Category Archives: community gardens

Photos with Stories Reveal the Vitality of Northampton Street Community Garden

One of my first posts ( January 2021) focused on photos I took as an enthusiastic but infrequent visitor* to Northampton Street Community Garden. This sequel adds views of an insider, someone who has worked the soil there for several years with attention to significant events in her surroundings. As I requested, she has selected from her own photos and provided her own words to identify or explain them.

Clematis in Cambridge

Clematis vines, leaves and beginning buds are graceful in themselves, while signaling the promise of slightly translucent flower petals unfurling, emerging from the subtle green overlapping leaves. Not sure my words or photos (from streets in my neighborhood) will convey the significance of clematis in my life, but here’s a chance to try.

Community Garden, Sacramento Street, Cambridge, June 2015

In 2015, years before I had an iPhone, I took most photos with a Canon Powershot and edited them with Picture Manager on my PC. I was trying to capture the fleeting perfection of peonies, poppies, and irises to send to friends and family far from Cambridge or to save such moments for myself. Though even the few selected here fall short of the experiences of being there, they remind me of those invigorating visits.

Community Garden, Sacramento Street, Cambridge, 2020

More than any year before, I was taken by the abundance of colors, styles, variations in this community garden two blocks from my home. Ever plotless, luckily I was still welcome to wander the paths among distinctly different plots that enhanced each other. Ever clueless, I enjoyed absorbing random clues to the way people managed their parts and the whole of this shared space.

Community Garden, Northampton Street, Boston, 2018 and 2019

To follow my own blog rules, I’ve somehow selected seven photos from so many I’ve taken during years of visiting this wonderful community garden, where my family members tend a productive lot. I keep marveling at the dense collection of splendors and and surprises surrounded by city buildings.