JanG's Goals Articulation

Intro/Context:
This garden is designed for Jim and Anne Marie Treger and their three sons, Brian, Andrew and Charlie. Jim is an investment banker with J. P. Morgan and Anne Marie is charismatic, high-energy community organizer and environmental activist.
The garden design fully permeates the entire property and its paths, play areas and contemplative spaces are oriented to accommodate the flow of activities between indoors and outdoors. The garden is 60% shaded from mature forest borders; the lawn in the front of the house and wooden deck in the back of the house receive the most sun.
Furthermore, this edible forest garden is situated in the middle of a slope; the water run off from the top of the hill streams through the back yard and pools up in the back yard of the neighbor below. This garden is designed to catch all that wonderful water-energy, to heal erosion and to restore the soil.

Goals Articulation

This garden is a welcoming and comfortable place for hosting parties, events, workshops and tours:
---Spontaneous teaching and learning happens
---Visitors are inspired to plan and implement their own gardensVisitors are inspired to retain
pc designers to implement and teach
This garden is kid planned and kid played:
---A spacious and rugged play area; nothing off limits,
---Flexible and resilient plantings.
---Favorite edibles are incorporated in the design;
---Blueberries and raspberries are lavishly cultivated.
---Awesome variety of fruits, nuts and vegetables are introduced.
---boys’ play set is nested and accented with edible vegetation. Comfortable seating
constellations provide grandparents a place to relax and watch children play.
This garden design is a comprehensive water catchment system that absorbs and stores
and distributes all available water and eliminates erosion and achieves 100% on-site rain
water retention:
---A series of catchments and terraces along the high side of the property slow and spread
all the runoff from the lots above.
---Water that now crosses driveway surface (freezes in winter) is caught in rain-barrel
above driveway. The aged asphalt of the driveway is perferated in some artistic way,
custom designed “grass paveer”.
---Roof top vegetation absorbs rain water and any overflow is directed to ponds and swales.
---Soil is rehydrated, restored and held in place by plants and understory trees.
---Wild mushrooms and mosses love to volunteer in this garden especially on
SE side of house where shade and moisture are predominant.

This garden meets all its needs and provides excess for family and community:
---Fresh vegetables, nuts, fruits, herbs and mushrooms are harvested and distributed
to family, friends and community.
---Creates soil by composting on siteRestores soil nutrients by planting comfreys,
vetches and legumes
---Fruit and nut trees in sunny locations, as well as vegetables,
---Mushrooms and mosses are invited to grow in the shade and moisture of the
northeast side of the house.
This garden is a predominantly self-restoring and self-maintaining ecosystem.
---It is easy and inexpensive to maintain and becomes more stable and diverse over time.
---This garden asks question, “What if I do nothing here?
---This garden demonstrates the principle, “Make least change for greatest possible effect.”
---Persistent, hardy adaptable attractive in all seasons
---Thoroughly utilize deck and roof top as zone 1 and primary sunny area.
---Deck and trellis provide vertical growing space for climbing perennials
(kiwi) and annuals (beans and peas)
---Leggy, old shrubs, suffering from malnutrition, are replaced by beautiful,
edible shrubs. Old shrubs that can be pruned and revitalized are incorporated
back into the design where possible. Problems are solutions.
---Functional interconnections and redundancies are demonstrated.
---This garden produces no waste; waste is transformed into value.

This garden inspires a persistent and expanding pcd awareness/activist movement;
a fundamental mindshift that transforms private and public landscapes:
---Forests are liberated from lawnmowers and leaf-blowers.
---Ecotones and transitional areas, spaces-between and gap-moments are noticed
and valued as cradles of life, fresh beginnings and enlightening opportunities,
as well as great places to grow delicious food.
---Plants working together in guilds form an elegant a continuous spiraling system
of pathways, open spaces and perennial, edibleforest habitats

