When Greenfield resident Eveline MacDougall first visited the Great Falls Community Garden in 1997, it made her think of all the gardens her family had grown, and about her own frustrations trying to “squeeze plants into tiny outdoor spaces while longing for a real garden.”
Inspired by the Turners Falls garden, MacDougall turned to her friend — and one of the garden’s creators — Suzette Snow-Cobb for advice, and started talking to community members and the Department of Public Works about a site for another community garden, this time in Greenfield. None were found.
Then used as an administrative building, the Davis Street School lot had space that MacDougall thought could be used for a garden. Months passed involving talks with the school committee and the selectboard at the time before the selectboard approved the garden, provided MacDougall check in with all the abutters. After two years of planning, the Pleasant Street Community Garden was about to be born.
In the spring of 1999, Rick Pascale spent eight long hours breaking ground. Thirteen plots were marked off, and gardeners to use them were found immediately. When Dorothea Sotiros came along to help MacDougall, 30 plots were in use. There was always a waiting list.
There were struggles and frustrations along the way, but MacDougall said she wouldn’t trade a minute of her time in her 15 years leading the garden initiative for anything. The gardeners who gathered there were refugees, immigrants, youngsters, elders, apartment dwellers like herself, and even prisoners from the jail. All were grateful and happy to have dirt for planting. MacDougall’s stories of trials and joy would take more than this column to tell.
But then the brick building was razed in 2017, the gardens were removed and there was gnashing of teeth. MacDougall reminded the gardeners that the town had been very generous in allowing them to use the land, for free, all those years.
Now, the community garden is making a comeback, this time at the John Zon Community Center, which took the place of the Davis Street School.
So far, there are lawns, shrubberies and a large pollinator garden in front of the building. Behind the building is a rain garden, and the beginnings of a new community garden. Dorothea Sotiros is once again one of the organizers, along with Temple Israel Rabbi Andrea Cohen-Kiener and others who have met for the past few months as a working group.
On April 22, Earth Day, there will be a celebration from 5 to 7 p.m. to mark the beginnings of the new community garden. There will be music, snacks and conversation about the garden’s future.
I met with Cohen-Kiener to see the 180-by-35-foot planting bed full of promise. It is not ready to be planted, though; Cohen-Kiener explained the soil needs to be prepared this year before it is fertile and healthy. A healthy soil will prepare the garden for successful crops next year. The working group’s members are grateful to the Northeast Organic Farming Organization (NOFA), which gave them best practices advice about improving the soil.
The working group is happy about the educational impact of the garden’s location, Cohen-Kiener said. Those who come to or walk by the John Zon Community Center will have an opportunity to see the skills needed as the garden takes form. There will be a best practices workshop in composting, demonstrations on different ways to garden and a talk about vertical gardening.
Cohen-Kiener said the soil will be worked this year with tools that were used in the original community garden, then patiently and hopefully stored while the working group waits for the land’s renewal. Those tools will be stored in a new shed created thanks, in part, to grant funding from the New England Grassroots Environment Fund and the local nonprofit Common Good, she noted. The town has absorbed the installation of the shed.
The working group is welcoming the thoughts of those who are interested in getting a plot in the garden, and invites residents to come to the Earth Day celebration to share their suggestions.
Pat Leuchtman has been writing and gardening since 1980. Readers can leave comments at her website: commonweeder.com.