​Planting memories

By Ben Haugmo

benhaugmo@yahoo.com

The past meets the present at Moorhead’s Heritage Garden, which is holding its upcoming community planting days, and is seeking both donations and volunteer assistance.

The garden organizers are currently accepting via email promises of donations of perennials . After confirmation is received, donors can either bring their plants to the site on June 4 or make arrangements to have the plants picked up.

Volunteers can help with planting at the garden on Saturday, and there will be tours held on Sunday. Everyone is invited to help with planting -- you do not have to make a donation.

The Heritage Garden is located south of Woodlawn Park near the location of the decommissioned Moorhead power plant. The garden recalls the history of the power plant while also providing a new green space for Fargo-Moorhead residents to enjoy.

The garden features sculptures made from found objects collected from the power plant. Coal buckets, coal chutes, pipes, girders, and generator hoods are scattered around the garden. Many of the pieces will serve as seating when development is complete.

Landscaping also played a factor in the the artistic considerations of the Heritage Garden. The rolling “wave” pattern running through the space was designed to match the curve and shape of the federal flood levy nearby. The hill the garden is located on has had tiered seating dug into it, to serve as an amphitheatre area where community programming will be held once the garden opens.

Su Legatt is a social practitioner and community artist who helped design the Heritage Garden with Rob Fischer and Kevin Johnson. She has a clear vision of the garden’s eventual appearance, and how it will preserve Moorhead’s history amid resurging plant life.

“As the plants mature and time passes,” said Legatt, “this is going to seem like a very--sort of a bizarrely strategic industrial area that’s being taken back by nature, but in a very beautiful way.”

The material art used to decorate the garden isn’t the only way that its connection to Moorhead’s history is being expressed. There’s a narrative element involved which will allow community members to get in touch with the past. Throughout the garden will be QR codes for visitors to scan and listen to the stories of people who were in some way connected to the power plant, to Woodlawn Park, or to the city of Moorhead.

“There’s going to be markers attached to the plants,” said Legatt, “telling who it came from and why. While you’re wandering through the space and exploring, you’ll get to discover this personal history people have.”

Legatt’s involvement with the Heritage Garden is important because of her familiarity with the area.“I’m from Minnesota, a fifth generation Minnesotan, and I’ve been in the Fargo-Moorhead community off and on since 1998, so I really feel like this is home. I was brought on the project because of my background in social practice work and community engagement work, but also because I’m a Moorhead resident. I’m excited that we’re turning it into a space that can be used, but also one that celebrates the people in the area, and the heritage and the culture that we have, connecting to agriculture, sharing plants, and tradition.”

The Heritage Garden project came about as a result of the Plains Art Museum’s Defiant Gardens initiative. The program draws its inspiration and namesake from Kenneth Helphand’s book, Defiant Gardens: Making Gardens in Wartime.

Neatha Cloeter, Director of Education and Social Engagement, believes that the Heritage Garden successfully embodies the idea of defiance.“Heritage Garden is defiant in that it has taken a building that was demolished, the Moorhead power plant, and kind of immortalized it in the form of a garden,” said Cloeter.

The other project created through Defiant Gardens is the Pollinator Garden for Plains Art Museum. The garden defies the urban environment in which it is located, as well as the decreasing populations of pollinators such as bees, butterflies, and hummingbirds.

The Heritage Garden is tentatively slated to open in September, but community members can get an early idea of what the final product will look like by attending the planting days next weekend.

IF YOU GO

Heritage Garden Community Planting Days

South of Woodlawn Park, Moorhead, MN

Saturday, June 4, 9 a.m. to 3 p.m.; Sunday, June 5 from noon. to 3 p.m.

http://plainsart.org/learn/defiant-gardens/heritage-garden-and-amphitheater-for-moorhead-2/

Donation offers accepted at HeritageGardenMoorhead@gmail.com