Welcome to Trybal Revival Gardens
Trybal Revival Garden is located in the Eastside neighborhood of Kalamazoo, Michigan. Our garden and greenspace consists of a community garden with about 20 raised beds, an apiary, kitchen garden, rain garden, an assortment of ornamental and herb gardens, and a quarter-acre greenspace with an orchard, production beds, pollinator habitat, and a vermicompost system.
We welcome you to explore our website to learn more about us, or better yet, stop by and visit – we’d be happy to show you around!
Spring / Summer 2016 Update
Springing into another summer
All this rain and fickle weather must mean spring is here. Now in our fifth year with the community garden it’s time to rebuild most of the raised beds (this time with more permanent materials!) and wage a serious war on the quack grass. Creating garden space in what was once a grass lot has proven to have its challenges. Since it’s hard to rebuild garden beds while they are being used we are limiting our community garden to our 5 core gardeners who have stayed with us year after year and shown dedicated interest in their garden beds. We will work on rebuilding the rest of the beds over the next year.
Meanwhile things are coming along in the Eco-Garden. Tomme has been diligent about an organic spray routine for the orchard trees and grapes, and the production beds are being planted. We look forward to setting up a free farm stand around the corner at Peace House again this summer to distribute vegetables to Eastside families. WMU’s student garden is on board again this year to help supply the free farm stand – it’s a great collaboration and the best part is watching the kids get really excited about eating fresh food!
Another Seat in the Garden
This spring we are fortunate once again to be a community partner with Kalamazoo College’s “Seat in the Garden” class. This is an English class that is part of their service-learning program. The students read novels and short stories with garden themes and are assigned to a community garden where they volunteer 3 hours each week. This is our third year as a participating garden in their program. We have a delightful and enthusiastic group of eight students who come each Monday and help us with our garden projects and learn about what we’re doing with our community greenspace. We hope they enjoy their class as much as we do!
And then there were three!
It’s been a very exciting spring in the apiary! We went into the winter with 3 Langstroth (traditional) hives but only one made it through the winter. We decided not to purchase new bees in the spring but instead hope to split the one strong hive that made it through. As it turns out, the hive was stronger than we realized – it swarmed at the end of April (which is very early for a swarm)! We’ve had lots of swarms over the years but they always go high in the tree tops where we can’t get them – but because this one was so early the leaves were not on the trees and they went low – we were able to capture the swarm and start a new hive.
Welcome Leland!
We were thrilled to get an email from Leland, one of our former “Seat in the Garden” K-College volunteers. Leland is now finishing his junior year and looking for an opportunity to stay in Kalamazoo over the summer. He remembered that we have offered a work-in-exchange program over the summer where we provide a room in our house in exchange for work in the gardens. Leland will be with us June through August this summer. We look forward to getting to know him better and sharing our house with him.
