Holly Walker’s Gardening Paradise

by Elena Wrye Growing A Garden of Knowledge

HOLLY WALKER LEARNS BY DOING AS SHE NURTURES NATURE IN HER OWN BACKYARD

STROLLING THROUGH HER GRANDPARENTS’ GARDEN AS A CHILD, HOLLY WALKER delighted, and thought nothing of, plucking a tomato from a vine and biting into its delectable, fresh, homegrown flavor. During extended stays with her grandparents, Holly would help them tend to the several acres of garden that they played host to. “I helped. I always helped. That was my playground— the garden,” Holly says of her upbringing. “It was completely and totally normal to walk out in the garden and grab a tomato and eat it like an apple. That wasn’t a prized thing. That was simply our food. So, I’ve raised vegetables pretty much always.” Rain drops of passion sprinkled on that seed of gardening that was planted in Holly’s heart and it grew. For although she still enjoys meandering through the garden and picking what she pleases to eat, her ever-increasing knowledge of plants, soil, and proper preservation of food, has transformed that passion into a lifestyle for her and her family. “I canned about 689 jars last year. That’s a lot of canning. And that’s not one given thing—in fact, the majority of it I’ve run out of already. Which means I need to at least double the main things this year,” she adds. Amidst canning, Holly also preserves food through dehydrating, freeze drying, freezing, vacuum sealing, and fermenting. Food preservation has grown into a lifestyle for Holly and her family over the years. And throughout the entire process—from starting seeds, to the greenhouse, to planting, harvesting, and preserving—they know the positive ways that they will reap the benefits of what they have sown.

For Holly, she’ll be the first to say that it’s a matter of time for her. “I can ground beef, which may sound crazy. But let’s say you’re going to cook tacos one night. All you have to do is open a pint size jar of taco meat that’s canned. It’s already got onions and salt and pepper in it. It’s already cooked fully. You open it, add some taco seasoning, and you’re done! Then there’s no time involved in having to cook the meat until browned,” Holly says. She goes on to explain the same process with using canned chicken in meals as well, mentioning that it’s no different than opening a can of chicken meat that you bought at the store, “except you know it’s the real McCoy. There’s no extra sodium in it, there’s no extra anything in it.” The other motivation? Accomplishment. Holly recognizes that you can purchase a plant from a big-box store, follow the instructions given, and receive something from their due diligence. “I’ve always enjoyed that side of it: getting the reward of whatever comes off the plant. That’s great, but in later years, probably the last ten years, I’ve grown everything from seed. I don’t go to the store and pay five dollars for a tomato plant. Instead I’ll pay, at the most, three dollars for a whole packet of seed and grow multiple tomato plants out of that one packet. So, there’s a real gratification to it when you do it yourself.” Amidst Holly’s garden, one will find a wide variety of both plants and herbs, varying anywhere from nine different flavors of mint, 14 or 15 different kinds of basil, to plants such as lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, radishes, and more. But the usefulness doesn’t stop there, for Holly, ever the resourceful learner, has also stocked her garden with plants such as coneflowers (Echinacea), toothache plant, and one of their most useful plants, yarrow, to truly dive into the benefits of herbalism. Yarrow is known to stop bleeding from a cut instantly when picked, moistened, and applied to a wound. It has been used by the family for this purpose, especially for Holly’s husband, Eric, who suffers from profuse bleeding due to a medical condition. In the Walkers’ garden lies many things – there’s the medicinal herbs, the bounty of tomatoes, the budding fruit, and more. But what truly lies there is years of learning, days of trying, moments of enjoying, mornings of harvesting, and memories worth sharing. “To new gardeners? Anybody can do it. You just have to stick it in the ground and do it. Even if you do it wrong, you’re learning something. If you make a mistake, you will have learned what doesn’t work. The only fail in gardening is not planting—because you will always learn something. And you may not get to eat this year, but you might eat five times better next year, because you learned it,” Holly says.