Trading Subways for Soil: Discovering Life Outside the City
On the second Monday of each month at the Pound Ridge Library, the Pound Ridge Gardening Club meets—and I decided to give it a go.
After three wonderful years living in Fort Greene, Brooklyn, my wife and I gifted our four-year-old daughter and six-year-old son a puppy—and suddenly, the apartment shrank. That sparked a conversation we didn’t expect to have so soon: we needed more space. We looked in our area but came up short, and after much back-and-forth, we made the bittersweet decision to head north. We were excited about the childhood we envisioned for our kids—more space, more green, more life—but it was hard to leave the city we had long dreamed of and the beautiful community we had built there.
During the transition, I joined a real estate brokerage in Bedford and made it my mission to learn about the surrounding areas we now planned to grow into. Missing our old community and newly blessed with outdoor space, I figured the best thing I could do was show up at a Pound Ridge Gardening Club meeting—partly to learn how not to kill plants, partly to meet people, and partly to see what kind of color and nourishment a garden could add to this next chapter.
At my first meeting, one of the members—Dr. Gross, a neurosurgeon—gave a surprisingly gripping presentation on poisonous plants. I came in thinking it’d be about the usual suspects—poison ivy, things to keep the kids away from—but I could not have been more wrong. Dr. Gross delivered a Dateline-worthy slideshow about plants that looked totally innocent but were sneakily, sometimes fatally, toxic. There was one tree that could shut your nervous system down just by standing under it in the rain. He even told a story about the time he played Sherlock Holmes and deduced that a patient’s temporary paralysis was caused by her excessive licorice habit. I was so locked into his storytelling that he actually stopped mid-sentence and asked if I had a question. I didn’t—I was just that absorbed. Honestly, I can only imagine the look on my face was the same one I wear when I'm deep into a doom-scrolling spiral. And in today’s screen-heavy world, I genuinely can’t remember the last time something off-screen held my attention like that.
The next month, I returned for another meeting—this time to hear Aaron Hodgins Davis of Hodgins Harvest, a certified organic mushroom farm, talk shop and lead a workshop. In a previous life, I worked my way up in kitchens and, admittedly, I’m pretty shroom-curious. I have this dream of walking in the woods with our dog, foraging a full sack of Morel mushrooms for dinner, and being completely confident that the meal won’t end in a hospital visit—or worse.
Aaron delivered a solid, high-level dive into the fascinating lifecycle of cordyceps and then walked us through how to build our own Blue Oyster mushroom culture. While assembling my grow bag, members of the club kept calling me over to chat and swap stories. The people in the club—many of whom have clearly lived full, thoughtful lives—were generous with their time and their wisdom. And it got me thinking: maybe the most valuable things I’ll grow here won’t just be mushrooms or tomatoes, but friendships, insight, and inspiration that reaches beyond the edges of the garden bed.
I plan to become a full member and keep learning—about plants, about the land, and about the people who tend to both. After attending two meetings as a guest, you can then schedule a time to meet with some of the members to discuss the responsibilities and expectations of membership before officially joining. I have my meeting set, with hopes of becoming a part of the group.
And I fully endorse the idea that if you're even a little curious about gardening—or about anything, really—it’s never too late to feed that curiosity. Whether it’s gardening club, photography club, birding, or whatever else lights you up, these spaces are where people not only nurture their passions but show up to share them. And when someone shares what they love, it’s a powerful thing to experience—on both the receiving and the giving side of the table.
Turns out, the best part of gardening club might not be what grows in the ground.