A Piece of Peace: Q&A with the Anonymous Gardener of a Tiny Park on Connecticut Avenue
I’m sitting in a small wooden chair, facing Connecticut Avenue, reading my book and trying to drown out the car noise. I get some looks, and I don’t know if they’re directed toward me or the fact I’m in a garden smack dab in the middle of one of the busiest streets of the city.
These fifty-ish cubic feet of green space are a stark contradiction to “the hellscape that is Woodley Park on Connecticut Ave,” as one online commenter called it. There are multiple trees, one of which hosts a wire bird feeder. There’s a clear path to walk through, neighbored by plants like squash and mint and even a pomegranate tree. And there are the chairs and table — which is actually a cupboard that houses all sorts of books, like a little lending library.
As I’m waiting, a group of elementary schoolers walk by, enamored by the sight. “What a nice garden!” a teacher remarks. I’m unsure if he’s saying it to me, or the kids, but I smile.
Another person stops to ask me what the deal with the garden was. I tell her what I know and that I was actually waiting to find out more. It’s then that the mastermind behind the whole project appears.
I first noticed the garden a few months ago and admired it every time I was in the neighborhood. I also noticed that the space was rarely empty. The gardener is almost always tending to it and making conversation with those who engaged, sometimes playing chess. He was happy to talk about the creation of the garden (we had agreed to meet that Tuesday) as long as I kept his name out of it, perhaps to preserve some sort of mystery. During the course of the conversation, multiple people came over to say hello to the gardener — he’s clearly well-received (and recognized) in the area.
Our interview has been edited for length and clarity.
How did you get the idea to kind of create this space?
It was kind of a calling in the air. Some people would call it schizophrenic, I just say I was listening to my inner tuition.
I’ve been helping around in the neighborhood for a very long time. It originally started probably when I was 15. I took places that were abandoned and misused, resurrecting them and making them cleaner for community-based reasons.
I engage, I listen, I see. I get to tap on spots that are not seen, even though they’re in plain sight. Before I really broke ground, and it gets a little spiritual here, I did have a conversation with God. I was like, “Is this okay, can I do this right now? Is it all right?” I wanted to make sure at least, again with my inner tuition, that it was all right.
A lot of people come in and ask several different things like, “Did you get a permit? Did you do this? Did you do that?” And I take that as a top-down look, going to the head and asking, “Hey, can the body do this?” But sometimes the head has to receive what the body is doing. I took a bottom-up approach, checking in with the community before I go to the Council.
It’s really a lesson in sustainability, turning small places into places that can bring people together, teach people where their food comes from, engage the children with different things. There’s a little bit of everything in here for everybody.
When did you first break ground on the garden?
It was about three years ago. In my house, I start everything from seed or from roots. I pull things out from the ground just randomly walking on the sidewalks. I’ll find mint growing randomly, or oregano and, and I tried to propagate them in my own house. My house started getting overfilled and I was like, “I need to put this down somewhere.”
Before I even broke ground, I had mint, basil, and bell peppers in the weeds. No one noticed, except for those that have that keen eye. I would notice them from a distance and I’d see someone pick my bell pepper.
The next year, after everything was gone, the mint showed up again. That was to me a way of saying, “Hey, start this up again, but do it a little bit more professional this time. It doesn’t have to be in the weeds.”
I just went and built the trail. I pushed out all the weeds. I cornered all the trees so that it had this natural path that was already formed by the trees and I could see it because I have an ability to step back and look and gauge, kind of like an architect’s eye. I can see small details.
I had the table set up, the bricks came from construction down the yard, the rocks were from gutter rocks, they’d fallen over. Every little thing was free. All the plants that I plugged in here, were being thrown away from Ace Hardware. So in less than, like a month, this was a garden.
I wanted it to be manageable for children. It is not accessible to is the handicap, and that’s something that’s always bothered me. If I’m given a chance to work it out again, I’d make it so that at least the outer lane was accessible by wheelchair. But yeah, It’s been a fun process.
Were there any hoops you had to go through?
A person from the Department of Energy realized that this was a good stepping stone for one of Muriel Bowser’s campaign platforms, bird and pollination stations, so they gave me seeds to hand out.
Police officers would come by and kind of check it out. And they say, “Wow, we wish we were doing this. “ They’re checking to see if there was malice behind this. You could see they were trying to put their thumb on the on what’s going on here.
Do you come here every day? Rain or shine? How long do you stay normally?
I was here in the rain yesterday. [I’m here] sometimes six hours a day. I think the act of gardening is very important, not just the garden itself. When the garden is by itself, people can interact with it how they are. But then having a gardener within the garden, showing little things like pulling out a weed here, planting something there, plucking a fruit here. That is definitely the vision I want to place in other people’s minds that don’t have that exact vision when they think about taking care of the land.
It seems like you have people who recognize you?
I was born in this neighborhood. So 36 years, and this one neighborhood here, less than two blocks in every direction, this was my stomping grounds. Those are the first people that know me.
I’ve been a community server my whole life. So they know me as well because I’ve had jobs all throughout this neighborhood. And it’s kind of like, “Oh, you’re here now?”
I went through all the schools in the neighborhood, so I catch all my old friends. They come by and see me. I went to Oyster, which is right around the corner, so I really connect to those kids whenever they walk by.
What are your hopes for the future of the garden?
This garden specifically, I haven’t maxed out its potential. It always has room to grow every season and new concepts.
I have other places that I’m working on right now. I am sadly — and not so sadly — a prospector of joy and locations that can facilitate it. The next one, without putting so many words, it’ll be more theatrical. This is more garden and natural. The next one will be a more theatrical place where people can sing act, that don’t generally have the means to do it.
What do you hope that people will get out of the garden?
The big one is remembering a little bit of what we’re here to do, not just for the planet, but for each other. To take care of each other to protect each other in times of need, that includes what remaining innocence we have.
I want there to be green zones, so that both good and bad can sit down and just chill. Just having facilitating places where we can breathe and feel human again. That is the biggest part, is to engage in conversations like we used to, when we didn’t have our brains filled with so many thoughts.
Is there anything else that you think’s important to add?
I used to leave apples and oranges and a plate of fruit over here. And I’ll go back to that in a moment or two.
When it gets hot, I leave water for people. At one point, when it first started, people would hand me cash from the street. All the money that people gave me, I put it into a cup right in the center of the garden. For probably a month and a half, there was like $120 right here in the middle of the street. No one noticed it.
