Community Garden Plots

Not everyone likes to garden and those who do tend a garden like it for differing reasons. The yards around the houses here on the island are about the same size as the house gardens in Zabovresky, and like in Brno, there is a community garden with plots that residents can rent by the year to grow vegetables, fruits, flowers and herbs. The plots are about 4 meters by 8-9 meters. They are not separated from each other by fences and don't have building structures on them, but there is normal garden architecture like trellises for running vines and espaliered fruit trees, wood frames for raised beds, and scarecrows and decorative statues like gnomes and saints and frogs. No one here camps out in the gardens, though there is a little area called "Palmetto Room" with barely functional tables and chairs tucked just inside the little wood at the south end of the garden. I have never seen anyone in there. My parents have two plots this year. For them, the sole purpose of their garden is to grow food to eat now and to freeze for the winter. Others rent their plots for fruit and herbs and/or flowers or to have a quiet place to sit. One woman even plants a 'memorial garden' in honor of her mother, though much to the chagrin of my own mother and of others, the daughter never harvests the vegetables. So for her, I suppose, the pleasure is in making the garden, tending it, and accepting nothing from it. On the way to the garden last week Thomas suggested that you might enjoy some photos of the community garden here. Since I derived so much pleasure from going to the gardens with Lenka in Brno, I agreed. So, here are a few images for you.