The Saga of Plot 48B: What a Community Garden Is All About

Volunteers put the finishing touches on Plot 48B

As I have written before, my role as co-manager of my town’s community garden is to be the ‘enforcer’ to Betty’s ‘garden guru’.  While she is universally loved because she freely dispenses excellent horticultural advice, gardeners hear from me when there is a problem with their plot. I’m the one who tells people to weed their aisles, cut back their vines, and tighten their fences. 

And, also as I have written, I have to do my job with a light touch.  A plot in the community garden may be a limited, sought-after town benefit; but having one ought to be fun.  Having someone continually nag you to do something is definitely not ‘fun’ and, after a while, a gardener will say to himself or herself, ‘To hell with all this.  I’m going to the Cape.’  If that happens enough times, I run out of people on the waiting list and plots begin growing up in weeds. 

It's a big garden - 76 gardeners in 70 plots

And so, I say ‘please’ and use phrases like ‘as soon as possible’ a lot, even when the transgressions are annoying to the miscreant’s rule-abiding neighboring plot holders.  I nudge people into being better gardeners.  I sign my notes, ‘Garden Ogre’; the better to draw both a smile and compliance.  But I am also persistent, especially this time of year.  

In mid-June, I began to notice one garden was developing a weed problem.  I sent an email.  A week later, I had neither received a written response (‘sorry, I’m on vacation…’) nor did I see evidence of weeding.  Another email went out.  Still no reply. 

Plot 48B had grown up in weeds

Then, the heat of late June and early July hit, and the weeds exploded.  I wrote one of ‘those’ emails: ‘Unless you get your garden under control, you’ll lose it.’  That message drew a response – an unexpected one.  The plot’s tenant wrote back to explain why she had been unable to garden.  I won’t divulge the reasons except to say they were moving, and jarring proof that the Covid-19 epidemic reaches into our lives in unexpected ways.  Like so many of our gardeners, she saw her plot as a refuge, but she did not have the hours it would take to bring it back into compliance. 

So, I did something I’ve done a handful of times:  I put out a plea to help rescue the plot.  In a simpler time (before March 2020), I would sent out my request to a dozen long-time gardeners with big hearts and open calendars.  I would name a date and time, and expect enough of them to show up such that, in some fixed number of hours, we could correct whatever problem needed to be addressed.  This year, social distancing made that impossible.  Instead, I sent my request to the entire garden, telling everyone to do what they could on their own schedule, and to keep six feet apart in doing so. 

At least 20 of the 76 gardeners responded.  Each day, the garden showed tangible improvement.  By this past Friday, I could write the plot holder and say, ‘I think you can do the rest.  You have a lot of friends here.’ A few hours later, though, I received an unexpected reply: even with the reclamation, she would be unable to continue for this season.  With regret, she was giving up her plot. 

And, I had my own dirty little secret:  by mid-July, no one wants to start gardening.  It’s too     damn hot and there’s not enough season remaining to grow the 'fun' crops.  By mid-July, everyone who might have thought about gardening in April has made other plans. 

Some stories have unexpected plot twists, and this is one of those.  That same day I also received an email from one of our gardeners – a wonderful woman who is a professor at Wellesley College –wondering if surplus vegetables might be collected for a group of two dozen food-insecure international students remaining on campus for the summer.  All on-campus food service had been shut down, supermarkets were miles away, and the students’ budgets were tight to non-existent.  

Except in 2020, we regularly put
out bins for the Food Cupboard

I will add that, for more than a decade, we have regularly put out bins for our town’s Food Cupboard.  This year, because of Covid-19 restrictions, they’re unable to accept donations of fresh produce.  I told the Wellesley College professor that not only could we put out bins bi-weekly for such a food drive, but we would also devote plot 48B to the effort.   

This morning brought the final plot twist.  As volunteers were putting the final touches on cleaning and re-planting the garden, yet another of our members came by to help out.  She is on staff at Babson College in Wellesley.  When she heard about the Wellesley College students, she said she had just been made aware of a similar number of international students at Babson who also face food insecurity until classes begin in September.  Then, half an hour later, the lady who has long coordinated the community garden collection for the Food Cupboard, also dropped by and said, yes, the Food Cupboard bins are all available and will be in place for our use. 

A proud occupation
when things like this
happen.

So, this coming week, and one day every other week until the end of the season, there will once again be bins and wheelbarrows at the front of the garden.  The recipients will be different but the need will be just as great.  And, Plot 48B is going to be devoted to that very good cause. 

It is events like these that make being a garden ogre a proud occupation. 

This afternoon I emailed everyone in the garden and told them they should take a bow.  This is what a Community Garden is supposed to be about.