The Providential Gardener was originally a blog created for a job interview in 2006. I thought it should be about things I love, and it happens I especially love both Providence and gardening. It took all of 15 minutes to come up with the name on a lovely May evening. Providential Gardener is a way of seeing the world. You can read here how I was thinking then about "the Growing Community of gardeners and caretakers of urban farms, parks and other public spaces, as well as individuals and families...."
The back story on the word providential, which seemed to me perfectly fits this online community, relates to why Roger Williams named this place Providence. He wrote: “I, having made covenants of peaceable neighborhood with all the sachems and natives round about us, and having a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress, called the place Providence; I desired it be for a shelter for persons distressed of conscience.” Synonyms for providential include opportune, advantageous, favorable, auspicious, propitious, heaven-sent, welcome, golden, lucky, happy, fortunate, felicitous, timely, well timed, seasonable, convenient, expedient. In fact, providential is often used in relation to fortuitous natural events, for instance, “a providential rain saved the crops.
But this thing keeps evolving....