Community garden won't grow without fence funding

By Elizabeth Bernardi

April approaches and gardeners at the Mystic Housing Project are eager to start the planting season. But their new land will remain barren until they can raise the funds to finish fencing within their new community garden, and they're hoping the Somerville community will pitch in.

“We're trying to find people we know who care about gardening in Somerville,” said Warren Goldstein-Gelb, Executive Director of the Welcome Project at the Mystic, which has supported the garden with education, communication, and fundraising.

For 18 years, residents of the Mystic Housing Project have grown food to feed their families in a community garden space. Vietnamese residents who had farmed in their home country wanted to grow the ethnic foods they couldn't find in American stores, so they founded their garden on empty land at the Mystic. Gardeners used unconventional materials, such as bedsprings fished from the trash, to create working trellises. For a decade and a half, the garden, which looked chaotic to some but fed dozens, went undisturbed.

But the land they worked had never been officially designated as garden space by the Somerville Housing Authority, and in 2006, the SHA announced that they needed the space. Deputy Director Paul Mackey said that they were in desperate need of a maintenance shed.

“It's storage for all of our stoves and all of our equipment that we can't store in a basement,” Mackey said. “It stores all of our lawn care equipment, and it's also a place for all of our trucks to get work.” There was no other appropriate place at the housing project for such a shed.

The garden was razed in June 2006, ending that growing season abruptly, and leaving the garden without a permanent home. But now, after two years without a space of their own, the gardeners have finally been granted a new plot of land at the Mystic.

In the meantime, the Housing Authority agreed to rent a plot of blacktop at the old St. Polycarp School bordering the housing project. The space was intended as storage for garden supplies, but the gardeners set up a makeshift container garden in the space.

The haphazard-looking gardens, which now, in the first days of spring, look hardly likely to bear anything edible, are a testament to the dedication of the gardeners. Five-gallon-buckets filled with soil bear the remnants of annuals planted last season and the dormant perennials gardeners hope to replant in the next month.

For founding gardener Hahn Le, an immigrant from Vietnam, gardening brings great joy.

“I see the plants growing and this makes me happy,” she said. “I see something I created with my hands and I see that I have learned something new.”

The new space, at the back of the housing project, has been enclosed with exterior chain link fencing to protect the gardeners' plants and possessions, but it lacks interior fencing around each individual plot.

Such fencing may seem extraneous, but its purpose is twofold: first, it provides security to each gardener. Second is the vertical growth that fencing supports. A chain-link fence can also serve as a trellis, offering a high-yield opportunity to a plot that may be less than 100 square feet. The more vertical space the gardeners have, the more food they can grow to feed their families.

“Internal fencing is popular among Asian gardeners,” said Roberta Hayes, a landscaper and community activist who serves on the garden's steering committee. “If you've got vertical support of whatever type, your food production increases exponentially. It's what we'd call a high-yield opportunity.”

Mackey admitted that the housing authority never expected a need for interior fencing.

“We hadn't anticipated that,” he said, “because frankly none of us understood the concept of community garden.”

The Housing Authority has budgeted as much money for the project as possible, adding underground water with taps between the gardens so the gardeners will no longer need to haul buckets. The SHA has offered to sponsor the labor for the fencing, but since it has exhausted the budget it can spend on the project, the Welcome Project has to raise funds for the materials - some $6,000 - in time to let the gardeners transfer their plants before the growing season is well underway.“It's considered its own thing,” said Hayes of the Mystic Housing Project garden. “It's not part of the other community gardens” in Somerville. Funding or resources granted to those other gardens are not automatically granted to the Mystic, so community support is imperative.

Mackey said the garden is unlike anything else at public housing in the city - for one, he said, the Mystic is the only housing project with green space to support such a venture. But he also said that it's the only place where the tenants have come forward to demand the opportunity to grow their own food.

Armina Nguyen, a longtime resident of the Mystic and member of the Welcome Project's Board of Directors, helps her mother garden her plot, which has become an intergenerational effort.

“She grows a lot of ethnic foods,” said Nguyen on a recent afternoon, as she helped Hayes and Goldstein-Gelb measure plots in the new garden to make sure they were divided equally.

All but two of the 21 plots in the new garden will be worked by individual residents and their families. One of those two plots will belong to the Welcome Project, and one will belong to the Mystic Learning Center and will be dedicated as a place for children's education. Roberta Hayes said that volunteer gardening experts who can help either with a curriculum for that garden or time spent showing children how to work it will be in high demand.

In the next few weeks, Goldstein-Gelb and Hayes will be working hard to garner donations so the gardeners will not miss out on the first crucial weeks of the season. They have established a web page for donations (www.firstgiving.com/welcomeproject), and initiated a Friends of the Mystic Garden program for people who wish to contribute to the garden, receive updates on its progress, or volunteer their time (those interested can contact the Welcome Project at welcome@welcomeproject.org).

They need the financial help now, said Hayes, but they are looking for assistance later as well, doing some basic carpentry in the space, and helping with the children's garden later. Inviting the greater Somerville community into the space to help only expands the sense of community that is already a part of the garden.

For a diverse group of gardeners, many of whom cannot communicate directly with one another, their love of working the soil is a commonality that brings them together.

“For me, it is very good to eat the food I grow,” said Brazilian immigrant Walter Coutinho. “I feel well; I am happy.”

Comments

[mystic community garden]

ELIZABETH!!!

YOU ROCK!!!

THANK YOU SOMERVILLE NEWS!!!

from Roberta

[andy]

i am a somerville community gardener, with a long background in community gardens in other parts of the country, and am thrilled to see coverage on this issue in the somerville news. that said, i think the premise of the article is a little weird. while fences around individual plots may be something that is a cultural practice for some of the people using this garden, it is entirely unnecessary for the plants to grow, despite what your title might suggest. and, the trellising function that a fence provides can be met in many other ways, including old boxsprings, as mentioned in the article, or something as simple as wooden stakes and twine. to me, money raised for gardens could be used in many more worthwhile ways.