Lincoln County Conservation District
Davenport Community Garden
Your Donations Make a Big Difference
Contributions from the community are what help get this project closer to becoming reality!
The Davenport Community Garden is complete and is alive and green!
It takes more than dirt to grow a garden.
A true Community Garden is 10% Garden and 90% Community.
To the entire Community of Davenport and all the volunteers:
THANK YOU!
Here is how we got there...
This is a shared space, and we encourage seed swapping/donation! Visit our seed library setup in the Community Garden shed.
If you have seeds to share, feel free to add them to the library!
There are also Free seeding trays and pots available (first come first serve)
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Contact us @ 509-725-4181 X119
Sponsor a Space
Sponsor a Brick Today!
T-shirt Sale
The Lincoln County Conservation District is selling "I Grow My Own Food" t-shirts. For $20, you can take a t-shirt home for yourself! All proceeds go toward the Davenport Community Garden Renovation Project.
*No Shipping! Pick up your t-shirts at the LCCD office!*
Xeriscaping
Xeriscaping refers to the conservation of water through creative landscaping. Originally developed for drought-afflicted areas, the principles of xeriscape today have an ever broadening appeal.
Xeriscape landscapes are defined as “quality landscaping that conserves water and protects the environment.” There are seven principles associated with Xeriscape landscapes:
Xeriscape or Bust
Written by Linda Prado
Communication Intern at Lincoln County Conservation District
My first day as an intern and I’m already hitting the ground running- literally, as my new boss, Val, and I make our way through town to get to the community garden. Ok, not literally. We’re actually just walking. While we’re strolling, Val tells me about the new renovations the Conservation District is planning to make on the garden. She warns me how badly it needs a make-over, and I tell her I had an idea of what she meant.
But what I had in mind was not nearly as exaggerated as it should’ve been.
As we step through the garden’s entrance, I immediately notice the bareness, the dryness. Woodchips and weeds are all that cover the ground. The cracked wood boxes splinter off to join the parched medley down below. Suddenly, I understand why Val was so excited for the renovation plans.
After we water the tomato plants, we head back to the office, where Val hands me the fattest folder I’ve ever seen. It’s
all the research she’s done on community gardens, and all the plans she has for our garden’s make-over. Inside, I find design layouts and professional drawings of what the garden will look like.
The drawings show me a garden that I’m not used to seeing. They depict a place filled with native grasses, shrubs, boulders and rocks of all shapes and sizes. No rose bushes or flowers. No grass. Not even a single little sapling. But oddly enough, it still looks… Beautiful. Inviting. Encouraging.
I’m intrigued.
Diving deeper into the folder of garden knowledge, I come to find that this type of landscaping is called “xeriscape.” Xeriscaping is the practice of substituting grassy, water-reliant lawns with native, drought-resistant vegetation. The main purpose of this is to conserve water, and help demonstrate a fire resistant landscape. How clever, I think to myself.
Even though I’m new to the Davenport area, I’ve already heard of the city’s limited water resources. In the middle of miles of wheat fields, that news wasn’t all that surprising to me. Lincoln County is currently experiencing a two-year drought. Although this spring has been uncharacteristically wet, it unfortunately will not last. Growing up in Central Washington, I also personally know of the severe fire seasons. I have friends who have experienced the threat of flames at
their doorsteps. At the end of the day, we all need to be aware and prepared to combat fire. Especially in a dry area like Davenport.
After those devastating fires of 2015, preventative measures are being taken not only at the state level, but community and individual levels as well. Landowners are looking at ways to protect their homes, neighborhoods want to prevent any large fires from reaching their area, and small towns with limited water resources, like us, are trying to conserve the water needed to combat these inevitable fires.
So imagine my delight as I’m reading about the incredible benefits of xeriscaping. It’s a literal answer to all of these prayers.
Did you know that lawn maintenance is the greatest water consumer in the US? In the Inland Northwest, the average household’s water usage in the summer is 885 gallons per day. Xeriscaping can reduce landscape water usage by 50-75%. That’s a LOT of saved water. Water that can later be used to fight fire.
By using fire resistant plants, such as lavender, sage, or succulents, land owners can protect their homes with an aesthetically pleasing defensible space. Plus, these types of plants hardly require any maintenance!
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For all of these reasons, it’s easy to understand why the xeriscaping design is being applied to the new garden. The dry woodchips will be substituted with gravel and rocks, the splintered garden boxes will soon be replaced by ADA compliant boxes, and the weeds will all be pulled and exchanged for fire resistant shrubs and native grasses. Technically, the garden will still be dry, but at least it will have a better chance of surviving a fire, and look beautiful while doing it.
Once the renovations are complete, the xeriscape garden will be an excellent education and demonstration site to promote the use of xeriscaping and water conservation. We’re providing the community with an opportunity to see and understand for themselves why they should consider applying a xeriscape design to their own yards. Not only will it be a site for education, but also a site for reminding the community to always conserve water, and be inspired by the green life of the garden.