Green and Growing: More Poems about Gardens and Gardening

The 2025 gardening season began for me in February when I pruned the raspberries and tayberries (oh, those wicked thorns!). I wasn't yet truly done with the 2024 season, in the sense that I still had berries and vegetables in the freezer waiting for me to turn them into something despite the complete canapalooza canathon canstravaganza I put up in jars in 2024.

I created a big garden bed full of poems I harvested along the way that same year. They just keep coming, the way the world keeps turning, the sun keeps rising, rain keeps falling, seeds keep doing their amazing thing and turning into plants that make more seeds. 

Now it's 2026 and I'm deep into another year of gardening. Heirloom seeds courtesy of my neighbor's generous daughter populate my raised beds. She shared her large stock and even started some plants for me: peppers, tomatoes, cucumbers, five varieties of basil (Genovese, sweet, mammoth, Thai, ruby). Volunteer potatoes showed up early, telling me I didn't get all of them dug last fall. I relocated plant after plant into one raised bed that's now filled with a mass of greenery, the soil beneath where I hilled up the plants completely hidden. The new garden beds I created around a couple of trees give me more space for flowers. One of them bloomed with bulbs that I planted last fall. Those green shoots of hope poking through the soil shouted "Spring!", then died back as a reminder that I need to do more if I want color throughout summer and fall.

"Happiness"
Paisley Rekdal

I have been taught never to brag but now
I cannot help it: I keep
a beautiful garden, all abundance,
indiscriminate, pulling itself
from the stubborn earth:

Maya Stein

There are outlines of what will unfold in the beds.
That first tiny, ripe tomato. 


Curled carcasses of leaves all over the paths, kale stiff and starchy,
the basil stalks skeletal. What if, she wonders, I do nothing? A whole season
could pass this way, every death taking its own putrefying time and she
on the other side of the window, warming her toes on the hearth.

Joy Sullivan

I waited so long for love
and suddenly, here it is
standing in the garden, hands full
of heirlooms hot from the sun.

"In the Garden"
Fabiana Fondevila

There’s zeal ripening in the tomatoes
and purpose in the pumpkin vine
trampling its way to freedom.

There is inner city grit in the hydrangea
struggling to bloom
in its chewed up dress and tortured feet.


It is important for me to be down on my knees,
my fingers sifting the black earth,
making those things grow which will grow.
Sometimes I save a weed if its leaves
are spread fern-like, hand-like,
or if it grows with a certain impertinence.

"In Time"
Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

In soil not yet worked this spring,
two perfect rows of parsley emerge 
in a curly leafed celebration of green, 
vestiges from last year’s planting.


I’ve seen the neighbors frown when they look over the fence
And see our espalier pear trees bowing out of shape I did like that
They looked like candelabras against the wall but what’s the sense
In swooning over pruning I said as much to Mrs. Jones and I swear
She threw her cane at me and walked off down the street

"Making Sense - or I Pledge Allegiance" (scroll down on the page to find the poem)
Carrie Newcomer

I lift up my face to the summer sky
The sound of larks
And the feel of dirt
To all that keeps making sense
In senseless times.

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