Somewhere
behind the two busy intersecting urban highways on the northern edge of
Chicago, there’s a large piece of land occupied by a community (public) golf
course, an animal shelter, a (garbage) recycling center and the James Park
Community Gardens.
The gardens
are no more than five acres. And yet they’re a site in which as many as forty
amateur gardener-farmers come at all hours of the day and night to tend their
postage-stamp size pieces of land.
“Community
gardens have become so popular these days that people have to apply for a plot.
And then they are selected lottery-style,” says Robin Gaston, a retired senior
auditor for HP Hewlett-Packard) Inc. who got lucky three years ago, winning the
lottery that allowed her to start a small garden of her own.
“I’d never
been into gardening before, but when my friend Sue asked me to water her plants
while she was away, I saw the appeal of being out in the open air and watching
the way plants grow,” says Robin who adds she loves harvesting crops that she
frequently transforms into healthy meals. She also enjoys sharing her bumper
crops with friends and neighbors alike.
Out of the
forty odd gardeners at James Park some are like Robin, retirees with leisure
time on their hands. Meanwhile, others rely on the crops they grow to feed
their families or at least supplement their diets with fresh fruits and
vegetables which they’re assured have no harmful chemicals sprayed on them.
Technically,
the land belongs to the City of Evanston and is overseen by a lands department
head. But once a person pays a minimal annual fee (USD80), she or he has access
to all sorts of benefits.
“We each get
the key code to enter the garden. And once inside we have access to wheel
barrels, shovels and other gardening equipment,” says Robin.
“We also
have access to water and hoses so we can keep our gardens green and thriving.”
Having spent
all her working life behind computers, analyzing company spread sheets and
problem-solving in a transnational company, Robin says gardening has ensured
she doesn’t miss the corporate world at all.
Having a
plot that’s around 15 feet long and 10 feet wide, she’s been able to grow
everything from beans, broccoli and Brussel sprouts to kale (sikuma wiki),
Swiss chard, yellow squash and zucchini as well as egg plants, tomatoes and
green peppers.
“But I’ve
been in battle with the bunnies from the beginning,” Robin says. “Last season
they destroyed my beans and nearly finished my lettuce. But this year, I’ve
gotten better at fencing so I think my veggies will be okay.”
Fortunately,
the bunnies are not as keen on munching Robin’s spices so she grows everything
from mint and oregano to “parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme,” the latter a
lyric that had me humming the Simon and Garfunkel classic tune the rest of our
morning in the gardens.
I got to hum
why my friend weeded and harvested scads of yellow squash, parsley and thyme. I
had anticipated meeting some of other gardeners who I’d been told were regulars
in the gardens. There was the African American man who’d been tending his
garden plot for the past 20 years and who’d given Robin invaluable advice when
she first started out.
Then there
was the Eastern European gentleman who’d constructed a beautiful trellis at his
garden gate on which he had draped raspberry vines, the berries of which were
just starting to ripen as we passed by. The temptation to snitch one or two was
almost overpowering; but seeing how careful members of the gardens were not to
intrude on one another’s territory, I felt compelled to abide by their
invisible ethic and kept my fingers to myself.
After she’d
finished weeding, Robin gave me a ‘grand tour’ of the gardens where I saw
almost every postage-stamp sized plot proliferating with leafy greens, be they
pumpkin, kale, Swiss chard or sundry spices.
That day we
apparently arrived too late to meet any of the other gardeners since we’d got
there around 9:30am, and the veterans are said to be there from dawn onwards.
But even in
their absence, I was able to see the beauty of community gardens. What I
especially loved was the way Robin brought all her veggie left-overs from home
and throw them into her ‘compost tumbler’, a manual machine that provided her
with all the organic fertilizer she needed to grow beautiful vegetables, like
to yellow squash, baby tomatoes and parsley that I took home that warm sunny
day.
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