Cultivating our Futures: Envisioning The People's Garden

Cultivating our Futures: Envisioning the People’s Garden

By Alissa Case (writing) and Vanessa Hoff (visual art)

Dear Community,

As spring emerges in Minneapolis, the rhythmic brilliance of perennials, the awesome power and potential of seeds, and the fungi’s ability to alchemize, transmute, and compost are potent reminders of knowledge that lives deep in our bodies. The Earth’s cyclical wisdom always seems to be right on time. Witnessing the resilience, growth, and healing capacities of our more than human kin is offering me, and I also hope, you, the ability to begin to digest all of the experiences of our collective winter of federal occupation and terror. For me, this moment has been an all-at-once experience of time – inside of a (non)linear present, shifting with our process and processing, simultaneously flowing with the currents of our histories and ripples of our futures. With this thicker and fuller sense of time, it is easy to see and feel that our ability to immediately activate a constantly expanding resistance rooted in love and care for our neighbors AND sustain it is the beautiful and powerful result of years of community led labor – organizing, building networks of care, practicing skills and adaptation, and open sharing of gifts, wisdom, and resources. We know in our bodies that we keep us safe.  And, because we experienced it again and again in all sorts of ways, we know that another world is possible. In Minneapolis, we know that through a vast system of hyperlocal communities, we have everything we need to sustainably seed a future where we are all safe, free and flourishing.   

Over the last two years through our work as educators and now at The House of Possibilities, we have been slowly dialoguing and dreaming about our vision for community care, interdependence, joy, and liberation.  For us, this begins with a garden.  We believe, as Myrtle Thompson-Curtis taught us, that you “grow a garden, grow a community.”  We long to co-create space in our neighborhood that feeds both our bodies and our spirits.  We want to help cultivate an inclusive intergenerational community of practice – seeding and nurturing relationships of mutual care with the land and each other; sharing food, skills, stories, and wisdom; making art; dialoguing, dreaming, and building worlds together where we are all thriving.  Norma Wong, Indigenous Hawaiian leader, teacher, and Zen master, describes the moment of time that we are in as a threshold, where we are both experiencing the violences of collapse and feeling the immense possibilities for radical fundamental change and the creation of new worlds. In order to practice and live toward the changes we long for, she encourages us to envision our “horizon story.”  This is taking the long view, deeply understanding our responsibility to each other and the Earth, naming what our collective liberation looks and feels like, doing our human work of becoming the people we need to be and taking the essential actions to create a different world.

Through the invitation of this teaching, we offer a glimpse of the near horizon.  

A Selection from “A Year in The People’s Garden: A Collective Journal of Daily Observations, Musings, and Abundant Gratitude”

August 14, 2038 (Saturday)

6:45 am – I arrived to a garden already buzzing with activity this morning – a chorus of pollinators humming in the flourishing native gardens, a small group doing yoga under the apple trees, folx arriving for morning coffee, and a gardener from the collective already lovingly making their rounds to the numerous veggie beds, noting the new growth since their tending last week and estimating today’s harvest for the weekly food share.  Witnessing this beautiful mutual flourishing, the care and abundance, never ceases to amaze me. (AC)

11 am – I love this point in the growing season – where it feels like every day the garden offers us a bounty that can feed a couple hundred.  A dozen of us just finished this morning’s harvesting and our food share stand (and a couple of extra folding tables!) is overflowing with tomatoes, peppers, green beans, collards, kale, mustard greens, chard, spinach, basil, mint, cilantro, sage, oregano, dill, rosemary, lavender, parsley, thyme, potatoes, squash, onions, cucumbers, and beautiful bouquets of cut flowers.  Community members are starting to arrive and so are all of the other gifts for sharing – various tinctures, salves, and teas from the collective of herbalists who steward the medicine gardens here, croissants, scones, and sourdough bread, spare fabric, jams, chutneys and pickled delights, paper made from plants in the garden, kombucha, eggs, bowls of raspberries, a table of zines, prints, books, and art.  Over the next couple of hours, countless neighbors will walk away with their arms full of gifts and joy on their faces.  I look forward to this time every week – I love this land and community. (VH)

2 pm – Our youth leadership council, The Dandelion Collective, has a busy afternoon today.  The bike shop we built last year is hosting a fix-a-flat skillshare in an hour and then the rest of the afternoon the shop will be open for anyone who needs tools and support.  There is a poetry writing session later on – most of the poets are working on pieces they will be sharing at their showcase during the Fall Equinox Community Celebration.  Then, there is a collaboration happening between the zine team and two artists from the neighborhood to hold a drawing class. Their work will contribute to a multivolume series highlighting plants growing here in the garden. These days are my favorite – so many people come through. A day of using my hands, making art, and connecting with my people, all surrounded by this abundant ecosystem always fills my spirit up. (LJ)

8 pm – As we are setting up the firepit tonight for our monthly “Making Music Under the Moon”, there are a handful of artists lingering from an early evening class, still working on their drawings as the light shifts in the sky.  Soon people will start arriving with various instruments, marshmallows to roast, and copies of lyrics to pass around.  I heard someone was bringing a telescope tonight and doing some sharing around stars, constellations and celestial navigation.  In no time we’ll be feeling the vibrations of the music, the energy of the Earth, and the medicine of the fire.  It’s going to be a beautiful summer night in the garden.  (IH and SO)

Beautiful people, we are so grateful to be your neighbors.  The House of Possibilities is a naming grounded in the values of emergence, abundance, community, love, dreaming beyond, and an openness to the care, beauty, and brilliance of each other and the Earth.  If this resonates with your spirit, we hope that you will join us in dreaming and co-creating the horizon stories we collectively long for right here in our neighborhood.  Together, let us grow The People’s Garden.

Learn more about the project’s commitment to our present and future

Join us at Dreamstate Cafe on May 16 from 1-5pm.  We’re having a party to benefit the garden!

Donate today – 100% of donations go directly to the purchase of land!

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