This garden is a radiant mandhala that magnetizes neighbors and community leaders:
---Inspires teachers and preachers, politians and municipal employees to design and implement
perennial edible forest suburban habitats for the benefit of all life on earth, visible and
invisible, present and future.
---Heals our fears of the unknown and our fears of impermanence, calms and clarifies our
journey through life and death.
---Herbal medicines are cultivated and studied.
---This garden draws attention and yet plays well with neighboring landscapes.
---Radiant spiraling and interacting patterns breath in and out of the very center of the house
(which happens to be a kitchen with a skylight) through windows and doors, along garden
paths and play areas and beyond.
This garden inspires and invites families and friends into cooperative ventures designing
and implementing gardens in and around homes, schools, places of works, and public areas:
---Invite pcd teachers to come and speak and facilitate a multitude of pcd classes and
full curriculums in our area and beyond
---Many watershed associations visit this garden and form unified and coordinated bio-regional
watershed communities that help trigger off a national Greenbelt Movement (Wangari Maathai)
bringing us closer to the Great Turning.
---Governors visit this garden.
---President Obama visits this garden.

This garden demonstrates the authentic nutritional, political, community and universal
values of pcd and inspires transformative economies and enlightening societies.
---Individuals and organizations invest money in implementing designs and programs
that are centered on the ethics and principles of pc.
---Expands and multiplies opportunities for engaging in right livelihood abound.
---Plays well with others; respects the jobs and needs of conventional landscape maintenance crew,
companies and public-works crews; without pontificating, by example and positive, cooperative,
realistic, mutually beneficial exchanges of skills, materials, equipment, kindness and humor.
---This garden support independent heirloom seed-growing movement
(purchase seeds from Hudson Valley Seed Library)

This garden helps to heal our illusion of separation from the natural world.
---This garden provides a circular space that can accommodate 20 or so people in a
Council of All Beings (Joanna Macy)
---An ongoing process of meditation, contemplation and practice shapes and organizes
this garden.
---Feminine space all accommodating without bias, quiet and still, laughing and singing
---Distinctive individuals in a perennial multicultural edible forest dance.
---This garden relaxes and blends time and space.
---This garden settles and cradles the house and family activities
---Subtle, understated, lavish and surprising
---Whimsical, confident
---Spicy and sweet and good to eat
---Edgy, edgy and edgy
---This garden rocks!

FREEDOM FROM HABITUAL TENDENCIESThere are all kinds of habitual tendencies that are connected with holding on to what we are. People get divorced because they think they might find a better mate. People change restaurants because they think they might get cheaper and better food. The habitual patterns of ego work that way. The notion of enlightenment is a sense of freedom from those patterns. And the way to attain that freedom is by means of the sitting practice of meditation. In sitting practice, we look at our minds, and we maintain good posture. When we combine body and mind that way, we find ourselves emulating the Buddha -- the way to be properly. Then we begin to develop sympathy toward ourselves, rather than just holding on.

"Personally speaking I have never been put off. I never give up at all. I am not going to give up the cause of peace that might occur in this world. And I am looking forward to it in some sense. The more chaos happens, I feel more possibility of creating greater peace, and when I see more aggression, more chaos, I feel more encouraged. That is, my smile is never diminished. I always smile."
The Druk Sakyong, speaking to a Nova Scotia audience in 1982
It says I’m easy. I’ve arrived.
humorous and whimsical
sacred space

Ocean of Dharma Quotes of the WeekDecember 21, 2008 THE SUN IS ABOUT TO RISEThe Great Eastern Sun is the sun that is fully risen in your life. It is the sun of wakefulness, the sun of human dignity. It is Great because it represents upliftedness and the qualities of openness and gentleness. You have an uplifted sense of posture or place in your world, which we call having good head and shoulders. It is East because you have a smile on your face. East is the concept of dawn. When you look to the East, first thing in the morning, you see light coming from the East, even before the sun rises. So East is the smile you have when you wake up. The sun is about to rise. Fresh air is coming with the dawn. So the sun is East and it is Great.From "Facing Yourself," in CONQUERING FEAR, forthcoming from Shambhala Publications, Fall 2009.