Mixed Greens
by Dorothy Dow Crane

At this moment (I’m writing this in January) gardeners are dreaming about the sweet taste of carrots just pulled from the soil and that green zebra tomato still warm from the sun. They are calculating how much fertilizer it will take to transform a small Wyatt’s Wonder pumpkin seed into a humongous jack-o-lantern for Halloween. But the sobering reality of gardening in your own backyard is often more a lonely battle against creeping shade, browsing woodchucks, and snacking deer. Green thumb apartment dwellers, meanwhile, must resort to pots. Frustrated gardeners, there’s a place for you! For a small fee (and sometimes none at all) you can plant your Kentucky Wonder beans in a local community garden and harvest a lot more than vegetables! Those of you in the Rhinebeck-Red Hook area longing to plant, weed, pick, and enjoy the company of fellow gardeners can dig away in the Rhinebeck community garden, the Unification Theological Seminary community garden in Barrytown, or the Bard community garden on the Bard College campus.

Last March the rise across the parking lot from the Rhinebeck town pool was a cornfield. By May a hoard of volunteers contributing everything from sweat to fence posts had laid out plots, mulched paths, run the water line, and transformed the Thompson Mazzarella Park parcel into Rhinebeck’s first community garden. Community Garden Chair Raphael Notin is still awed by how the garden sprang into being on such short notice. “It was amazing,” Notin recalls, and adds in obvious understatement, “we were exhausted.” By June seedlings had sprouted in the green and brown patchwork quilt of 28 plots.

Education, collaboration, and dedication to ensuring equal access to healthy food are as integral to the Rhinebeck garden as the cucumbers and cosmos. Two plots are planted by children participating in the Rhinebeck Recreation program. (When I tramped through the garden in January the young gardeners’ painted rocks peeked through the snow.) Three plots are set aside as community plots to be tended in common by all plot holders. Volunteers deliver the produce from these plots to the Dutchess County Community Action Food Pantry in Red Hook for distribution to Northern Dutchess families in need. Sophia Miele, intake specialist, says these community garden contributions not only expand the amount of food available to those in crisis, but provide healthy fresh produce to supplement the usual canned and processed items. “Families’ faces light up at the fresh tomatoes and lettuce available during the summer months,” Sophia says. “It broke my heart to tell them the garden deliveries were over when fall came.” She adds that food pantry use has increased over the last year, mostly due to job loss.

Gardeners sow seeds, but more than turnips take root. Community gardeners become plot neighbors, sharing strategies about the best way to stake peas and how to keep cilantro from bolting. Last summer they comforted one another during the terrible tomato blight. Gardeners as young as three work side by side with retirees. Spanish-speaking families introduce long time locals to tomatillos. Teens in dripping wet suits wander up from the pool to see the garlic and the marigolds. A recent retiree who joined the community garden because her backyard had become too shady for vegetables and flowers confessed that that she hadn’t spent this much time outside since she was 10. “I didn’t know any of the other gardeners when I joined,” she said. “I’ve met all these wonderful people because our paths crossed, literally, in the garden.” But you don’t even have to be a gardener to be a part of the Rhinebeck Community Garden. In addition to donations of time and skills, the garden is seeking contributions of garden-related items, especially tools, and financial support to sponsor plots for low-income families. A gazebo for shade is on the to-do list this season.

If you sow your vegetable and flower seeds at the Unification Theological Seminary community garden in Barrytown (you don’t have to belong to the seminary or even live in Barrytown to join), you’ll be planting your zinnias where young Teddy Roosevelt played one summer while visiting the then Aspinwall estate. Community garden coordinator Henry Christopher has seen the drawings that nine-year-old Teddy sent home to his nanny with his account of what Christopher likes to think of as Roosevelt’s first exploration—the waterfalls on the Saw Kill. The estate eventually became home to a Roman Catholic seminary, and the current community garden is sited where the Christian Brothers’ kitchen garden used to be. You’ll be digging into history here. Christopher says that old religious medals still surface occasionally in the soil. This community garden, smaller and more informal than the Rhinebeck garden, draws plot holders primarily from Barrytown, Red Hook, and Tivoli. Tired, sweaty gardeners often cool off on the shady trail along the nearby Hudson River.

Gardens invite us to look forward. To put seeds that look like odd bits of straw into the earth and watch them become marigolds is to believe in the future. Paul Marienthal, Bard College Associate Dean for Student Affairs and garden coordinator, describes the Bard community garden as “an extreme act of hope.” There are no individual plots in the Bard garden; there is no official membership. Garden participation is open to anyone who’s interested. “The only rule,” says Marienthal, “is that you keep to the paths and don’t overwater.” His hope is that everyone will pick what they need, give what they can (weeders are welcome), and realize that we’re all in this together (and here he means more than the garden). The garden is located on Blithewood Avenue near the center of the campus, not far from the Saw Kill falls that young Roosevelt sketched on his summer Hudson Valley visit. Marienthal welcomes any garden energy and garden input that comes his way.

Here in the Hudson Valley, you can pick your kale well into November and the frozen pesto from your basil will last well into the spring. The simple pleasures of sharing a garden—the sun on your back, your hands in the dirt, the noisy crows harassing the red tail hawk nearby—linger even longer. Start digging!

More information on community gardens mentioned in this article:

Rhinebeck Community Garden
Raphael Notin
Fee: $25 for a large plot, $15 for a small one
Email: rnotin@frontiernet.net
845-876-6419

Unification Theological Seminary
Henry Christopher
Fee: $15 for a large plot, $10 for a small one
Email: c47henry@gmail.com
845-633-3264

Bard College Community Garden
Paul Marienthal
Fee: none
Email: marienth@bard.edu
845-505-1795

For general garden information visit the Cornell Cooperative Extension Dutchess County website: www.ccedutchess.org. Click on Agriculture & Horticulture, and then Community Horticulture to read the Dutchess Dirt Gardening Newsletter.