This morning, before I even left the house, I was sitting at my desk ordering the last few parts for our new automated watering system. Our Jeff and Bill have been designing this thing for months. The plan is to control the watering remotely from our phones. The garden is going high-tech, and I’m here for it. More on that when it’s fully up and running.

Shay and I got to the garden around 10:30 to find Bill and Jen already deep in it. Becky was there too, with Joe and their kids. Grace, who’s been logging hours toward her Master Gardener certification and came out with us last year, had already started watering the Giving Garden. Jen had pulled the harvest cart to the stand area, dusted it off for the season, and washed all the harvest bins. That’s the kind of person Jen is.

Fifteen volunteers showed up across the day. Here’s what we got done.

Rebuilding the U-Pick, One Layer at a Time

The main event today was pushing the U-Pick rebuild forward. The city wrapped its parking lot reconstruction this spring, a nearly $200,000 project that brought new pavement and a brand-new ADA-accessible ramp. Since then, we’ve been working to bring the front garden section back, better than before. The approach: weed fabric first, then cardboard on top, then about four inches of wood chip mulch, and finally the new raised beds.

Before anyone picked up a shovel, the whole crew stopped and looked at the space together. That hive mind moment (five minutes of walking through the layout, confirming bed placement, talking through where the new Friends of the Garden signs would go, checking for anything we hadn’t thought of) is worth more than it sounds. We found no gaps. We got to work.

Here’s where Michael Sharp deserves a shoutout. He’s been sourcing commercial Gaylord boxes from his workplace and donating them to us, and I have a new appreciation for cardboard I didn’t have before this season. Gaylord boxes are four-ply, and when you split the seam and unfold one, you’re working with a sheet that runs somewhere around 12 to 15 feet wide. Dense. Heavy. Near-impenetrable to weeds when laid flat over landscape fabric. They covered a massive amount of the area, and I have never been so excited about a box in my life.

Cardboard down. Four inches of mulch on top. Then the new raised beds into position: galvanized metal sides, wood trim at the top. Built over the past week by Becky, Joe, and Bill. They look great out there.

We didn’t stop at the first section. With about 20 minutes left in the day, we tackled the area to the right of Mr. Watermelon Man: pulled the beds aside, laid fabric, laid cardboard (another round of applause for those Gaylords), and got everything back in position. Next Saturday, we’ll finish placing all the beds on that side and start filling everything with soil and compost.

Jen also caught up with Tomato Bill while she was out there. He’s growing cantaloupe again this year and is fired up about a new cattle panel trellis he’ll be using to grow them vertically. He’s already got about 30 plants started at home and at the garden. His cantaloupe from last year were worth every bite, so the anticipation is real.

The Neighbor Who Put Down His Bags

Around noon the heat got to me, so I stepped out for a bit to cool off. Shay was ready to head home, so I dropped her off and came back to find a new face out front moving wheelbarrows of wood chips with the crew.

His name was Jon. He lives in the neighborhood, had been walking past on Nine Mile on his way to the pet store, saw people working, and asked if they needed an extra hand. He stuck around for about an hour until the last of the mulch was down. Then he headed off to finish his errand.

During a short shade break, someone mentioned that Bill and Jen make the drive down from Algonac every week. You could see the genuine confusion land on Jon’s face. He was trying to make sense of why two people would volunteer in a community that wasn’t technically theirs.

It’s not complicated, though. Zip code boundaries are imaginary. Jon himself proved that the moment he stopped walking and picked up a wheelbarrow handle.

What the Giving Garden Produced

While the front section crew ran on mulch and cardboard, Jen directed Becky through the Giving Garden harvest and Grace kept the watering going. Stefanie has been part of this garden for years, and today she harvested crisp peas and red radishes, then walked the back path to take in the poppies and wildflowers blooming along the edge of the property. She also weeded out lamb’s quarters from the compost pile and cleaned up near the gate. Her photos from today say everything.

Photo credit: Stefanie Swierkosz

Becky and I also filmed a short educational video about harvesting garlic scapes. I love making these little clips because you never know who they’re going to inspire. I’ll be honest: my questions during filming usually come from a completely genuine place of not knowing much about gardening. It’s literally real-time learning on camera. Becky, for her part, was fully equipped. Mostly because Bill had explained the whole process to her about 20 minutes before we hit record. We’re going to be TikTok famous!

Speaking about Becky, she has been coming out on weekdays this year, working alongside Bill, and picking up things she’d never touched before. Watching someone light up over garlic scapes for the first time is one of my favorite things about this place.

Total Giving Garden harvest for the day: 9.13 lbs. About a pound of berries, 1.38 lbs of garlic scapes, half a pound of peas, and nearly 6.5 lbs of radishes.

Strawberry Shortcake, Made From Garden Strawberries

Becky had harvested over two pounds of strawberries from the Giving Garden earlier in the week. She made strawberry sauce from them, picked up dessert cups and whipped cream, and showed up today with the full setup.

Strawberry shortcake. Made from strawberries we grew. Shared under a shade tent at the garden.

The kids were completely sold. Honestly, so was everyone else.

A Flag for the Pole

Lisa brought a Progress Pride flag to the garden today and we got it up together. It’s flying now on Nine Mile Road alongside the Urban Seed flag and our very excellent pirate flag.

The Eastpointe Community Garden is a safe space for everyone. The flagpole says it now.

The Neighbors Who Pulled a U-Turn

Later in the afternoon, Lulu and her daughter Sophia were driving past on their way home from the grocery store when they spotted the crew out front working on the U-Pick beds. They pulled a U-turn.

Lulu told us she used to volunteer at community gardens in Detroit years ago when she was a student and hadn’t thought much about it since. She jumped in and helped roll some tarp near the pond. Sophia and Rory hit it off immediately. When Lulu left, she said she felt blessed knowing this garden was that close to home.

She’ll be back. I have no doubt.

A Pepper Donation That Started With a Parade

When I got home, I had an email from a guy named Jeff. He grows peppers in containers and has extra plants he’d like to donate to the garden. Great news on its own.

Then I read the rest of the email.

Three years ago, we were walking in the Eastpointe Memorial Day Parade, handing out seed packets to neighbors and kids along the route. Something we do every year. Jeff got one of those packets. Jalapeno seeds. He planted them, got completely pulled in, and has been doing bucket gardening ever since.

Now, three years later, he’s reaching out to give something back.

We’ve handed out a lot of those seed packets. We have no idea what happened to most of them. Some probably ended up in a junk drawer. This one turned a neighbor into a gardener, and now that gardener wants to share what he grew.

You don’t always know what you’ve set in motion.

Oklahoma Showed Up in Our Mailbox

We also got a package today. The mailbox doesn’t see enough action for it to feel routine, so there was a small moment of excitement when we opened it.

It was from Paul. He lives in Oklahoma, and we met through a work networking group. He heard about what we’re doing at the Eastpointe Community Garden and wanted to be part of it somehow. So he bought a collection of seed packets and mailed them across the country.

An acre lot on Nine Mile Road in Eastpointe is connecting with people in states we’ve never visited. That still doesn’t fully compute. But I’m not going to argue with it.

What’s Next

We hit about half the list today. Next Saturday: finish positioning the beds to the right of Mr. Watermelon Man, start filling the new raised beds with chips and compost, plant the Giving Garden, get some new raspberries in the ground, weed the sponsor beds, and clean up the fire pit area.

If you’ve been thinking about stopping by, next week is a good time to do it.

Saturdays, 10 AM – 2 PM. 16425 Nine Mile Road, Eastpointe. No experience required. Just show up.