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Interest blooming in community gardens

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By Mark Fisher, Staff Writer 6:21 PM Thursday, August 26, 2010

DAYTON — Jim Bishop brims with pride as he shows off the thriving vegetable crops — squash, beets, tomatoes, cabbage, corn and more — growing on the plots he rents at the community garden at Wegerzyn Garden MetroPark.

“We can some of the vegetables, but 90 percent of what I grow I give away,” said Bishop, 75, who lives in Trotwood. “I just like to help people, and doing this keeps me out of trouble.”

This is Bishop’s 12th year of farming plots in Wegerzyn’s community garden, but he’s got plenty of company — especially this year. All 344 plots in Wegerzyn’s community garden — and the plots are a spacious 28 feet by 28 feet — were rented out this year at $20 per plot, and there’s now a waiting list, according to Luci Beachdell, who oversees several community gardens affiliated with Five Rivers MetroParks.

The increasing interest in community gardening is fueled in part by the poor economy — people are finding ways to feed their family when money is tight — and the growing interest in eating locally produced vegetables and fruit, especially organically grown produce, Beachdell said. Wegerzyn’s community garden, for example, has an organic section with stricter rules regarding herbicides and pesticides.

Beachdell has seen the number of active, smaller community gardens nurtured by Five Rivers MetroParks double since 2007, to 39, as MetroParks launched or expanded programs such as Grow With Your Neighbors, which is designed to help urban residents develop gardens and green spaces, often from empty lots.

One of those empty lots — two acres of former railroad company land at East Fourth Street and Wayne Avenue in the shadow of downtown Dayton that has been owned by the city of Dayton for decades — has blossomed through Five Rivers MetroParks’ Grow With Your Neighbors program into Garden Station, operated by the Dayton Circus Creative Collective, a group of local artists. Garden Station has 16 elevated garden plots 4 feet by 12 feet rented for $10 a year by residents of the nearby Cannery or the South Park neighborhood and other urban residents, according to Lisa Helm, Garden Station’s project manager.

“This is the only community garden I know of that is right downtown, and we have a lot of apartment dwellers who don’t have land at all,” Helm said. “Many of these people miss gardening.”

The garden plots boast tomatoes, squash, peppers, beans, herbs and other crops. Helm hopes to add seven to 10 more elevated plots before next year’s growing season. Another section of Garden Station serves as an art park.

Five Rivers MetroParks also offers plots in a community garden in Possum Creek MetroPark, and it operates “City Beets,” a summer gardening program for urban youths who grow vegetables at Wegerzyn, then sell some of the produce at the 2nd Street Public Market and donate to local food banks.

And the parks organization is finding other ways to nurture community gardening and make people better gardeners: it offers a “The Plant Doctor Is In” program that gives on-site one-on-one advice, and on Nov. 16, it will offer a free class at Wegerzyn that will teach those interested in starting a community vegetable garden the essential steps to make it a success, according to Valerie Beerbower, a Five Rivers MetroParks spokeswoman.

Other organizations and government entities are also joining the community gardening bandwagon: Sugarcreek Twp. in Greene County, for example, operates a community garden behind its township administration building.

Back at Wegerzyn, Jim Bishop is bemoaning cabbage lost to rot and describing his battle against Japanese beetles with Dawn dishwashing liquid as fellow Wegerzyn cultivator Norbert Seng, 70, of Beavercreek points out his beets, eggplant, broccoli, watermelon and other plants. Seng also donates much of what he grows, most of it to the Dayton-based homeless shelter, St. Vincent Hotel.

“I grew up on a farm, and now I’m retired, so this is my second childhood, I guess,” Seng said. “And I like to see the reactions of those I give my vegetables to.”

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