Exploring your Microclimate : The goal of Shepard Lane Garden


Stay curious, investigate, and learn along the way
There is a world right outside your door and mine.  It isn't something everyone takes time to stop and notice.  Some of it you make, like your own garden.  Some of it is wild, like the roadside and the forest nearby - or even the cracks in the sidewalk or things that have blown into a pot occupying the corner of your yard. 

Citizen Science

Does your mind fill up with questions about plants, seeds and wild things?

It's all fascinating.  You can dive into this - even without a degree or a job in an extension office or lab.  Plant a seed, watch insects and birds, marvel in Nature.  Give me a wild bird I haven't seen before, or a plant that keeps popping up, and even if it is a weed, I'm out there with my camera and/or notebook, collecting bits and pieces until I solve the mystery.  And now, I'll share them here with you.

This treasury is the place where I'm ready to share all of this.  It's a way of life -  doing the things I naturally find myself doing.  It's neither 'nice neat weeded garden' or 'wildlife adventures in the woods' and it is more than just a place for  drawings and photographs.  It is more than a journal, and it's more than an almanac.   It occupies a space between artist and gardener and citizen scientist.   So here we are. 

this pea relative blooms in late July to early August
it is the reason our area is called, in local folklore, 'pea ridge'

What Shepard Lane Garden is

We are located in West Tennessee, south of Paris, west of Nashville, east of Memphis.   It's a micro-climate on one of the highest ridges in our area, among cedar trees, hickories, redbuds, sarvis and oaks. We have been saving and trading generations of sometimes obscure seeds with friends from across the country.  We're working on building the soil, the landscape and a seed bank of landrace seeds that have survived well through all sorts of conditions.  We grow a wide variety of plants for food and keep chickens in a pen we built. This past year we've built four new raised beds, added onto our perennial gardens, orchard and started a bank of information about wild plants, soil and weather. 


What we hope to be

I hope to also share growing local food, recipes and preserving the produce of the season.  It will be a look at our local markets and farms - there are so many in our area that are doing similar projects, small and large scale.  I hope it will be friends and neighbors sometimes across the world, as well.  It is a little botany, a little art, and a little folklore.  It is dogs playing fetch on long walks and chickens eating handfuls of lespedeza sericea, sunrises and sunsets and the change of the weather.

Welcome to the journey of Shepard Lane Garden.  Come back and see us, often.



We are Shepard Lane Garden and all of the other tiny adventures that happen both inside and outside of it, as well.




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