Today we’re visiting with Dawnn McWatters.

I’ve been subscribing to (or buying) your magazine for many years as an amateur gardener. In 2019 I stepped up my game, left a healthcare career, and became a Master Gardener. This year I’m launching a nonprofit food literacy and therapeutic horticulture education program called The SAVOR Project.

I’m sending pics from what we affectionately call our “soggy bottom garden” here on the outskirts of Portland, Oregon. After fencing in the garden plot to keep out our chickens and dog, I realized that it was located in a frost pocket (oops!). Raised beds helped me with the water retention at the bottom of our south-facing slope, but they didn’t save me from five years of shlepping everything up and down at the end of a weeding session. Sadly, after a serious car accident on our busy country road and some landscaping-related injuries, we’ll be selling our property this summer, but I look forward to gardening in community again on an itty bitty urban plot and sharing what I’ve learned with my neighbors.

It’s hard to pick my favorite plant or garden picture (like trying to pick between children!). Here are a couple that stand out. Sunflowers are a sweet connection to my immigrant great-grandfather’s Ukrainian roots, and last year I established my first-ever sunflower plot with a handful of varieties.

Also, over the past couple of years, I’ve taught myself how to make shakshuka as I’ve reconnected with my long-lost Jewish roots, and last summer I was able to use Black, a Russian heirloom tomato, that I’ve grown in my own garden. It feels like I’ve come full circle. I told one of my Master Gardener colleagues recently that although I ended up with bushels of unripe, green heirloom tomatoes last fall, it was my biggest yield yet, and I had many healthy plants that thrived (but just ran out of heat units in our wooded plot). I’m pretty proud! Maybe it was a failure, but it was also a success in my eyes, and I have room to grow for the future.

An Ameraucana pullet (one of the varieties of chickens that lay greenish or bluish eggs).

A ‘Joker’ sunflower (Helianthus annuus ‘Joker’, annual) just beginning to bloom.

‘Black’ tomato, a Russian heirloom variety.

Sunflower ‘Ring of Fire’.

‘Ring of Fire’ sunflower being enjoyed by a visiting bumblebee.

View of Soggy Bottom Garden.

‘Teddy Bear’ sunflower.

Have a garden you’d like to share?

Have photos to share? We’d love to see your garden, a particular collection of plants you love, or a wonderful garden you had the chance to visit!

To submit, send 5-10 photos to [email protected] along with some information about the plants in the pictures and where you took the photos. We’d love to hear where you are located, how long you’ve been gardening, successes you are proud of, failures you learned from, hopes for the future, favorite plants, or funny stories from your garden.

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