KEYED IN

SPACE- AND CLIMATE-CHALLENGED GARDENERS FIND A KEYHOLE GARDEN UNLOCKS NEW POSSIBILITIES FOR GROWING FOOD

- AMY GRISAK

A perfect garden style is impossible to pinpoint, but the keyhole garden belongs on the top-10 list. First designed in the 1990s to assist people in drought-stressed southern Africa to grow food, keyhole gardens have since gained popularity in home gardens around the world.

There is a lot of variation in the design, but in general a keyhole garden's shape resembles Pac-Man-or picture a pie with a piece removed-and it stands about half as tall as the gardener. A cylindrical basket runs top to bottom at the garden's center. This is a compost bin that receives kitchen scraps. As the waste breaks down, the gardener waters the compost and nutrients seep into the soil, supporting the plants.

A DOOR OPENS

As all of us know, when two gardeners get together, the ideas fly. A couple of years ago I was chatting with a new garden friend, Kari Aguayo, when she told me about a beautiful stone garden she and her husband had created in their suburban backyard. I'm partial to anything built out of stone, and the notion of combining beauty with healthy plants caught my attention, too.

"We had a friend who went to Bolivia for a mission trip," she explained at the time. "They don't have a lack of food, but they do lack nutrition." The goal of the trip was to encourage families to build keyhole gardens to grow a greater diversity of produce.

Intrigued by the keyhole concept, she told her husband, Jesse, they had to try it. But researching the details was a challenge six years ago.

"Of course, there was not a ton of information," she recalls now. They talked to their friends and decided on a plan with a garden roughly six feet across and waist high. Kari notes that many resources recommend this diameter to allow the compost to adequately feed the entire garden. It also keeps all of the plants within reach.