Making the most of gardening moment
HOUSATONIC COMMUNITY COLLEGE DEAN OF ACADEMIC AFFAIRS ROBIN L. AVANT WRITES ABOUT HOW TO GET STARTED
Robin L. Avant has good timing. The Housatonic Community College Dean of Academic Affairs has published her first book “The Spirit of Gardening: Gardening for New Bees The Life Revealed Through Gardening,” at a time when a pandemic- induced quarantine has a lot of people turning to the activity as a way to do something productive in these trying times.
Avant, a Bridgeport resident, completely gets why growing something out of the soil would be comforting for people right now.
“I think it’s also about an interest in sustainability and green living, and about being healthier,” she says.
At a time when people might want to limit their trips to the grocery store, producing food at home might also have an appeal, she says. But for Avant, whose background is in biomolecular science, gardening has always been about the process.
Though she grew up among gardeners, Avant didn’t get into the habit herself until she was well into adulthood. Her grandmothers — one Black and from the American south, the other white and from England — were both avid gardeners, but her parents didn’t engage in the activity. Avant theorizes that that is why she didn’t immediately take to gardening either.
“It was just a block,” she says. “My parents didn’t do it, so I didn’t do it. I always saw ( my grandmothers) doing it, but never participated.”
Avant was active in lots of other ways as a child, learning photography, gymnastics, swimming and a bunch of other hobbies. “But I never did gardening,” she says. “I don’t know why.”
Fast forward many years later, to 2010 when a colleague at HCC starting bringing food from his garden into the office. Avant suddenly found her long- suppressed gardening instincts springing to life, and peppered her co- worker with questions.
“I didn’t really care about the food itself,” Avant explains. “I would ask: ‘ How are you doing this?’ ”
Avant says it was the science of turning a tiny seed into something substantial — be it food or flowers — that finally got her to engage in it.
“I continued to learn independently, trying, failing, trying harder and eventually succeeding in gardening,” she writes in her book.
She learned about succession planting — how to organize your garden so that, as one crop’s season ends, another one’s starts. She learned about indoor gardening, so that the mercurial New England weather wouldn’t be a barrier to her green thumb.
And she’s passing a lot of that knowledge along in “The Spirit of Gardening,” which offers advice about planting seasons, growing specific crops and designing an “area map” of where each item should be grown.
The short book — which clocks in at just over 100 pages — contains multiple color photos of fruits, vegetables and herbs. There are spaces in the book where readers can map out their gardens and there are pages in the back where novice gardeners (“new bees,” as Avant calls them) can paste a picture of their gardens and scribble some notes about their successes and failures.
“It’s just a simple book, and it’s very colorful,” Avant says.
She hopes people will use the book as a tool to learn more about producing their own food, and about how therapeutic gardening can be.
“It’s about relaxation, enjoyment, awareness and education,” Avant says.