Historic Garden Tours Begin at PSB Birthplace

Last Sunday, June 17, the Birthplace hosted the first of four "Historic Garden Tours" planned for this summer as part of the Calvin W. Price Appalachian Enrichment Series, sponsored by the Pocahontas County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

Photo by A. Jiordano of volunteer gardener Joe Heathcock talked about buckwheat and other cover crops, and their function in the museum's organic garden.

It was an interesting program, but I was staffing the Birthplace that day and kept getting pulled away by other things.  Fortunately, Angelo Jiordano from The Pocahontas Times was there and describes the event in an excellent article that appeared in the paper this week.

Sunday visitors to the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace Gardens enjoyed a return to "The Good Earth," with free garden tours, demonstrations, and a little bit of history behind the famed author and humanitarian.

Event organizers invited local "mostly-retired" farmer Cad Tyler to talk about some of the tools he uses, and share some tricks he's learned in his 60 years of farming. Tyler also talked about organic gardening author Elliot Coleman and some of the methods he employs.

Read "A step back in time at the Pearl S. Buck historic garden" and see more photos from the day on the website of the Pocahontas Times.

Landscaping the Grounds of Pearl S. Buck Birthplace

It's Spring, so things have started to bloom around the birthplace.  I'm fascinated by the different pace at which this happens, especially by the large maples in front of the house, which are already green and bushy at the top, but only starting to reveal their leaves on the branches closer to the ground. I suppose that's what happens when I tree grows so tall and majestic. Higher branches reach up for sun, lower ones are blocked by their shade.

That's not all that is changing on the grounds of the Pearl S. Buck Birthplace, where we're giving Mother Nature a little assistance.  If you stop by and walk around the back of the Stulting House, you'll see that our large Good Earth Garden has been "plowed, disked, and tilled," and tomorrow students from Hillsboro Elementary School will come to the Birthplace to do some planting.  Let's hope the garden is as fruitful as last year, when at least 600 lbs of produce were donated from it to local food pantries.  We hope to meet or exceed that amount again this year.  The gardens are a valuable teaching tool, that make the grounds more enticing and appealing.  It's gratifying they can also meet this real need.