"It's my life's mission to make it so that everyone is forced to learn how to garden!"
Well, maybe not forced, Brie Arthur admits, but she loves sharing the joy and satisfaction people can get from growing their own food. That's what her presentations are about this weekend at Crystal Bridges Museum: Arthur will reveal ways anyone (even those of us in tiny apartments) can grow a little something and take advantage of space and technologies we may not have realized were available to us.
FAQ
Discover the Grounds:
‘The Foodscape Revolution’
With Brie Arthur
WHEN — 10 a.m. Saturday; seeding demonstrations throughout the afternoon during the Garden Party
WHERE — Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville
COST — Free
INFO — 418-5700, crystalbridges.org
"I think that everybody can recognize no one has a lot of free time nowadays, so I'm trying to really show how you can garden and cook from things in the raw and it still not take up all of your life," she shares. Even just something small and easy like garlic or peanuts can yield surprising results -- and confidence. "I try to give people some really simple tips on how they can use their bed edges and not work very hard and ultimately get a meaningful amount of food from something they grew. It's very satisfying to just rip plants [like garlic and peanuts] out of the ground at the end of the season. I think sometimes if people were to start with root crops rather than fruiting crops like tomatoes ... Tomatoes will hurt your feelings in a skinny minute, but garlic and peanuts will make you feel like a superhero."
Arthur's new book, "The Foodscape Revolution," explores how to use edible plants in landscaping alongside ornamentals. She also shares options for people with limited space or no green thumb to speak of. Her first talk at the museum will end with a Bloody Mary demonstration -- "to show people how to deal with all those tomatoes they get in the middle of the summer" -- and in the afternoon, Arthur will be working with seeds to engage kids in gardening.
"I spend a lot of time teaching children how to grow plants so that when they're my age, they aren't in the situation we're finding millennials -- with no experience growing and they're really intimidated by it," Arthur says. "Whether you're managing a landscape or not, you're likely passing by 50 or 100 landscapes every single day and not even really realizing it. Both talks are a way of looking at all of the open space between the plants that already exists and just being creative and figuring out ways you can use that open space to be able to feed your community."
-- JOCELYN MURPHY
JMURPHY@NWADG.COM
NAN What's Up on 05/12/2017