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Community Gardening
| Article
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19238 |
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Section : |
LIFE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
2,164 Words |
| Author
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Karen Karvonen
Karen Karvonen is a garden writer based in Denver. |
When Betty Wigington was growing up in Savannah, Missouri, her extended family raised all the vegetables they ate, canning and storing enough produce to take them through the winter. One of Betty's fondest memories is that of sitting under the tomato vines, holding a saltshaker in one hand and wiping juice off her chin with the other.
Today Wigington, a 66-year-old retired school nurse, lives alone in a Denver, Colorado, high rise, three stories from any contact with the soil. Yet she still gardens with her daughter Nan, her son-in-law Rob, and an occasional grandchild.
"They do the hard digging, and I furnish the seeds, plants, and fertilizer," says Wigington. "Last year Rob even put in an irrigation system. And Nan designed a scarecrow that was so lifelike it even fooled the garden attendant."
The 10-by-15-foot plot Betty Wigington and her family cultivate is part of the Denver Botanic community Gardens. They and 200,000-plus other community gardeners in the United States spade up nearly ninety thousand acres of land. And not all that acreage is in urban areas. A community gardening program in Knoxville, Tennessee, provides plot for the rural poor who don't own land. Some older residents in rural Michigan raise their veggies and blossoms in solar greenhouses attached to their senior center.
The gardeners themselves are as varied as the crops they grow: Their ranks include nearly every age, race, religion, ethnic group, and socioeconomic background. The wealthier residents of San Francisco tend rooftop plots, while inmates at the County Jail till an eight-acre plot surrounding the prison. Meetings at Boston's Berkeley Street Community Gardens, originally a Chinese garden, are bilingual. Throughout New York City are blacks, Asians, and whites who have joined forces to turn blighted neighborhoods into green oases. In many larger cities, elevated beds allow handicapped gardeners access to their plants.
The reasons people gravitate toward community gardening are just as diverse. David Houseman, the program manager for Michigan's Alternative Food Delivery Systems, which creates community gardens for seniors, believes most gardeners' motivations are fairly simple.
Some people find gardening therapeutic; it lets them get in touch with nature, says Houseman. Many enjoy raising fresh produce they can't find in stores, or saving on their food
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