Here at Garden Circles, we love how gardening can change lives.  In a story along those lines, we are happy to report on a donation we made early this summer to The Shop in Brainerd, Minnesota.  

This is Cindy Moore, Director at The Shop with the garden beds we donated. 

in Cindy's words: "TheShop is a youth defined space for transitional age youth (14-22). We find that those who visit daily live in the margins of our community. These teenagers and young adults often struggle within the educational system, have mental health issues, frequently use alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, live in poverty and may even be homeless in the city they grew up in. We are caring adult mentors offering opportunities such as our Bicycle Recycle, Computer Refurbishing, Service Projects or our soon to be set up TarTop Garden to help our at risk youth develop assets that support healthy life transitions and experience personal success."

This is what they did with those garden beds, some pallets and a couple of tires to turn a rough old asphalt parking lot into a growing experience for local teens.  

Cindy describes how the community really came together to make this happen:

"Urban gardening 101 called The TarTop Garden began with a vision. Forces began to align with the invention of Garden Circles (Thanks to Ryan Hunt). 25 minutes and we had 3 ready made raised beds installed on the tar in front of TheShop. Hugglekulture videos (Thanks again, Ryan), a mess of yard waste (Thanks to Amy), a few yards of dirt (Thanks to Thrivent), and a rain barrel (Thanks to Bethel Church) and we had the beginning of our project. Our VISTA (Volunteer In Service To America), Heidi Jeub taught urban gardening basics to youth and staff and set us up with pretty cool journals."

Over the summer, the gardens thrived and grew lush.

"Truth, we did not realize just how successfully a garden in the middle of our parking lot would take off and bring in some serious vegetables in such a short time. By using the power of sunshine and 40 buckets of water daily we have teaching moments for youth, for the neighborhood, and for the community."

"Today we have a jungle of tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, patty pans, zucchini, squash, kohlrabi (because it’s alien looking), potatoes, beans, more tomatoes, kale, basil, cilantro, parsley, onions and even a pea or two hidden in the tangles. We have learned a thing or three and have fun sharing the produce with our neighbors. We invite you to park in front of TheShop on Washington and take a look at what can be done to produce fresh foods in “any” yard, office parking lot, daycare, church entryway, and in the backyards of every rental property. A great way to talk to your neighbors, collectively grow produce to share and teach ourselves about the foods we eat."

"Our mission is to nurture youth to overall wellness and develop assets that support healthy life transitions.  
Having the ability to teach youth the ease of growing vegetables allows at risk youth to experience the simplicity (sunshine and water) of creating fresh food for their tables.  It's not rocket science.  And it can be fun.  Imagine if we had an outdoor water system? And then imagine the extra fun of water fights!"

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We are putting in a demonstration installation of Garden Circles right here at our headquarters on the Hunt Utilities Group Resilient Living Research Campus.  The process of figuring out just where and what it would look like was interesting and may be useful to others out there contemplating how to plan Garden Circle installations.  Of course, we can always help, too.

Criteria

First we decided what was important to us and came up with this list:

1. Creative shape demonstrating the creativity of the system
2. Good visible location where visitors could see it well
3. Location where it could be tended and observed.

So we picked the front yard of the founders' home in the center of our research campus.  

Making a Map

We got an image from Google Earth that showed the interesting shape of the yard between curvy sidewalks.  I opened that image in a free drawing program called Inkscape and used it as the base layer.  I scaled the image within the program based on the measured size of a large concrete patio that was 20ft X 40 ft, a one time staging surface and possible garage floor).   To scale it, I made a rectangle that was 200X400 pixels (so each pixel was 0.1 ft), made it partially transparent, and then scaled the image and rotated it till it fit directly over the patio in the image.

Trying out Ideas

Then we started drawing circles.  

The first design was simple and would show off the simple round shapes of different sizes and be easy to tend near the sidewalk.  Not much pzazz, though.

The second design was meant to be similar, but show off the linking feature.  Paul and Lynn, the founders and my parents, were not moved by this one, either.

Then went a little more creative.  we figured it would not be understandable artistically except from the air, plus it was more beds than we thought we wanted to manage.  It's a cute sorta seahorse, though.

Then we started drawing in the arching trellises made from cattle panel mesh.  We went back to extremely simple, again, but moved on very quickly to derivations of previous plans we had drawn up.

Dragonfly?  Maybe...

Spiral Labyrinth?  Interesting...

You know when you finally see something that you like and you just decide?  That is what happened with the final design and Lynn (the ultimate decision maker).   We took the Quad 4 U basic shape and added a few extra lines to make the space flow a bit more.

This shape is made with 36 Garden Circles and will have a 16ft X 16ft patio in the middle made from patio block that matches the sidewalk.   It will be a very nice addition to their outdoor living space.  And, while they are lounging or grilling on the patio, they can tend the plants.

