[Community_garden] old tires never die....

[Alliums]

Wade (and everyone else):

Don't discount practical experience when making a decision for your
community garden.  If this edging is so wonderful, get the funder/provider
to give you the names of folks that are actually using it -- and then follow
up with them and find out their experience.  You specifically want to know
-- does it have an odor in summer? (a total non-starter for a public area)
-- does it create "heat islands" that will affect plants (something your
gardeners should be warned about) and how much maintenance does it REALLY
take (also critical for a public area).

My guess from your post is that your community garden is considering this
item because it's low cost and you believe that it will reduce your
maintenance around the edges of your community garden -- a worthy goal as
neatness in the edges does make the public and funders happy.  (If I'm wrong
here, you can jump in, but that's the thesis I'm running with.)

Wade, the maintenance-free perimeter is the "holy grail" of public outdoor
spaces.  And, unfortunately, like the Holy Grail, it ain't been found yet.
If this stuff did what you are hoping it would do, even Mike (who I consider
a personal friend) wouldn't tone his rhetoric one bit on the toxin issues
(because that's who he is and we really don't want him to change), but he'd
be taking snipes at "people who want perfect perimeters at any cost."  And
notice that he isn't saying that.  And no one on the list is speaking up for
the product, saying that it is has reduced their maintenance, looks nice,
etc.  You discount the practical experience of those on this list to your
peril.

As someone who has responsibility for 3 different outdoor recreation
projects (community garden, labyrinth and dog park), I know we struggle with
border maintenance yearly.  However, it's been my experience (18 years --
good heavens -- what have I done with my life! ;-), that nothing beats
either mowing or organic-based borders.  Why?  Because a human with a
trimmer has a better sense of what to keep and what to whack and over time,
organic borders (logs, wood chips, etc) melt into the soil while inorganics
age oddly and end up looking like misplaced garbage.  And anything that
looks like short-haul dumping is the enemy of a welcoming public space (and
tends to encourage others to dump things, which means you end up spending
even more time on border maintenance when all anyone wants to do is play
with the plants in their plot.).

Black plastic and landscape cloth have legitimate uses in sustainable
agriculture, but we don't allow them in our community garden because even
the most experienced gardeners have found that they require more maintenance
that expected for the results -- and if not maintained properly, they look
awful!  It's usually the new gardeners that want to use it because they
think they won't have to weed again -- and they get very discouraged when
the weeds pour out of the holes.  Since they had unrealistic expectations
from the plastic, they get discouraged and leave -- then the rest of us have
to pull the plastic out of the plots which is a lot of work we'd rather not
be doing.  So, after a few of the experienced gardeners tried it and
realized it wasn't working for them, either, we banned the stuff totally.
For us, using wood chips over newspaper make have to be reapplied yearly,
but if someone abandons the plot, the worms deal with it, not us.  And that
allows us to spend time on the plants that we enjoy, rather than "common
area maintenance" which in my experience, gardeners prefer not to do.

So, Wade, I suggest you follow up very, very carefully, because I very much
doubt this rubber edging is going to save you the time you think it is --
and I'd be saying that if it was virgin rubber, rather than old tires.  I've
read far too many catalogs touting "Maintenance Free" that wasn't (for both
home gardeners and municipal parks) to believe any of these claims.

Dorene Pasekoff, Coordinator
St. John's United Church of Christ Organic Community Garden and Labyrinth

A mission of 
St. John's United Church of Christ, 315 Gay Street, Phoenixville, PA  19460