Betty and I secured a plot in
the Medfield Community Garden a year after we moved back to New England in 1999. From our first year, though, we noticed that
the garden seemed to be run for the benefit of a few families who staked out
multiple plots for themselves, did little maintenance, and imposed a
three-page-long list of rules that amounted to a screed against the use of
anything contrary to their idea of ‘organic’ principles.
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| A Google maps view of the garden, circa 2009. It has since been enlarged. |
We complained – to no avail – to
the ‘committee’ and then to a town selectman who looked into it and found that
the garden was under the auspices of the town’s Conservation Commission. We spoke to a member of the Commission who
nodded in all the right places. A few
months later, we were called into the Town Clerk’s office and sworn in as
members of the Community Garden Committee.
Which is when we found out that
we were the only members of the
Committee; the others having finally found suckers to take their place, and
promptly resigned. The one who had written the garden rule, as it turns out, wasn't even a committee member.
That was six years ago. I dredge up this bit of ancient history because,
this weekend, the garden was plowed under for the season by a farmer from a
neighboring town. The garden’s year is
officially over.
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| The garden in April... |
I like to think that Betty and I
have made some improvements in the running of the Community Garden. For one thing, it is now considerably larger:
30,000 square feet of gardens plus ancillary walkways, compost piles, and
whatnot; call it an acre in all. There
are fifty, 600-square-foot plots; about ten of which are further subdivided
into 300-square-foot plots so that those with smaller gardening aspirations can still
get their hands dirty. We can offer
plots to up to sixty families each season while charging just $20 per full plot
or $15 per half plot (which pays for two plowings, the delivery of compost and manure, and on-site water). For another thing, the gardening ‘guidelines’
fit nicely on one page.
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| ... and at the end of June |
We work with the town to bring
in wood chips to keep weeds out of the paths, and well-composted manure to
provide fertilizer. A soil test done on
the garden last spring showed that the garden is 18% ‘organics’ – no other
fertilizer is needed. The garden is
plowed under in the fall, overspread with manure over the winter, and then
harrowed in the spring. That fact that
after twelve years at its current site, the garden is now a full foot higher
than the surrounding field speaks volumes.
Betty’s job is garden
advisor. She gives a vegetable gardening
lecture to a standing-room crowd each March at the Medfield Library, and then
fields a continuing string of questions as the season progresses. For her, the questions are a gold mine: they tell her what is on the mind of both
beginning and experienced gardeners which, in turn, allows her to fine-tune her
presentations to garden clubs and civic groups.
She fields many queries while
she works our plot. Most questions, though,
arrive via email and Betty responds with page-long answers that include links
to university and extension service websites.
As a result, Betty has been given the title of 'garden guru', and
properly so.
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| Back in the bad old days, garden plots would be abandoned |
In addition to mowing and
weed-whacking the garden perimeter, my job is garden ogre. Garden communications are via email and the
ones I send out over the course of the season are invariably of the nagging
variety. In April and May I am telling people that they need to show ‘evidence
of gardening’ or else their plot will be given away. This is because, in the
bad old days, people would sign up for a plot, find it actually involved
effort, and abandon their garden to the weeds.
Those weeds would become everyone’s problem. Now, any garden that is not worked by the
middle of May gets turned over to someone on a waiting list.
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| ... and in August, when everything ripens. |
As the season progresses, I tell
people, gently at first and then stridently if follow-up communications are
needed, to clear weeds from the walking aisles, trim back vegetables that are
causing their fences to bulge into the aisles, get the excess weeds out of
their plots and, in August, to get their blankety-blank sweet potato and squash
vines out of the aisles.
Then comes the end-of-season
cleanup campaign. I am aware that many
community gardens allow permanent fences.
To me, this promotes insularity and a sense of a closed community. In Medfield, all gardens must be taken down
by the end of October. “Taken down” means fences, but also includes stalks and
vines that must be bagged up and completely removed from the vicinity together
with anything that might be diseased.
Weeds should be chucked to the perimeter of the garden. All that should remain is stuff that the
tractor can easily plow under.
It is during October that I
begin signing emails with the title ‘Garden Ogre’. The vast majority of our gardeners are
responsible. A minority have either an
unwarranted sense of entitlement or some aversion to meeting deadlines. I walk the garden every week noting who is
putting off their cleanup work and I start sending out ‘reminders’. If it gets to be the middle of the month and
the garden still shows no sign of cleanup activity, the tone of my emails becomes
downright unfriendly.
The response to these emails
varies from a wake-up call that finally gets them out on a chilly Saturday
morning to a petulant reply from one family that “they have small children and
preparing for Halloween is more important.”
Guess which family will not be invited back for the 2014 season?
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| Ready for next year. |
I walked the garden one final
time on Saturday morning. I pulled a
dozen or so stakes and some landscape fabric that had been buried by mulch. The
garden was otherwise clean of debris.
Later this month, I’ll send out notes to each plot holder asking if they
want to return for 2014 and, if so, to what size garden. That survey will tell me how much ‘marketing’
needs to be done to fill the spaces next year.
It is a satisfying bit of public
service. A fair number of the notes I
receive from my fellow gardeners make a point of praising the work Betty and I
do to keep the enterprise running. Best
of all, my fellow gardeners are a great group of people whom I would otherwise
likely never get to know.
What more can
an ogre ask? Well,, a donkey sidekick would be nice...
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