Plants and People Thrive at the Small Space Garden
By Elaine Mills, Extension Master Gardener
Photos by Elaine Mills
The Small Space Garden, tucked into a courtyard at the Fairlington Community Center, is a hub of activity on Sunday mornings from May to November. This petite demonstration garden, overseen by Master Gardener volunteers, and its associated plant clinic draw adults and children who are shopping at the adjacent Fairlington Farmers Market at 3308 S. Stafford St., Arlington, VA 22206.
Some guests visit weekly to see what’s growing, to sample edibles, or to pick up vegetable and herb seedlings and propagated cuttings of native plants for their own gardens. As many as 70 family members attend educational programming for children on the third Sunday of the month. An average of 20 clients stop by the plant clinic table each week to have their gardening questions answered by a team of Master Gardeners, and they often return to report back on an issue for which they have received advice or to show photos of plants they’ve grown from a seed or transplant giveaway.
Throughout the growing season, the Small Space Garden demonstrates how both vegetables and native plants—even compact trees—can be grown in small plots, raised beds, and containers. Some vegetables are grown in pots so that they can be moved to receive the best sun exposure. Other containers are used to corral a bristly plant like eastern prickly-pear or to control the growth of spreading species, such as clustered mountain-mint and common milkweed.
Coordinator Ben Murphy has thoughtfully devised a schedule of succession planting with children in mind so they’ll always have something edible to pick, whether it’s strawberries in May and June; cucumbers, peppers, beans, or tomatoes in summer; or blackberries and squash later in the season. Angela McNamara regularly prunes the garden’s fig tree into a fanning shape against a wire fence to show how it can be trained to provide fruit in a limited area. Native fruiting trees in garden beds include multiple serviceberries and pawpaws, an American plum, and a hazelnut.
Recent native plant additions to the garden include trilliums planted under the pawpaw trees. The ‘Jeana’ cultivar of garde.n phlox, featured in a long, narrow bed, is the most popular native plant in the garden, admired for its long bloom period, manageable stature, disease resistance, and attractiveness to butterflies. A shady corner of the garden features a display of containers with shrubs, grasses, and ferns. Among the plants featured are pinxterbloom azalea, strawberry-bush, and bottlebrush grass. Three additional planters for full sun, part-shade, and shade situated throughout the garden demonstrate how native species with different foliage textures and bloom times can be combined for both beauty and support for pollinators, caterpillars, and birds.
Education is an important focus of the garden. Coordinator Leslie Cameron prepares weekly postings on Small Space Garden happenings for the Fairlington Appreciation Society Facebook page. She also created a display of a bucket that draws and traps mosquitoes, and the garden provides free straw for folks who would like to replicate the practice in their own gardens. One-page flyers on this and a variety of other garden features provide information for visitors, even when the coordinators are not on hand.
Anne Reed and Debbie Keefe from the adjacent plant clinic, who are also leaders of MGNV’s Youth Education Program, have developed a varying curriculum of monthly educational opportunities at the garden for children ages 4 to 8. Recent offerings have included activities on pizza garden plants, native plants, plant parts we eat, honeybees, and monarch butterfly migration.
The Small Space Garden has undergone a mini renovation during the Summer 2025, improving the infrastructure and services for visitors. Leslie’s husband Ed helped to build a new garden shed for tools and supplies, and Ben’s partner David Laufer lent his carpentry skills to construct a new kiosk. The latter provides a way of posting information on garden events and linking to the “Between the Rows” monthly lists of garden tasks on the MGNV website.
Finally, the garden (625 square feet of native habitat) has now been added to the ever-growing Biodiversity Map for the Homegrown National Park, the national initiative to address the biodiversity crisis and support productive ecosystems by adding native plants in private yards and community spaces.
Gardeners of all ages are invited to visit the Small Space Garden to have their questions answered, to harvest and sample vegetables and fruits, to participate in the lively educational events, and to enjoy quiet time surrounded by flourishing plants!