 I'm Chantal, I'm a retired physician and I'm a moon gardener. Lunar gardening is something that's been going on for centuries, farmers have developed it, but it's become more of a quote-unquote science. I started planting according to the lunar cycles. I have found that by putting it into practice, things grow much faster than they would otherwise. And I think what it's got to do is got to do with putting yourself in sync with the rhythms of the seasons and the rhythms of the earth and the rhythms of planting. And I think that when you put yourself in sync with the seasons, when you're in touch with nature, you feel different. You are more grounded, it's a different feeling. And I think that that's what permeates this garden. As a result of the fact that this garden is on a street corner, there's a lot of foot traffic around it. I don't have a fence, so it doesn't make any sense for me to try to keep things to myself. So it was almost out of necessity that I created a garden that's open to the community. This just happens to be where I can garden, so I'm gardening out front. That necessity pulled me out of myself. It pulled me out of my depression. It put me back in touch with the community. And now a lot of different things have grown out of it. I put out this little stand, which has become an exchange. When I have excess produce, I put it in there. People can pick it up. When people have excess stuff from the neighborhood, they'll come in, they'll put it there. It's just a really nice way for people to share what they've got. I started the garden on this little plot right here, which is about, I think, 10 by 20 feet. And that was the very first garden. Everything else when I started gardening was lawn, except for just a little border over here. And when I first started gardening, it was not really in my mind to do anything other than just to plant a few flowers and to have a pretty garden. But the real urge to garden, and this particular garden, came about after I got really sick. I hurt my back and had a couple of spine operations. And the recovery was very, very difficult and long. I was on a lot of medication, became very, very depressed. And just found really a very hard time motivating myself to do anything. I had so much pain I couldn't stand for very long to do anything inside the house. It was hard to imagine that I could even do anything outside. But I had this urge. It was like a elemental force that said, come and do this. You can do this. I didn't listen at first because it seemed impossible when I couldn't stand up to cook a meal. How was I going to come out and build a garden? But that voice wouldn't stop. It just said, yeah, you can do this. You can do this. Come out and garden one day. I remember that I had this little stool that rolled around and I put on my back brace and I slipped an ice pack in the back here. And I came out and before I knew it, I had cleared up the space. And within a few days, I had actually, I planted my very first garden and I got enough vegetables out of that very first garden to share with a lot of people. And that's what got me going. This part is the herb garden. And I always tell my students, if you're going to have an herb garden, you must put it really, really close to your front door. It has to be just within a few steps so that when you want something, you can walk out, clip it and walk back inside. So I've got parsley, oregano, all of my culinary herbs, but I also grow some medicinal herbs. I've got lemon balm, I've got lemon verbena, fever fuel, and I like to make my own soaps and I make my own creams and lotions. So I use the herbs and the flowers from the garden to infuse oils and then from those oils I make the different products. And I use, that's pretty much what we use for the whole family. I make enough so that I can ship out to the whole, to my family at Christmas time. And that's my Christmas gift. Lavender is one of my favorite plants. It's one of my favorite plants. I think it's really calming. If you've got any kind of anxiety, you want to have lavender growing in your garden. And certainly as a stress believer, it's just a wonderful scent. This is French lavender and I propagated it and grew a whole hedge out of that one plant. It's one of the things I talked during the class. I specifically created a path from one side to the other to encourage people to come through the garden and to wander and to cut through and to sit down if they wish. I have a lot of fruit trees growing. This is my guava tree and you can see some guavas we're going to be making guava jelly this year. This is a satsuma tangerine. That's a mango tree right there. Gave some beautiful mangoes and there's a cherry moya tree, a couple of pear trees and plum and nectarine. I've always got kale growing and I like to keep the kale right in front because I encourage people to pick it themselves and the kids love to come by and pull the kale and just chew at it. This is my vegetable exchange stand. People will bring things that they have extras of and whenever I have any extras, I'll put it in there and whatever the neighborhood partakes. I have a few more beans growing so this was loaded up with beans. You can see they're really drying up and I've left them on the vine to dry up because I want the seeds for next year so I don't have to go and buy any more seeds. I just collect the dry seed pods and wait until they're completely dry and then I will use those seeds for my next year's crop. Happy and that little thing, that little pole with the can at the top that's where I put peanuts for my friend Blue Jay and he comes and eats the peanuts but he stays around and eats the bugs too so I encourage him to visit the garden because that's my pest control. I've got bird feeders hanging all through the garden for the same reason because you bring the birds to your garden they will help you out by eating the insects. Today with the children of the neighborhood we planted the box and this is our winter vegetable box so we planted kale, lettuce, broccoli, onions there's cauliflower and there are flowers growing to attract beneficial insects all throughout the box. At the bottom it's full of logs so it's called a hoogle culture because it's very expensive to fill a box with a lot of soil and you can get away by putting a bunch of twigs and grasses and everything at the bottom put about four inches of soil and that's all you need to grow and as things go along the branches will decompose and actually rot and turn into soil so that's what's going on with this box. We planted a bunch of trees along the parkway now that we have gotten permission to grow food on the parkways so I've got citrus growing on the parkway. The outside of the garden is not irrigated at all and only depends on whether I water it or the weather waters it and that's because it's meant to be a permaculture garden so it should not really depend on watering it's hard to maintain at first but once you get it going you just have absolutely no worries it just keeps itself going so it may not be obvious to put roses but roses are actually really hardy they are drought tolerant and they will reward you with a profusion of flowers whenever it starts to rain again I find them good plants to interspers These are my favorite roses and I plant roses in remembrance of people so when I lose a friend or a family relative I will plant a rose bush so there's a rose bush this is my aunt's rose bush she likes yellow roses and there's one planted for my mother so yeah, it's my way of keeping their memory alive I have one more plant that in terms of memory and keeping things alive is really important to me that I'd like to show you so it's over here and it's right by my door it's not a very showy plant at all and it doesn't look fabulous but it means a lot okay, so this aloe plant was given to me as a gift from a family that has preserved it since the middle passage this particular plant made it through the middle passage was smuggled aboard ship by a slave it was grown in the fields of America that family escaped to Canada they took the plant with them and grew it over there some of them came back to the United States they came to Maryland, they brought the plant to Maryland and some of them moved to not too far from here a few blocks away from here and I was lucky enough to get a piece of it we don't have very many things to connect us to our past there's a big block that's been taken away from us and to have anything that you can touch that carries the memory of your ancestors be there, not even blood-related to me this is my talisman it's amazing to have this it's just amazing I take my inspirations from some people that I really admire Vanda Nashiva is one of my heroes she started the seed-saving movement in northern India after the epidemic of farmer suicides up there and she has been a real force against Monsanto she established an organization that has really revitalized seed-saving and heirlooms seeds in India and really it's an amazing woman so she's one of my inspirations she says that to garden, to produce your own food is a revolutionary act because right now we are so enslaved by our systems our food production systems the way that they've been set up there's not enough response to demand and our food is shipped from all over the place you don't know what's on it you don't know what pesticides are on it what preservatives half the time it's been picked before it's ripe and it's been subjected to gas in order to ripen it artificially it's not real nutritious food and it's really really important I think to everyone to get their hands in the dirt and to get back to growing something whatever it is on your balcony wherever you can find some open space a little bit of sunshine grow something it'll make you better it'll make your life better