- Carlington Wilmot photos
Everlan Josephs in her St. Catherine garden.
Avia Ustanny, Freelance Writer
DO PLANTS just get greener when you're around? Do they bloom their best after you get your fingers all covered with dirt while massaging their roots?
We have heard it said repeatedly, that plants are like people and respond to love and attention.
This week, we speak with Jamaicans who have a passion for the green stuff and who do not mind getting down and dirty while pursuing their favourite hobby.
A fanatic is Everlan Josephs who, at her home in Mount View estate, St. Catherine, has made the most of her spacious corner lot by turning every available inch of land into a garden.
This gardener is mostly interested in herbs, though there are lots of vegetables and fruits around too. Recovering from cancer in the last 15 years, she has used the herbs to keep up her good health, she says.
Her garden is filled with French thyme, rosemary, noni, callaloo, sorrell, spinach, Indian kale. Fruit trees include miniature plums, mangoes, ortanique oranges, navel oranges, naseberry, sweetsop, otaheiti apples and grapefruit.
There are also peppers and tomatoes and Mrs. Josephs says that she rarely goes to the market. Her fruits, vegetables and natural juices are a favourite item on the family table.
Such vegetable and food gardening as she does, has a fair following locally, though suburbanites in Kingston, St. Andrew, St. Catherine and other urbanised locales tend to want grow only blooming plants to break the concrete monotony of their communities.
Others find great satisfaction in floral design, as they take beautiful blooms and remnants of plant growth and create arrangements which are works of art.
Could there be a "green artist" in you, just waiting to bloom in the sunlight?
Whether you restrict your gardening activities to creating hedges, or to planting food for the table, here's a hobby for everyone. Where there is love, soil and sunlight, plants will always grow.
How her passion grew
HER EYES opened to the crowing roosters and a new plot for her garden. "Every day a new plan unfolds. Here I will put a new guava tree, there a few more miniature June plums.."
The garden of Everlan Josephs in Mount View Estate is chock-full of herbs and fruits and she is always finding space for more...bananas, plantains, avocados and pears.
The Josephs' garden is perhaps not unlike the Edenic first garden. It is very utilitarian as well as experimental. It is also her main occupation since retiring from work with the Red Cross Society over a decade ago.
She stands on a ladder and prune the fruit trees. "I weed and manure this garden myself. I use my fork to do ploughing and planting," Everlan boasts.
She confesses that she will be 61 on her next birthday, but she is in better health than many half her age. Her routine of raking, watering, planting and circumposing keeps arthritis and other ailments away.
Noni and other herbs grown in her garden are shared with neighbours and friends. Recovering from cancer, she is quick to note that the herb is known for retarding tumour growth and other anti-cancer properties.
She recalls that her first efforts at gardening were thwarted by Shelly soil, but this was later made moist and rich with manure from Content farms and leaves from trees which helped to retain moisture.
A gutter was cut to drain the area and a green house was later constructed to regulate heat and moisture for the more sensitive plants in the garden.
The garden is a good place to rehash family history. There is the plot of cayenne peppers created from a gift from her son. In another place are orange trees planted by her husband for each of her three sons.
Now that they are grown, the bearing trees and a myriad of other plants which find their way to the family table are reasons for those who are away from home to keep coming back to Mom.
