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Urban Gardens An easy way for me to connect with a new town is to approach a house with an interesting garden, ring the doorbell, introduce myself as a gardener, and ask permission to look around. Every garden is different, but all gardeners share an enthusiasm for showing off what they have made. Even the crustiest gardener will soften if you can spot an intriguing plant and, while remarking on it, pronounce its Latin name correctly. One gardener will refer you to another and before long someone will invite you to eat out of the garden. At that point, you, the stranger, are inside the fence, part way home, backing into Eden. Cleveland was never paradise but it has a long history of involvement with gardens, most interestingly those connected with schools. While school programs have diminished, some remnants remain and some of the original school gardens still exist, although most are now maintained as gardens for the neighborhood. While photographing in these gardens I saw people of every category brought into serendipitous relationships by their interest in growing plants. I watched them work contiguous plots while sharing recipes across cultures and relating experiences across class and circumstance. I came to believe that if Thoreau was right that "in wildness is the preservation of the world," it is equally true that in gardens are the roots of community. But enough of social uplift. Photographing gardens in Cleveland was frenetic but fun. Gardens contain all of life's riotous complexity compressed into one growing season. Change occurs daily. Weather rules. There is always some disaster, even in the best gardens. One thing that made Cleveland a special pleasure for me was the large-heartedness of the gardeners, their direct generosity, even when the sun baked, the rain flooded, or the wind laid waste. And when things worked perfectly, they put it down to good fortune, not their skill. Why tempt fate? Nowadays, if I'm driving past Cleveland late in the season I know which exit to take, which side street to go down, and which door to knock on to visit for a while and then be invited to harvest for myself some especially delicious vegetables and herbs, and perhaps be offered a division from one of that garden's plants. Back in Madison, Cleveland's abundance makes me doubly welcome to my wife, a great cook. Next morning a Cleveland transplant sets its roots in Wisconsin soil. Maybe in the spring, headed to the coast, I will return the favor. The power of gardening to link disparate people and distant places is one of humankind's oldest stories-the one just before agriculture and civilization and the rest of it.
About Gregory Conniff Since 1978 Gregory Conniff, a lawyer turned photographer, has traveled around the United States making straightforward black-and-white photographs of the landscape. Avoiding popular or picturesque sites, he has sought out locations that elucidate humanity's attachment to the land. He is especially interested in how people accommodate themselves to the places where they live and work. His explorations have taken him through such venues as his own back yard, southern waterways, rust-belt industrial sites, the Upper Midwest, and the arid northern Plains.
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