Triangle Garden2 - Bradley Hills Village

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Where it all began -- The Triangle Garden

This project started with a focus and physical gathering space. Our spot was a patch of ground in our suburban Maryland neighborhood that we called the Triangle Garden.

This triangle patch was first established as a garden more than 25 years ago by two pioneering gardeners who were new homeowners. This lonely neighborhood greenery took on a new purpose when the two neighbors got the County’s approval for the patch to be recognized as a community garden.

Today, we know this treasure on the corner of Roosevelt and Garfield Streets as the Triangle Garden. The garden has so many uses, for example, a bench to sit on and chat with a friend, a place to hold a memorial service, a location for twice monthly weeding parties, a site for a plein air painting class, a wonderful place for a game of hide and seek and a place to quietly sit.

In spite of challenges of invasive plants, clay soil, and lack of access to water, the garden has been lovingly cared for over the years. Originally there was only a fir tree, a pine tree, and a huge forsythia. The care for the garden came in many forms. The County “cared” for the grass with a weedwacker. The County planted two dogwoods. A neighbor donated several azalea bushes when she had a construction project in her yard. The crepe myrtle was donated by a local business. A stone planter was salvaged from the yard of a 1920s bungalow that was being torn down. By 2011 the garden had taken shape and served as a sometimes refuge.

But by 2015 the two neighbors who had designed and cared for the garden moved away. Huntington Terrace Citizens Association (HTCA) took over the maintenance of the Triangle Garden. For more than five years they arranged the cutting of the grass in the garden and held holiday events there.

Eva Cohen, the beloved founder of the neighborhood Bradley Hills Village (BHV), was an avid gardener and went on daily walks that often passed by the Triangle Garden. In 2019 Eva passed away and the Triangle Garden was dedicated in her memory. Funds raised in her memory were used to redevelop the garden to enhance the diversity of plants and highlight plants native to the area that would attract birds, butterflies and beneficial insects.

In 2020 three members of BHV discovered a shared love of native plants and gardening. They volunteered to spend several hours in the garden one weekend. This meeting to discuss native plants and to weed in the Triangle Garden was infectious and they began to meet frequently to discuss plants and garden pests. One of the women was getting her certification as a Master Gardener and needed a final project to complete the course. She chose caring for the Triangle Garden as her project. The three women were spending more than 25 hours a month caring for the garden—so they began referring to themselves as the “Garden Crew.” They organized and held twice monthly gatherings to care for and revitalize the Triangle Garden. At these gatherings people cemented friendships and developed a shared respect for native plants and the beauty of the Triangle Garden.

Today the Triangle Garden, with benches, bird baths and many native plants is a haven for neighbors, a space for contemplation, relaxation and natural beauty.

Philosophy: Find your neighborhood’s Triangle Garden—a happy place. Use it as a meeting place. Everyone loves to garden, bring things to share in the garden—food, plants, and garden advice. Some new gardeners may not know the difference between a plant and a weed, be willing to point out what to pull and what not to pull but be forgiving. Don’t rake the leaves, leave the winter blanket. Be patient.

Tips: Bring tools to share, pick times of day that are cool to garden, use the web and fellow gardeners to help you find what plants are needed and will thrive. Plants need space to grow and spread.

Making Bradley the Snake:

The commitment of BHV to being intergenerational, motivated BHV to join with HTCA to co-sponsor the first annual Family Day at The Triangle Garden in July 2023. The event included sprinklers and wading pools, a scavenger hunt in the garden, snacks, and two picnic tables of arts and crafts. Nearly 80 people took part from toddlers to elementary school kids, young parents delighted to discover one another, and a man with a broad smile in a wheelchair at the bottom of the street sitting with a friend and watching for an hour as the kids squealed and ran under a tyrannosaurus rex sprinkler. It was a magical day for everyone. The most lasting physical evidence of the day’s delight was the creation of a rock snake that was named Bradley. Children and a few adults painted rocks so that they could be added as a body to the gorgeously painted head of a smiling snake. Bradley still resides along the edge of the middle bed of native plants in the Triangle Garden. In April, 2024 our BHV work crew in the garden just removed his winter blanket of leaves to reveal all of Bradley’s vibrant colors.

Waking up the Triangle Garden, putting the garden to bed, and attracting pollinators:

The garden crew gave the lawn its final haircut in late November, weeded the last of the invasive vines to prevent their overwintering, reinstalled the sticks and string so that they again hold up the drooping plants and demarcate the edges of the beds, raked the last large tranche of leaves off the lawn and into the beds, made sure that Bradley the Stone Snake was visible in all his glory, did some judicious pruning of the white oak per advice from an arborist making short work of the pile of branches that resulted, said "hi" to the song sparrow family that nests in the shrubs, noted tasks to keep in mind for the following spring; and gave a mighty scrub to the two busy birdbaths.

The Triangle Garden spent the winter reinforcing its root system on warmish days and providing shelter and food to countless tiny creatures upon whom our whole environment depends. When December gets just a tiny bit too hectic, one can come over to the Triangle Garden and sit for a spell on one of the benches, and listen to the rustle of last year's dried stems saying, as only they know how, "Rest."