Tom Carey: A visit with Tia Meer

Tia Meer, compatriot gardener and president of the Simple Living Institute, found a few spare moments to stop by my garden for a chat. Tia, along with her husband, Terry, grow their garden on the shores of the Econlockhatchee River at their Econ Farm east of Orlando. Simple Living Institute is the nonprofit organization sponsoring so many of our Central Florida community gardening projects. With a mission to “create opportunities for sustainability in our community,” how can we go wrong with neighbors like these?

Like many of us living in Central Florida, Tia has had the roots of her experience transplanted here. “When I grew up in Pennsylvania, my grandma was a farmer,” she said. “Growing up as a kid on grandma’s farm, I’d pull up carrots and dig up potatoes — treasure hunting for food — raid the raspberry patch and pick strawberries, climb the cherry tree. I’ve always had a love for being outside with nature, watching things grow. That’s a connection a lot of people have lost growing up in condos and apartments or suburban houses.”

The productivity of Tia’s garden is worthy of any gardener’s envy. “Our Econ Farm is mainly a self-sustainable project where most of the stuff we grow is for me and Terry to eat or share with family and friends,” she said. “We eat out of the garden every day. We’re harvesting lots of carrots and cabbage and greens right now. The tomatoes in pots never froze this year. We make a different salad every day for dinner.”

Us gardeners are a creative lot, always looking for new projects. “I’m trying to integrate more permaculture into my annual bio-intensive vegetable garden,” she said. “I’ll do that with sweet potatoes along the fence line of my vegetable garden. Other perennials I’ve planted along the fence line are garlic chives and pineapples. I’m planning a native plant restoration on top of my septic tank mound. I’ll plant all native grasses, like wooly grass and purple love grass. And we have a little bat house, but I want a bat mansion to collect the bat guano.“

Think gardening is a relaxed way of life? Not for Tia! “My life is very complicated from all the different hats I wear,” she said. “I’m a volunteer with Simple Living and I’m the president. With my own business I do garden consulting. I’m getting known as the community garden expert for a lot of the projects at churches and schools. One of the other projects I’m most excited about is the Winter Park urban farm.”

When I asked Tia for some quick tips, she responded with the elegance of simplicity, “Compost is the answer to everything!”

Tom Carey is the owner of Sundew Gardens, a you-pick gardening business in Oviedo. Visit the Sundew Gardens Facebook page.