The Key Word is Public

The State of Maryland maintains a website specifically to inform the public about prominent garden locations throughout the state. It falls under their promotion of tourism.

Gardens of Maryland

In HoCo, the Howard County Conservancy is on the list. Their focus is, of course, primarily environmental. Other locations lean more historical, while some fit a more ‘traditional’ description of a public garden - - Brookside Gardens in Montgomery County, for instance. According to the American Public Gardens Association:

A public garden is an institution that maintains plants for the purposes of public education and enjoyment, in addition to research, conservation, and higher learning. It must be open to the public and the garden’s resources and accommodations must be made to all visitors.

That’s a broad enough definition to encompass a wider variety of places than I would have expected, which explains the variety in the State of Maryland’s list. I am realizing now that I assumed that public gardens were mostly synonymous with formal gardens. Not so. From the definition above, the highest priority looks to be that the gardens be 1. open to the public and 2. truly accessible to everyone.

Clearly I have more to learn about public gardens.

In April County Executive Calvin Ball announced the formation of a Public Gardens Work Group to begin the work of creating Howard County’s first official public garden at Longwood in Glenwood. The project falls under the leadership of Howard County Department of Recreation and Parks.

Image from Howard County Government

Do you have ideas? Suggestions? Priorities that you hope they will keep in mind? Good! They want to hear from you. In fact, there’s a hybrid meeting this evening. From Rec and Parks:

Here's a reminder that we are still seeking community input for the design of Howard County’s first public garden. Join us at a focus group meeting on July 17 from 6-8pm at Department of Recreation & Parks’ Headquarters (7120 Oakland Mills Road, Columbia). Sign up to speak or submit your testimony now. Learn more: https://www.howardcountymd.gov/boards-commissions/public-gardens-focus-group

If you can’t can't testify in person you can email testimony to:

publicgarden@howardcountymd.gov

The Longwood site has the potential to provide public spaces for aesthetic enjoyment as well as environmental education. Embedded within all those possibilities is the heavy burden of the history of the land itself as a “plantation” or forced labor camp for enslaved Africans. My highest priority for this site is that the resulting gardens place as high a value on the history as they do on the planting and maintaining of the natural environment.

What do you think?

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