The People's Garden: Participants grow more than food with community efforts

Community gardening is exploding.

Whether it's the result of the local-foods movement, the economic downturn or a tendency toward self-reliance, the community-gardening movement is bigger than ever.

Churches, schools, apartment complexes and assisted-living and community centers have all realized the benefits of tending gardens in a community. And in the process they are redefining what community means.

Vicky Garrett, the projects coordinator for the American Community Gardening Association, a nonprofit organization, said that they are "totally swamped" with requests for information. Their Web site is www.communitygarden.org.

Though they don't track the number of gardens, Garrett said that over the last year e-mails are up 29 percent, phone calls are up 19 percent and the listserv has grown 18 percent.

New membership almost doubled from 2008 to 2009. She said that the upward trend started with the reports of contaminated spinach and lettuce a few years ago. Then there were sharp food-price increases when energy prices rose dramatically.

In an effort to get a better understanding of the community-gardening movement in Winston Salem, I talked with several gardeners.

The movement is impressive in its diversity. Margaret Savoca, an assistant professor of nutrition at UNC Greensboro, works with children in the garden at the Ken Carlson Boys and Girls Club.

The garden was designed to help children understand the principles of raising their own food.

"We have a small group of kids who are doing this and a few adults," Savoca said. "I have been a gardener all my life. I grew up with tomatoes, peppers and eggplant in my backyard. I believe that children can enjoy seeing things grow and learn at the same time. It is a part of life that kids are missing out on," Savoca said.

Wallace Williamson, a master gardener, was involved in starting the Community Gardens of Rural Hall.

They have 10 plots. This garden is built on a neighborhood model. Ten families work the plots with one being shared by two older women. "Each person has his or her plot and can use it as if that person owned that small piece of land," Williamson said. "We help each other, but every plot has a temporary owner so to speak. We also have work days where we all come at the same time. That might include a demonstration, a potluck or whatever," Williamson said.

"I love sharing knowledge, plants and gardening tips with other individuals who share this passion. It is inspiring to help others appreciate and learn how to use the good earth to be more self-sufficient, to eat healthier and to get exercise while working together in community spirit. We had master gardeners working right beside novice gardeners. Everybody helped each other out," Williamson said.

This spring, the Rural Hall garden will become part of Reap More Than You Sow, a group started by Mark Godwin of Shouse Nursery and Andrew Hebard, president and CEO of Technology Crops International.

Reap More than You Sow is a nonprofit organization. They want to become facilitators for community-garden projects in rural and urban settings. The organization elects a garden captain, who then assembles a garden team and coordinates the workings of the garden. The organization intends to have one successful, model garden completed this year. A total of five are already in the works. The group sees its mission as "ecotherapy," a holistic approach in which community gardens will accomplish a sense of ownership, collaboration and pride, as well as offer an opportunity for exercise and to feed people nutritious produce.

Reap More Than You Sow intends to provide resources: equipment, assistance in building gardens, seed, fertilizer, advice and guest speakers. Each garden will have a beehive to illustrate pollination.

Hebard said that the idea came to him after participating in a discussion during a Leadership Winston-Salem meeting. "We were asked to envision what Winston-Salem would look like in 10 years…. I was amazed at how many people mentioned community gardens," Hebard said. "We strongly believe that community gardens could be the glue that holds the city together."

Mary Jac Brennan spends about 15 hours a week working in the community garden she started at Main Street United Methodist Church in Kernersville. The "Garden of Promise" is about a quarter of an acre and is managed by 12 regulars and more than 100 drop-in volunteers.

She talks about new friendships, intergenerational fellowship, sun-warmed cherry tomatoes, making pickles from cucumbers and sharing tomato sandwiches in the garden.

The garden provides food to Crisis Control Ministry, last year contributing 1,500 pounds of produce. Brennan wants to establish a link between the garden and Kids Cafe, an outreach program through Second Harvest Food Bank of Northwest NC that provides food and tutoring to children. The gardeners also canned produce for sale at the church's fall festival and occasionally offer fresh produce in exchange for a contribution at the church.

