Vegetable and fruit gardeners in Bangor and Brewer are joining together Saturday to show others what’s growing in the cities.
They want the free self-guided tour and workshops to inspire and educate people to till up at least a little bit of their lawns in favor of food.
The gardeners will be on hand to talk about what they grow, how they do it and what they’ve learned. Featured sites grow vegetables, fruits, flowers and pollinator plants both at private homes and community centers.
“There is much higher and better use for people’s space around their house if they had a garden rather than grass,” said Larry Dansinger, an environmental and social activist who organized the first urban garden tour last year.
He’s found at least 20 homes where people are growing food in the cities and hopes to expand that number greatly. Dansinger lists benefits to urban gardening that include environmental health, pollinator habitat, the local economy, human health, food security and food quality, along with promoting a feeling of self-reliance.
“Taking a very small seed and creating a very large plant, there’s joy in that,” he said.
He and his partner moved to Bangor from Monroe in 2015 and established a backyard garden that supplies almost all the vegetables and most of the fruit they eat.
Riding his bicycle around Bangor and Brewer, Dansinger noticed a handful of other yards where people were growing food. He recruited some of them for the tour along with people he knows, and the group is eager to hear from others who want to join their efforts.
City gardening means space is at a premium, and sites on the tour range in size and scope from a full garden to a walkway lined with vegetables. That’s intentional.
“The idea is to try and have a variety of gardens so that everyone who comes to the tour can say, ‘I can do that,’” Dansinger said.
The tour also offers fun educational handouts and free seeds including lettuce and radishes. Those are short-season vegetables visitors could take home, plant the next day and harvest before the end of the growing season.
Participants can also learn how to build garden beds and preserve food at Food AND Medicine’s solidarity center in Brewer beginning at 3 p.m.
The solidarity-focused organization, which works to address poverty through programs including food access and gardening, sponsored the tour this year and helped organize it. These workshops were chosen to teach people basics they can use when they start growing their own food.
“Grow your own,” Dansinger said. “Those three words are the simplest way of talking about the urban garden tour.”
Six locations will be open to visitors for free from 9 a.m. to noon on Saturday, and six more will host from 1 to 4 p.m. The rain date is Sunday, Aug. 4.
A full tour itinerary and garden addresses are available on the Food AND Medicine website.
