Late Spring Greens: The Garden’s First Season is Well Underway

Posted on June 8, 2024August 6, 2025 by Martin Cooney, Stone Sculptor

The Walled Garden of Alta Vista KS Bursts to Life with a Vibrant Show of Delicious Edibles

After much planning, hard work and toil, I am pleased to reveal the result of all that effort with the following photos taken a few days ago upon our arrival for another day’s work

On the whole, the project is coming along as well as could be hoped, but as with all ambitious projects of this scale, patience is the key word as, slowly but surely, the former delapidated roofless filling station is transformed into a garden, venue, workshop and showroom for my stone carvings and sculpture.

Please click on a photo to enlarge

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By the time I took this picture, the radishes were beginning to bolt – or go to seed, due to the warm evenings we have been enjoying since the cold winds of April eventually gave way to the balmy breezes of May.

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Trial and error is the name of the game, this being our first Kansas garden, after all. Lettuces for instances; I planted five varieties of them, including perhaps Kris’ favorite, the red delicious Lollo Rosso.

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Three, four or even five types of everything, including basil, kale, lettuce, spinach, chard, tomatoes, peppers and much more, were given ample chance to show us just exactly what they could do. And overall, the results were quite spectacular, with only one or two strains proving a disappointment. So, most of what you see will be making a come back later in the year when the summer garden makes way for the autumn planting.

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Hopefully, these pictures will give you some idea of things to come as The Walled Garden of Alta Vista KS gradually takes shape over the coming months. One thing for sure, Kansas – or perhaps any state in the great American Midwest for that matter – will have never seen anything quite like it – a modern take on the traditional English Country walled garden bursting out of a roofless former small town filling station. For now that the raised beds are in and are bearing a healthy stand of lovely, delicious greens, next come the flowers, and boy, will they be something. Thousands of them are now pushing through the undergrowth of greens and many more stand in pots awaiting transplanting into their rightful summer plots.

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All of this abundance didn’t just happen by chance. As you can probably imagine, a geat deal of planning and organization went into creating the results you see above – such as starting seedlings under lights, popping up a polytunnel, square footing the beds so as to maximize the means of production, and much more. So, here’s a little glimpse of just some of the things we got up to during the colder, windier months of March and April:

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To be honest, March and April proved to be quite bleak months here in High View (Alta Vista), Kansas – far colder and windier than I had hoped, and way colder than the historic temperature charts, that I had studied regarding nighttime and daytime temptures for the region, indicated. That’s because when rain, wind and cold are combined, the poor little seedlings appear too frightened to come up, and just sit there, shivering. There were a few hardy pioneer plants that braved the conditions, but on the whole it was a tedious time of watching and waiting, and growing increasingly frustrated in the process. In future years, this ‘wind shear’ effect will be negated not only by wind blocks yet to be constructed as the building’s security is beefed up, but by the many perennial plants currently establishing themselves throughout the beds.

Without a doubt, the most effective measures we took was the construction of the polytunnel. This simple and cheap device is the reason we have such a bounty of basil (five kinds), tomatoes (similar), and peppers (fruiting away right now, as I write !) Consisting of a ten foot sheet of polythene, four PVC pipes, some plumbing tape and screws, this nifty little device provided a tropical sanctuary to what was indeed a cold, cold place at times (and, have I mentioned … the wind?) Well, it’s gone now, of course, but it did its job superbly and I will never garden without one … ever again.

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Let’s peek in and take a look.

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Please click on a picture to enlarge

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As you can well imagine, with a project of this scale and scope, the tasks never stop coming, as one project ends another equally demanding proposition opens up. And recently my job has been to build the event bar foundation from cement blocks and recycled bricks retreived from the debris when the building’s roof was taken down. Thus we are able to employ a recycle, reuse or repurpose element to The Walled Garden of Alta Vista’s core values. The raised beds all stem from a nearby dismantled bridge, and (almost) every plant is the result of a heirloom seed, allowing for next year’s annuals to grow from seeds that will appear from flowers that will bloom in the garden in the coming months.

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Needless to say, throughout all of this, Kris has been playing the part of vital attention to detailer, a role she is supremely good and experienced at.

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Constructing the event bar proved to be a taxing job, but rewarding none the less. Maybe we will one day enjoy a nice, cool refreshing beer, with our elbows pressed upon the poured concrete countertop that is soon to adorn it.

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Building the Event Bar quite took it out of me, I don’t mind admitting it. Bricklayers and masons sure do earn their crust, I can tell you that. But I found it immensley rewarding, just thinking about all the happy people it will serve down through the years. I can see them, right now, pulling up in there various means of transport, stepping across the threshold and entering the one and only Walled Garden of Alta Vista KS with smiles on their faces and a great time in store for them, and in doing so breathing life into the old former red brick filling station once again, a hundred years after this fine old building was built a hundred years ago.

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