This Creative City Story is made possible by a special collaboration with Paducah Life Magazine.
In the Lower Town area of Paducah, you can take what resident Victoria Terra calls “a garden walk” along sidewalks and down alleys and see a variety of container and raised bed gardens. It’s like peeking through gates in the New Orleans French Quarter to find surprising gardens and exotic plants flourishing.
When Victoria and her ceramicist husband Michael arrived in 2008 as part of the Artist Relocation program, they found several clawfoot bathtubs in their two-story rehab house on North 7th Street. In her first summer here, Victoria used three of the bathtubs as containers for her own vegetable garden. That garden has now expanded, but the bathtubs are still part of it.
The Arts District is populated with working artists, students and artists-in-residence who add to the City's vibrant artistic landscape
Victoria’s mother had a vegetable garden in Massachusetts where she grew up, and it was Victoria’s job to do the weeding. “It wasn’t much fun,” she admits. So, when she, Michael, and their daughter Artie moved to Tucson, Arizona, in 1988, Victoria took classes to learn how to grow things in the hot desert climate. The result was her first garden, yielding green peas and “hand melons,” which she describes as a kind of Native American watermelon. In her Arizona garden, she remembers finding half-eaten pea pods, and one day she saw toddler Artie just biting a pea pod in half, leaving the rest on the vine.
In Paducah, Victoria decided to use waist-high raised beds of concrete slabs because, like the bathtubs, they are fairly low maintenance, necessary because of the Terra travel schedule. They drive all over the eastern half of the country selling Michael’s art and are gone days at a time. Michael and a studio assistant made the slabs which are art pieces in themselves.
For years, Victoria only purchased seeds from the Territorial Seed Company of Oregon, but last spring she and fellow gardener Mary Byrne attended the Baker Creek Heirloom Planting Festival near Mansfield, Missouri, and she came home with packets of heirloom seeds. (Heirlooms are varieties that have been around 50 years or more.) Now, she spends the winter browsing through all kinds of seed catalogs.
Victoria Terra showing off her greens
Photo courtesy of Paducah Life
Victoria calls what she does “lasagna gardening,” employing layering. The first layer is ash from fireplaces or woodstoves followed by compost, then newspaper and finally a layer of leaves. In this case the leaves come from a gigantic sycamore that shades her whole house and much of the backyard.
Chives live in their container all year, and the asparagus has been here for five years. Victoria always grows peas and chard and lots of “greens.” This year she has four varieties of kale, five varieties of lettuce, and some arugula. “I like to grow things we can’t buy easily,” she says, pointing to the yellow snow peas she planted beside the regular green ones.
Lower Town is famous for the award-winning Artist Relocation Program that prompted its colorful revitalization.
And, Victoria likes to experiment. This year she has a Japanese spinach variety called Komatsuna and tomato varieties Cherokee Purple and Chocolate Sprinkles. “I just had to have that last one,” she chuckles.
Explore Lower Town with our self-guided Lower Town Historical & Architectural Walking Tour and see Victoria's garden in person! While you're there, visit the Terra's at their local art studio, Terra Cottage Studios.
