The Becky Spach Landes Memorial Garden

Today’s guest garden comes to you from our friend Maintzie in South Carolina.

Anyone can have a veggie garden or a flower garden.  We all garden for the same essential reasons.  For the most part, we grow the same things.  Growing your own veggies is economical, the taste is fresher, the nutrients truer.  Nurturing a flowerbed is self-satisfying.  Surrounding yourself with beautiful blooms is relaxing at the end of the day.  Both are rewarding.  They require a lot of hard work to realize your return on investment.  The GrowDammit gardens are just ordinary in the grand scheme of things.

Memorial gardens are the cream of the crop. They are special because not only do you have reason, but you have purpose.

Ted & I went to high school with Becky.  We have fun, yet distant memories of partying with her.  She was a punk rock, skater girl back then.  We both lost track of her after high school, until Facebook reconnected us.  Even then, for me at least, the interaction was minimal.  I remember seeing her post about her family life and her adored children.  I don’t always comment on pics or statuses on FB, but I do try to pay attention to them. Her love of nature struck me, as did her posts about gardening.  Becky was taken from her family and friends way too soon in 2009.

And this brings us to the Becky Spach Landes Memorial Garden that has been established in the great state of South Carolina by her friend, and ours, Maintzie.  (If you bother to go back and read the blog comments, you’ll see Maintzie is a regular.)

We asked Maintzie what it was about Becky to inspire her memorial garden.  She gave us not only what touched her about Becky in life, she gave us what she does to honor her memory.

“I've had gardens in the past, and never has it been an all organic garden. Becky had a knack for gardening and firmly believed in all natural. She was a huge environmentalist. I figured when we planted last year we would go organic all the way in her memory. She was a beautiful soul, and I wanted to keep her memory alive and honor her and that was the best way I knew how. We don't use chemicals.  We use bamboo as stakes, hemp garden twine and try to recycle rainwater as Becky did. It is a hell of a lot harder, but I loved her and just feel like she is still here in some way with our garden. Even though her death makes no sense to me and never will, the garden gives me some comfort. Corny I know, but it’s all I have of her now so that's what I do.”

The only thing I have to add is that how you handle grief and loss is never corny (not even if you plant plastic flowers on a grave).  Thank you Maintzie for helping us remember a friend gone, but not forgotten.

Maintzie recently has some kind of squash eating larvae infiltration.  The solution presented to her at first was larvae cutting.  We’ve all agreed that this is butt nasty.  She has purchased an organic larvae Agent Orange, and intends to go all Ninja on their asses…the Becky Spach Landes way of course.

Next...Wooly Aphids