So, that is how you can do a large installation design and try out a bunch of ideas.  Stay tuned for updates on construction of this garden, irrigation installation, and planting, tending stories.

We will even try out some seer repelling ideas on these to see what works and what doesn't.  

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It has been a busy few weekends at Mootopia as we prepare the gardens for another growing season and make upgrades.  Here are the highlights including some experimental prototypes from the Garden Circle laboratory.

Asparagus beds

The idea that asparagus is something you plant and then just harvest every spring for the next 30 years excites me.  I also like to eat it, of course, but I really like the idea of putting in plants that just keep coming back for a long time with little work.  Because it is a low maintenance plant and wouldn't need frequent tending, I thought it would work just fine to put it in lower raised beds.  So, we made 1 foot tall beds for that job.  We planted 4 asparagus per bed and they are just starting to pop up.  

The little garden beds are so cute.  Maybe we can make a product out of it.  

Yoga tested.  Queen Moo approved.  She has tested each model of garden bed we have put in.  If she likes it, the asparagus should, too.

Filled and planted with room to top it off after they sprout.  At least that's how it said to do it on the articles I read.

Straw Bale beds

Last year our tomatoes were flopping over and taking the bales with it.  This year we won't have that problem.  We are trying a different way of arranging the bales and adding the Garden Circle Squares.  We put in 3 of the beds to try out this year.  Each one will have a different kind of frame over it for supporting the tomatoes.  Stay tuned for those updates later in the season.

We also added a couple other beds of bales that are not in a mesh and fabric frame.  Those will serve as controls in this experiment.  We have started conditioning the bales with 3 cups per bale of Milorganite high nitrogen, organic fertilizer and generous watering.  It will be very interesting to see how the contained bales do compared to the un-contained bales.

Greenhouse beds

Gonna play with growing tomatoes in a hot environment, too.  After finally getting the doors on the greenhouse and shelves made from bricks and panels from a couple cheap closet cabinets we no longer wanted, we were ready to figure out how to use this greenhouse for more than sprouting. We already missed the early part of the sprouting season for this year, but now we are set up for next year.  I can only take on so many parts of this learning curve at a time. 

For the upcoming growing season we are looking at which plants like it hot.  Tomatoes come to mind.  So do peppers and sweet potatoes.  We are going to try those in our greenhouse planted in real soil.  (Maybe we can do hydroponics later.)  I plan on taking half the south side for those plants, and the greenhouse is not that big, so I chose the 3 ft diameter Garden Circles.  

Turns out they fit great.  Imagine  a couple vining tomatoes in each of those garden beds growing up along the ceiling and cranking out tomatoes like crazy.  I like that mental image a lot. One will probably have sweet potatoes the same way.

Strawberry planters

Inspired by strawberries in a gutter, but big enough to be able to handle a lot of different types of plants, these triple-decker planters will help me make the most of my greenhouse space.  This first prototype started out 4 planters high, but it didn't fit so well against the curve of the greenhouse.

Now it is 3 beds high and fits much nicer.  Now I just have to make a bunch more of them.

Rhubarb - Lots of rhubarb

Along the lines of plants that are easy to grow forever, we also put in a bunch of rhubarb along a 60 ft length of fence on the west side of the garden.  Last year there were out of control grasses and weeds in that area, so to keep the cute little rhubarbies from getting overshadowed, we put down landscape fabric and covered that with wood chip mulch.

We put in about 30 along this fence  before running out of room and then another dozen or so along the walkway into the garden.  In a few years we will have sooooo much rhubarb we will be giving it away.  

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1. The squash vines are so big it kinda scares me.
2. I have so many fresh veggies I can't see my counter top anyone
3. The deer find it super convenient, now
4. My tractor doesn't have that tight a turning radius
5. It's hard to get the tiller up there
6. The combine can't reach the corn
7. My chiropractor misses me
8. You just killed my excuses for building raised beds for my wife.
9. They are too round
10. My dog doesn't dig holes in my garden anymore. He's sad.
11. My friends haven't been envious of my garden circles since they got their own
12. What if I wanted a Garden Circle triangle?
13. I used to do square foot gardening- now I have to do round foot gardening.
14. I filled up all the sunny spots in my yard already and now I might have to start cutting down the neighbor's trees.

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Top things you hear when selling Garden Circles

• Great, the deer will find that very convenient
• Cool idea/ Great idea / Neat Idea
• Why hasn’t anybody thought of this before?
• Yeah, I can't get down on my knees as well as I used to
• What is the fabric?
• I have been asking my husband to make me some raised beds
• My wife has been asking me to make raised beds
• That takes quite a bit of soil, doesn't it?
• Hugelkultur?  (blank look)
• I wish I didn't live in an apartment
• That's simple
• I have to take this home and show my husband/wife
• That is pretty affordable
• Wow (when they see the creative shapes that can be made)
• I'm so glad I saw you here
• I wish I would have seen this before I made ours.

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