April 30, 2010: Boulder County
Community Gardens Sprouting Up Everywhere
LONGMONT — Veronica Sommers’ kids say she’s addicted.
Her husband says she talks to plants.
“So I guess I am hard-core,” Sommers admitted with a smile and a shrug.
A hard-core gardener.
“My main reason, I think, is I like to dig in the soil and have that connection with seed,” the Longmont woman said. “Every time you put a seed in the ground, it’s like a little miracle.”
This is the eighth year that Sommers has had a plot in Second Start Community Garden where 11th Avenue dead-ends just past Baker Street.
“I have to plant something every year, just because. Every year, it gets bigger and bigger.”
Every year, “it” does get bigger and bigger: community gardening, that is.
The trend is growing. A lot. And fast. So much so, that’s it almost impossible to keep up with all the new vegetable gardens sprouting up around the city.
Schools. Churches. Nonprofits. Homeowners associations. Even tight-knit neighbors just getting together to hoe and grow on a communal patch of tilled earth.
11th Avenue Garden
For years, Second Start Community Garden and the Colorado State University Extension gardens at the Boulder County Fairgrounds were pretty much the only community gardens in town, and they are pretty hard to get into because they’re usually full (as are their waiting lists).
So people who didn’t have land — or whose land wasn’t suitable for gardening — had a hard time finding plots of dirt to call their own.
Not anymore.
Across the street from Second Start is a plot of tilled earth that soon will become the second city-
aided community garden, officially named the 11th Avenue Garden.
The garden has been in planning and preparation stages for nearly a year, but it should soon open to anyone eager to get his or her hands dirty.
The Longmont City Council approved nearly $7,000 in June to prep the site and the soil, manage weeds and install a water tap and a gate.
Then the city and Growing Gardens, a Boulder County nonprofit, applied for and received a $28,000 grant from LiveWell Longmont, a program that advocates healthy lifestyles in the community.
Half of that money will pay to install water hydrants and irrigation lines, fencing, pathways, compost bins and, if the budget allows, other amenities like a shed to store tools. The other half will go to developing and managing the garden — including spreading the word.
The Longmont City Council last week gave initial approval to lease the city-owned land to Growing Gardens.
Growing Gardens will manage the 11th Avenue Garden and plans to make about 40 plots available to gardeners in June. Executive director Ramona Clark said about 15 people have already signed up for plots.
Growing Gardens partners with churches, homeowners associations, cities and counties to manage eight gardens in and around the county.
Each of the group’s gardens is different because each takes on the personality of its gardeners, Clark said.
“They each have a completely different feel to them; they’re like kids,” she said. “I’m excited to see what (the 11th Avenue Garden) will look like. It’s kind of like waiting for a baby.”
Churches and service organizations
Rob Baltrum is hoping to get on the list for a plot at Bethlehem Lutheran Church at 1000 15th Ave.
Even though it’s his congregation — and even though he’s helping get a community garden there up and running — there’s no guarantee he’ll get one of the plots, he said with a laugh.
“I’m going to get in the queue,” he said. “I’m not guaranteed to get one more than anyone else, but I would love to get a plot.”
The idea to start a community garden at the church came about after a church member learned more about the Second Start garden.
That turned into: “Why don’t we start our own garden?”
The church has a couple of acres of vacant land north of its parsonage, Baltrum said.
A portion of that land will be turned in a garden; the church will start with about 25 full-size plots that could be divided into half-plots, as well as some raised beds.
The church is still working through some details, such as rules and regulations and how to get water to the garden (installing a pricey city water tap or using the church’s water supply).
While the church will manage the garden, the plots will be open to anyone in the community.
Plots likely won’t be available until next spring, but Baltrum said the church plans to start turning dirt this summer to prepare the site. They’ve already sent soil samples to the CSU Extension office so they’ll know how to prepare the soil.
If interest grows once the garden is growing, the church could expand it, he said.
“We know there are waiting lists at almost all the other gardens,” Baltrum said. “We pretty much assume once the word gets out that there are plots available, we’ll fill up.”
And he hopes to tap the congregation to help spread the word. Baltrum has a direct line to the church’s director of youth and household ministry (who happens to be his wife, Kristen Baltrum), so he hopes the youth group will help knock on doors when the garden is closer to being ready.
“Being a church, we do a fair amount of community outreach, and we’re positioned in a residential area with a (mix of homes) in the neighborhood,” he said.
“Making a community garden would really benefit that neighborhood.”
Bethlehem Lutheran isn’t the only church or service organization considering putting in a garden.
First Congregational United Church of Christ also is considering one, and members of First United Methodist Church on 11th Avenue are talking about putting in a vegetable garden as well.
The OUR Center has kept a vegetable garden for years behind its warming center at 309 Atwood St., using the produce grown there to help make daily meals for those who need them.
Richard Honey — the founder and director of Practical Christian Living Centers, which operates The Well — also is researching a community garden.
The Well is a Christian resource center at Third Avenue and Main Street that offers weekly dinners to the homeless, as well as help with job searches.
Honey’s organization is looking into a community garden that would “assist our community in establishing a work routine while offering an opportunity to live each day with a purpose.”
Anyone can do it
All different kinds of people work the land at the sites that Growing Gardens manages, Clark said.
Some are college students. Some are senior citizens. Some are families with children.
Some people live in apartments with no yard. Some live in houses with too-shady yards. Some live in the mountains with lots of land but with a too-short, too-cold growing season (or the deer eat anything they grow).
And they all do it for different reasons: Health. Environment. Eating organically. Eating locally. Needing to connect with nature. Starting a hobby. Feeding a passion. Feeding a family.
Community gardening also grows camaraderie between people who might normally never cross paths, Clark said. And they all have something to share: gardening.
“It’s kind of this common ground for people to come, and it equalizes everybody,” she said. “Everything and everyone is in an equal setting.
“I think people use the gardens for a lot of different things: They come to the garden to commune, to grow, to be quiet. Some are growing for beauty, some people are growing for food, some use it as a place to bring their kids to teach them to grow.”
At the Second Start garden on Wednesday morning, Sommers and her friend Janet Higgins methodically mixed manure and compost with the soil: shovel, lift, turn; shovel, lift, turn.
Sommers’s four children also help her garden — or are “made to help,” she said. (She bribes them with smoothies if they agree to weed.) Her 5-year-old daughter, Christine D’Epagnier, said her favorite part is planting the seeds.
“They grow and help people get fruit,” she said.
She shouted, “Yay!” and ran over to the plot when Higgins asked if she was ready to help plant snow pea seeds.
That same morning, like every Wednesday morning, staffers with Imagine! — which serves people with disabilities in Boulder and Broomfield counties — brought eight students with a gardening class to plant and work in their plot at Second Start.
Imagine! staffers Lorna Diehl and Lucinda Riley said this is the second year the organization has offered a class.
“They love to be outside, and they love to see things grow,” Diehl said.
Riley said gardening gives them a chance to be outside and see how things grow, but said it also boosts their self-confidence.
“They’re so proud of themselves,” she said.
And that’s the whole thing, Clark said: Anyone can garden, and everyone should have the opportunity to.
“Gardening isn’t hard to understand; it can be hard work, but everybody can do it,” Clark said. “Everybody should be able to do it. Everybody should be able to know how to plant things and grow things.”
This is awesome. I helped put in a community garden on the corner of 8th and Marine 2 years back and the response from everyone who walked by was extremely positive.
I’m very interested in getting started with a community garden. Your garden sounds awesome. What’s the next step??