Ellen Kutcher is the director of Historic Bethabara Park and oversees the community garden. Kutcher said that the original settlers included a doctor and a gardener. They supervised the establishment of the community and medical gardens in the spring of 1754.

"The Bethabara community garden is the only known, well-documented colonial community garden in the U.S.," Kutcher said in an e-mail.

The gardens were abandoned 20 years later when the settlement moved to Salem. The Garden Club Council of Winston-Salem and Forsyth County pledged $1,500 to restore Bethabara's community garden in 1985.

No planting was done the first year because of a lack of maintenance manpower. Toby Bost, who was a Forsyth County extension agent at the time and is now retired, suggested that the garden be divided and leased to individuals.

Kutcher said that there are now 32 gardeners and that a strong sense of community exists between them. They have pot luck meals with ingredients from their plots.

Kutcher said that having the gardens in a public spot is an asset because visitors get to talk with the gardeners. The downside of the unprotected site is that vegetables often disappear.

Don Mebane is the Forsyth County extension agent in charge of 4H youth and community development. Mebane supplies labor, plants, fertilizer and arranges to have sites plowed and tilled through the Winston Grows program, a joint effort between Forsyth Agricultural Extension, the Garden Club Council of Winston-Salem, Forsyth County and the Winston-Salem Foundation.

Mebane has about 30 gardens in the program, all of which have initiatives and objectives. At the Urban League there is an intergenerational garden for seniors working with youth. At Carter Vocational the garden is designed to support physically- and emotionally-challenged youth.

The garden at Winston Summit is planted for seniors and adults with disabilities, while one at Kimberly Park supports mothers and daughters gardening together.

At the Addiction Recovery Care Association, a therapeutic garden was planted with drug-recovery participants.

One of Winston-Salem's largest community gardens is at The Children's Home on Reynolda Road.

The Food Bank community garden was created there 10 years ago by Jim Holmes, a retired Winston-Salem businessman, and several members of Centenary United Methodist Church.

A group of volunteers cultivates the two-acre garden, contributing all its produce to the Second Harvest Food Bank.

Last year, more than 6,000 pounds of produce were harvested.

"We have about 20 regular volunteers and another 100 who come for one or occasional times," said Ellen Kirby, a volunteer and member of the coordinating team. "This year, we are expanding production to try to meet the increasing needs for food due to unemployment and homelessness in the area. We need individuals and groups."

Kirby is the editor of the Brooklyn (N.Y.) Botanic Garden handbook on community gardens. She is the former director of GreenBridge, the community environmental horticulture program of Brooklyn Botanic Garden and a past president of the American Community Gardening Association.

"I love to work with plants and with people, so community gardening is the perfect mix. When I started doing this in 1984, I was the volunteer caretaker of a church garden in Brooklyn but gradually realized I couldn't do it alone. Soon it evolved into a community garden. I made countless friends and enjoyed the pleasures of learning to garden with other people. I was in a traveling job at the time and would sometimes go to the garden at 5 a.m. -- before going to the airport -- to get my gardening fix for the week."

Kirby's stories are typical of the experiences I heard when talking with community gardeners. What starts as a love of gardening mixes with a compassion for those in need and becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

"A group of about 30 people from a local church came to help in the Food Bank garden twice," Kirby said. "The first time they came, a huge thunderstorm rolled in and we all had to take shelter … for about 30 minutes. We became instant friends…. We sang and laughed…. After the storm was over, we worked for about two hours. It was amazing to see what we accomplished. It left us with a new sense of hope that the garden was going to make it. But the best part was the connection between all of us that would not have happened without the garden."

If you have a gardening question or story idea, write to David Bare in care of Features, Winston-Salem Journal, P.O. Box 3159, Winston-Salem, NC 27101-3159, or send e-mail to his attention to gardening @wsjournal.com.