March 10, 2018

The Return of the Ogre


This month, for the ninth year in a row, I will go into a cave and come out wearing my Garden Ogre suit.  For the next seven months, I will prowl the Medfield Community Garden with one task: to tell 75 gardeners to weed their plots, tighten their fences, and be nice to one another.  I know with complete certainty that, by the end of October, half a dozen gardeners will hate me.  The rest will find me merely annoying.

Nine-and-a-half years ago, Betty and I cornered one of our town’s selectmen and complained that our town’s small Community Garden was a wreck.  Plots grew up in weeds and no one cared.  Two families took a quarter of the garden for themselves.  Water spigots leaked or didn’t work.  We demanded action.

Abandoned garden plots used to grow
up in weeds, like 'Mom's Garden'
What we got was a call from the Town Clerk, telling us we were to be sworn in as members of the Garden Committee.  After we took our oath, we asked who were the other members.  The answer was: “Just you; everyone else resigned.”

We generate publicity
seeking new gardeners
Betty and I took our newfound responsibility seriously.  A four-page list of Draconian ‘Rules’ became a single page of ‘guidelines’.  Articles appeared in the local papers seeking gardeners and new recruits showed up in droves.  Six thousand square feet of gardens were added, and then another 3,000 square feet, bringing the garden to a full acre in size.  New gardeners were encouraged to start with a 300-square-foot ‘half-plot’ space, and an early-Spring class on vegetable gardening became a staple at the town library.

It all sounds idyllic, except even ‘guidelines’ need to be enforced.  The secret to having 75 people gardening together is to ensure that everyone plays nice.  That’s where the Ogre comes in. 

Weeds along the fence
My number one responsibility is to ensure everyone keeps the paths around their garden weed-free.  It’s a simple request: every week, spend five minutes pulling any grass or weeds that are in the three-foot-wide aisles and, especially, along your fence line.  If you have a front-row garden, there are fifteen gardeners behind you who depend on being able to walk by your plot unmolested. 

Yet, every year, gardeners decide it’s not their job.  It begins with weeds growing in their fence and, left unchecked, escalates until there’s a carpet of crabgrass that will spew billions of seeds into every plot.  I start with kind notes: “Hey, the next time you’re at the garden, could you take a few minutes and weed the aisles?”  Some people comply, others don’t.  The next note is just a little testy: “Hey, I’m getting complaints about the weeds in your aisles.  Please take care of them.”  This send-and-ignore pas-de-deux continues until I send out one that says, “Weed your fence line and aisles or else I’ll do it.  And if I do it, you lose your garden.”  That’s the note the recipient posts to social media to show how a simple, friendly community endeavor has devolved into a dystopian nightmare.

Common sense says not
to shade your neighbors
As the season progresses, the problems escalate to include ten-foot-high sunflowers and eight-foot-high stalks of corn.  With just three feet between gardens, common sense says not to grow stuff that casts a shadow over your neighbors’ plot.  Yet, some gardeners insist it their Flora-the-Goddess-of-Gardening-given-right to not only grow this stuff at the back of their plot (where it shades the front of the adjacent garden), but to use it as a border around their garden, thereby shading everyone in sight.
Out go the memos, with predictable results.

I take photos of
rogue squash vines
Come August, two things happen.  First, everyone goes away for two weeks.  And, second, everyone’s squash vines run amok.  The vines push out fences, turning three-foot passageways into Amazonian-caliber jungle pathways where machetes are required for navigation.  I plead via email for cooperation and receive replies from Patagonia where, I’m informed, the skiing is wonderful but they’ll take care of the vines just as soon as their holiday is over and they’ve ‘decompressed’.  Some express amazement that ‘Madison’, who had faithfully pledged to tend their garden in their absence, hasn’t stopped by.

Then comes the end of the season.  Most gardeners clear their plots during September, even though they have until the end of October.  The days are shorter and few things are ripening.   A few gardeners, though, just stop gardening; leaving everything in place with predictable results.  Three gardeners did this in the autumn of 2017.  Oh, they finally took down their fence and cleared the plot, but not before the weeds were two feet high.  They were livid when I told them their plots were being given away.

Now, it’s March, and the process has started all over again.  Between people ‘aging out’ and moving away, I have nine plots to fill with up to 18 gardeners.  The newspaper articles began appearing last week and the response has been enthusiastic.  Everyone who inquires gets a copy of those Gardening Guidelines with a plea to read them before they send a check.  Everyone says they have so.  In theory, this year should be one of bonhomie and bountiful harvests of well-contained squash. 

But I’m not counting on it.

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