Sprawling Wachovia Garden plants seeds of community and sustainability

It's that time of year in the garden when summer's heat and exuberance mingle with a tang of decline. Plants are laden with a burden of fruit, and the humid air is heavy with the work of bees and aggravating mosquitoes.

I am being led through a community garden, barely 18 months old. It's a garden whose luxuriant growth defies its age. Carol Wooley and Tracy Lounsbury, two of the garden's founders, are my guides.

They are calling it the Wachovia Garden, a reference to the Wachovia tract established by the Moravians in the mid-1700s and encompassing Salem, Bethabara, Bethania, Friedberg and Friedland.

The garden is sandwiched between the God's Acre cemetery and the massive white expanse of the Belo home, a property of the Salem Congregation of the Moravian Church. The site once held the gardens and greenhouse of Edward Belo. It was graced with his beautiful roses.

Wooley is a commercial interior decorator and a resident of Old Salem. She lives in the 1839 Peter Fetter house. She, her friends John Hauser and Kirk Sanders started talking about putting a garden behind the Belo home. Wooley researched the historic precedent for a garden on the site, and the three of them came up with a plan and approached John Larson, the vice president of restoration at Old Salem, with their idea.

"John (Hauser) and I are very supportive of Old Salem and their mission," Wooley said. "We wanted to make sure that everything we did would be acceptable to them and contribute in a positive way to the museum and gardens."

At the same time, Lisa Mullen, a minister with the Board of Cooperative Ministry for the Southern Province of the Moravian Church, was among those assessing the assets of the Southern Province of the Moravian Church. One of those assets is land, and Mullen thinks the churches need gardens.

It was not long before the parties were united and the plan was brought before the board of the Salem Congregation, which owns the property, and the city's Historic Resources Commission. The plan was approved. Wooley's group then approached tomato gardener Lounsbury, who also signed on.

The Wachovia Garden functions as a community garden with affiliation to Home Moravian Church, and it would like to expand its efforts to other churches in the community. Some of the gardeners are Moravians, and others are not. Key Moravian principles — community and sustainability — drive this effort.

Mullen, who was working in the garden during my visit, said, "The garden lifts up those early spiritual practices: simplicity, generosity, hand and heart."

All of the produce is going to Sunnyside Ministry, a local Moravian emergency-assistance agency for people dealing with financial crises.

The gardeners make fresh-produce deliveries three times a week. Although this is an honorable goal, it would be too simplistic to describe the garden as a fresh-food production site for those in need. It's so much more.

The Wachovia Garden has a long-range plan that looks at the whole community. The site is being used by Salem Montessori School to teach children about the seed-to-table cycle, as well as the need to care for those who are less fortunate.

"They are seeing the whole cycle," said Karen Wilson, the head of Salem Montessori. "These are preschool children, 3 to 6 years old, and they plant seeds, grow and harvest their own food. They'll eat things out of the garden that they would never touch if presented to them at the table at home."

The same lessons and labors are being learned by kids from Sunnyside Ministry and from Home Moravian Church's youth group. Education is a big part of the mission embraced by the garden's founders.

"We try to grow unusual and heirloom varieties, and we want to teach about the importance of growing heirlooms," Lounsbury said, referring to the loss of genetic diversity as agriculture depends increasingly on fewer varieties. "The garden supported 155 heirloom varieties last year," he said. More than 100 varieties of tomatoes have been grown during the past two years.

Many Dixie Classic Farmers Market customers would recognize Lounsbury. He grows dozens of varieties of tomatoes and peppers for sale there, and he was the fourth-place winner of this year's Winston-Salem Journal tomato tasting. His entry was a tiny cherry tomato called Matts wild cherry. Lounsbury has worked in the community garden at Bethabara for 10 years, but he finds this site quieter and more to his liking.

The gardeners meet every Tuesday evening as a formal work day. It is usually followed by food, drink and conversation flowing around the common cause.

"We started out with about eight and now are about 15," Wooley said. "We are just a small group of people with a similar vision." Volunteers are always welcome.

The gardeners' dedication to permanence and aesthetics sets this garden apart. Sprawling over a tiered landscape that encompasses about an acre and a half, it is built around a central axis.

The gardeners have framed the landscape by planting heirloom Southern fruit trees and nine kinds of figs. There are apples, plums and apricots, and in the lower garden, raspberries and blackberries grow on trellises.

Alpine strawberries are planted as ground cover on one of the site's hilly sections. There are blueberries and plans for a grand arbor of grapes that will form a central meeting spot.

Nearby, two working honeybee hives are abuzz with workers on the evening shift. The area is carefully guarded with a fence and marked with warning signs. There is a small pond and a neatly compartmentalized herb garden framed with bricks, Wooley and Lounsbury said.

Lounsbury and Wooley pointed out where they thought steps could be installed, arbors erected and benches placed. All of these elements contribute to this group's commitment to making the garden a whole experience: production, education and aesthetics.

The mood is celebratory. They mark the planting of their apples annually with a cider-sipping celebration. There have been honey tastings and pumpkin carvings; the joys of the harvest are welcomed and recognized.

Once again, the Belo gardens are thriving.