THE GIFT OF GROWING

THIS COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER IS SOWING SEEDS OF INSPIRATION

BY JODI HERSEY

LYDIA MUSSULMAN OF BANGOR JUST LOVES TO GET HER HANDS DIRTY.

“Anything goes as far as I’m concerned,” said Mussulman, a master gardener for the past 30 years.

She could fill volumes of books with all she’s learned from planting and working the dirt in her own yard. But Mussulman does more than that. She also voluntarily prunes and spruces up gardens within the surrounding areas, including a plot at the Rogers Farm community garden in Old Town, as well as the small flower garden at the Bangor Region YMCA.

From a young age, Mussulman was drawn to the outdoors.

“I’ve always been more interested in flowers than vegetables. Both my mother and grandmother were wonderful gardeners back in Illinois. My mother would grow flowers for the church,” Mussulman said. “I loved to go to my grandmother’s home and be in her garden. At that time, Grandpa had vegetables growing on one side and Grandma had the flowers on the other. She didn’t like me traipsing through her garden, but Grandpa let me have free rein of the vegetable garden so I was the asparagus and pea picker.”

Master Gardener Lydia Mussulman with Bangor YMCA CEO Diane Dickerson. PHOTO COURTESY OF SHAWN HILL

Lydia Mussulman’s garden at Rogers Farm in Old Town. PHOTO COURTESY OF KATE GARLAND

Photos from Lydia Mussulman’s garden at Rogers Farm in Old Town. PHOTO COURTESY OF KATE GARLAND

After Mussulman and her husband raised their own family, she decided to go back to school to become a master gardener through the University of Maine Cooperative Extension. That’s where she met Penobscot County horticulturist Kate Garland.

“Gardeners are very nurturing people in general,” Garland said. “It does take time to get those fruits and flowers, but there are all these moments you get to experience while doing that that are just as much of a gift if not a greater gift than the actual product of gardening. Watching a bee visit a plant nearby or listening to the birds. I think one of the coolest things is being able to swap stories and tips with your friends, neighbors and new people you meet through gardening.”

Mussulman has met so many knowledgeable people like Garland not only through gardening but also through her yoga classes.

“I remember doing yoga a lot at the Y, and there was a woman working around the front walk and weeding. I said, ‘I could help if you want, and she said sure.’ But we never exchanged names or anything,” Mussulman said. “I like weeding. I’m very fond of it because I’m somewhere else in my head when I’m weeding.”

Mussulman soon found herself visiting the Y more frequently, exercising both her body and her green thumb. When she was diagnosed with breast cancer 12 years ago, she returned to that same familiar location on Second Street in Bangor and enrolled in the YMCA’s Caring Connections cancer support group.

“I went to the Y’s breast cancer meetings once a week and there were anywhere from eight to 20 women there,” she shared. “I was very lucky they caught it early. I had surgery and radiation and didn’t have to have chemo. It was something we got through very easily physically but emotionally was very different, and I was so grateful I had a place to go at the Y.”

Since then, Mussulman has devoted her time and talents to tending the small garden that adorns the walkway and front entrance into the Bangor Y, taking over for the woman who lovingly maintained it before her.

“I slowly started redoing everything. I buy daffodils and tulips because the Y members seem to really love those, and daffodils are great because they go from season to season,” she said. “Unfortunately, we had a beautiful little Asian cherry tree

More evidence of Lydia Mussulman’s green thumb. PHOTO COURTESY OF LYDIA MUSSULMAN

that died under my watch. I really think it was the drought we experienced the past few years, or it could’ve been my digging because small trees in small areas like that can’t stretch their roots as far as they need to.”

Mussulman and Garland agree that every gardener, no matter their scope of expertise, has seen plants fail to flourish at one time or another.

“The most experienced gardeners have killed more plants than they can count, me being one of them, and I’ve learned from every single one that I’ve killed,” Garland said. “So don’t be afraid to learn from mistakes.”

Both Garland and Mussulman advise those looking to grow their own garden of beauty to start small.

“I tell people go to your kitchen window and look out, then pick a little spot. Go small at first until you get a handle on what you’re doing. You can also do pots on your porch. That’s no weeding. With that you can go and put a few rocks in the bottom for special drainage and fill it up with a bag of soil from a store. Then go and buy geraniums or what you like,” Mussulman said.

Garland said that many affordable seeds can be sowed directly into a garden.

“Prioritize the groups you want to grow. If you have a limited amount of space or if you have a container garden that you’re doing, what is the thing you are craving the most, that you can walk out your door and get a snippet of? It might be basil. Basil is a really easy thing to get going in a container and it doesn’t require a lot of maintenance and has very few pests,” Garland said.

Mussulman has even used her gardening skills to inspire the next generation of growers from John Bapst High School.

“A few years ago, I helped the students plant the yellow tulip garden at the Bangor Y. They have a program to help kids with depression, mental health and that sort of thing, and they wanted to plant yellow tulips but the kids didn’t know how,” she said. “So, I showed them how to plant and that you want them so many inches apart. They all worked together and were great at it. It was a good time.”

Mussulman plans to continue digging in the dirt, weeding where it’s necessary and planting beauty both at her home and within her community, one seed at a time.