no-go.

Yet there we were, with a car chock full of tools, dirt, and plants, including some flowers that had been saved from the garbage at Shoal Creek. It was time for Plan B: Replant the Chestnut & 16th Street garden.

The Chestnut garden has always been popular with the neighborhood, so we were all excited to revive it. The summer had not been kind to the garden. Everything we had planted last winter was dead, but we were happy to see a yellow-flowered vine had climbed and bloomed on the large dead tree next to the garden. We expanded the garden in order to fit all the vegetable plants, and created a flower border around the dead tree.

As we worked, Tara from KVRX's Upstream program (last week, featuring the Garden Posse, but unfortunately the audio was lost), happened to be riding by and recognized our activities. She stopped to plant a couple of lettuces into the already crowded bed. The Posse was also helped by two shirtless guys who were out walking their pit bull and drinking an unknown beverage out of a brown bag. They were very excited to see us working on the garden, and although we were almost done, they insisted on helping spread some mulch around the plants. They were an uncle and nephew who worked at a construction company and lived with family in the neighborhood for a long time. They said they wanted to build a border around the bed with extra rocks from work, and tell their family and neighbors about the garden. We said, that would be awesome.

So although things didn't go exactly as planned - this is the first time that we've had to abandon a site we hoped to dig - the night was productive and had a happy ending. Let's hope the garden is just as productive!