http://www.jg-tc.com/articles/2008/08/03/news/doc48939165e95eb206570331.txt
Charleston volunteers cultivate community garden
The people who tend the garden at 205 W. Monroe Ave. seem
to be nearly as good at plays on words as they are at growing tomatoes and
herbs.
Members of the Charleston Community Garden group showed how much fun they have
working on and talking about the plot, injecting a bit of humor to go with their
enthusiasm about the project.
For instance, member Liz Niemeyer said she and others started talking about a
garden effort last year, and landowner Hank Beurskens agreeing to let the group
use his lot was pretty much all it took.
“Once we established where it would be, it just all kind of grew from there,”
she said.
And here’s how fellow group member Anne Townsend
described the volunteers’ feelings once their herbs, tomatoes, pumpkins and
other crops started to sprout.
“It was good to see the fruit of it all,” she said.
The lot sits a few blocks west of the courthouse square. The first thing a
visitor sees is a large pile of broken up concrete and bricks, but it doesn’t
take too long to notice a bright, hand-painted sign letting people know it’s the
“Community Garden.”
Past the construction debris, there are neatly divided plots of vegetables and
fruits, a multi-tiered “spiral” for growing herbs, a scarecrow and a bench and
swing.
About 15 or 20 people work on the garden, volunteering different amounts of
time, “whatever they can,” Niemeyer said. Townsend described the group as
“eclectic,” made up of young adults, college students, teens, parents and their
children, and others.
People who volunteer to work in the garden get part of what’s grown there. The
group also began selling items at Charleston’s weekly Wednesday farmers market
last month and there are plans to have a produce stand.
“Our goals are going toward a co-op,” group member Jamie Christianson said.
All the fruits and vegetables are grown organically, and group member Abby
Ingram said the idea is to promote “permaculture,” something different than rows
and rows of the same crops planted “not how the Earth looks.”
“The whole idea is to use plants that work well together,” she said. She also
pointed out that the corn in the garden is, by design, planted near the path
between the plots so a group member who’s in a wheelchair can get to her
favorite vegetable.
Some of the group’s members recently approached the Coles County Board about
possibly beautifying the county-owned lot at the corner of Monroe and Sixth
Street, which has sat vacant for years.
Niemeyer said her first idea was to have the community garden there, but the
concrete in the dirt meant it wouldn’t work. Still, the group decided it wanted
to do “something to clean up that area,” Christianson said, and they’re pleased
that the county board is open to its efforts, which are supposed to begin next
year.
With the garden, the group received donations of seeds, equipment and other
materials, collects rainwater from downspouts at Buersken’s next-door
landscaping business and has neighbors who keep watch over the garden when
volunteers aren’t there. People who visit it are enthusiastic about it and often
suggest other locations for other garden plots, something the group is trying to
do.
“It’s a way of making a piece of land into something beautiful and functional,”
Niemeyer said.
The group is planning to have a meeting at the garden at 6 p.m. on Aug. 10 for
anyone interested in the project.
Contact Dave Fopay at dfopay@jg-tc.com or
348-5733.