Dungy’s garden a metaphor for more than just “Soil”

Story by Elisabeth Sherwin

The garden is a metaphor for many things in Prof. Camille Dungy’s life.

In 2013, it represented the beginning of a guerrilla war with her Homeowners Association.

Spoiler: She won.

When she and her family moved from Oakland, Calif., to Fort Collins in 2013, they moved into an established, traditional suburban neighborhood with well-maintained grass lawns.

Not good.

Dungy wanted a prairie garden to attract butterflies and bees. She wanted a garden that could thrive in the natural environment of Northern Colorado. She wanted a drought-tolerant garden with lots of native plants. And a pesticide-free garden.

In hindsight, all these things seem so reasonable, so desirable. The HOA should have given her a medal.

Instead, in the early years, a woman walked around the neighborhood with a ruler, measuring too-tall grass and weedy vegetation to report violators to the board.

What was a rebel gardener to do?

“They did not love my garden,” Dungy told the audience earlier this month at the Estes Valley Library.

“But my first patch was small,” she said. She and her husband, Ray, had to bring in quantities of soil, railroad ties, and river rocks for landscaping, which could not be done overnight.

The idea was to start small and reclaim sections of the yard as time and the seasons allowed.

As the years went by, neighbors admired their work. Now, she said, everyone in the neighborhood uses railroad ties for landscaping, and many neighbors trade native plants.

“I was right,” she said. “I was going to move slow so (the HOA) could catch up with me.”

Dungy writes about her garden in her 2023 book, “Soil: The Story of a Black Mother’s Garden,” which is about gardening, yes, and much more. She is also an essayist, poet, and professor of English at Colorado State University.

She writes about Black history and recent politics, and again, her garden becomes a metaphor for a heterogeneous environment.

And, oh by the way, the HOA eliminated its rule against “non-standard landscaping.”