DUKE UNIVERSITY VEGETABLE GARDEN

Hello!

I hope you enjoyed a very lovely Easter.  Ours was especially nice because, for the first time this Spring, it was warm enough to eat outdoors.

So I set the Easter table out on the terrace.

As always, I prepared Captain MJ Sweeney’s Herbed Leg of Lamb and, as always, it was scrumptious!

I also made my Italian Easter Pie.

The only thing missing from our Easter dinner were my boys and their families who live back east .  Knowing they were not coming west this Easter, last week I took a quickie trip back there to see them.  I spent a couple days in DC and then went down to Durham, North Carolina, to visit my son who is in the final weeks of his senior year at Duke University.  It is hard to imagine that in 3 weeks, on Mother’s Day to be exact, he will be graduating. Where have the past 4 years gone?

In less than a month, he will have to say goodbye to this amazing dormitory he now calls home.

He lives there, on the top floor, where his desk is tucked inside that dormer window……

and he gets to look out onto this beautiful blooming tree below.

My visit happened to be at the peak time to visit the Duke Gardens, the jewel of Duke University.  Founded in 1934, it is considered one of the top 10 public gardens in the United States.

Duke Gardens features 55 acres of specialized gardens, right in the heart of the University. One of my favorite parts of the garden is the The Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden.  I simply call it the Duke University Vegetable Garden.

Here, visitors can learn about organic vegetable and fruit gardening and participate in hands-on gardening classes.  If I lived in Durham you can bet I’d be a frequent participant in Duke Garden activities.

They were just beginning to get things planted and seedlings were starting to pop through the soil.

The planting beds are laid out in a circular fashion

Raised beds flank the inner circle and, adjacent to them, are picnic tables covered by wooden pergolas and wisteria vines.

Chalkboards like this one are placed throughout the garden, offering interesting tidbits of information.

These organic and sustainable garden displays teach visitors about how plants provide both food and shelter for not only people but for animals, birds and insects included.

Programs in the Charlotte Brody Discovery Garden include a series of classes for Master Gardeners. They also have family workshops, festivals and discovery days.

And they raise a variety of chickens in this very nice chicken coop.

If I were a chicken, I’d like to live in The Duke Gardens!

But there is much more to The Duke Gardens beside the vegetable gardens and the chicken coops.  So stay tuned and in my next post I will share with you more of these beautiful grounds now in full bloom.

PS……

I want one of these in my veggie garden.  Can’t you just imagine it with bean stalks trailing off of it?

HAPPY GARDENING!

PS – For more information about the Duke Gardens, visit their website here.

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All opinions expressed in this post are my own.   All photos are the original property of Celia Becker @ www.AfterOrangeCounty.com and may not be reproduced without specific permission.

Thank you for visiting!

Celia