Grow, Share Ideas and Give Back By Cindy Perman
- Cindy Perman
- Jun 13
- 6 min read
Updated: Jun 22
Community gardens bring residents together
There are a lot of backyard gardeners in Maplewood and South Orange, but did you know that both towns have community gardens?
These are groups of 4’x12’ raised garden beds that residents can rent to grow vegetables, herbs, flowers and other plants. You must be a resident to participate in your town’s com- munity garden. It’s $80 to rent a garden bed for the season in South Orange and $85 in Maplewood. Although both are sold out for this season, you’ll have plenty of information if you want to join when registration opens next winter. Just contact your town about how to apply.
People join the community gardens for a variety of reasons: Some live in apartments without their own yards, others may live in a house but have a lot of shade in their yard. (This is MapleWOOD, after all!) Some just enjoy the camaraderie of gardening with others.
Maplewood has two community garden sites. One is located behind Town Hall on Valley Street and the other on Boyden Avenue, on the side of the parking lot near the community pool.
“It’s nice to see and meet people with different backgrounds,” says Jennifer Thomas, a second-grade teacher at Tuscan School and president of the Maplewood Community Garden committee.
The South Orange Community Garden is in Waterlands Park on West Third Street near Church Street, along the west bank of the east branch of the Rahway River. (The closest parking is street parking on West Third Street.)
It’s all about community
Talking to leaders of all the gardens, one thing shines through: The importance of the community in community gardens.
“One of the goals of community gardening is to get people to share ideas and bring community together,” says Olivia Lewis-Chang, a clinical psychologist who is on South Orange’s Village Council and is the chair of the South Orange Community Garden executive committee. “There’s cross- cultural and inter-generational sharing of knowledge.”
Spend a few minutes at the gardens, and you’ll come away with a lot of ideas, such as how to build Lego-like raised garden beds, where you can easily swap out a board if it starts to rot, how to create your own cucumber trellis using fallen tree branches (genius!) and how to add an extra layer of protection against critters by planting garlic or onions around the border of your bed. Heck, you can even go there just to talk tomato, learning what types of tomatoes are successful for other gardeners and which ones are the most delicious!
All the gardens are organic, which means no pesticides or chemical fertilizers such as Miracle-Gro. There are certain things you can’t plant, such as mint, strawberries, invasive species, asparagus, corn, sunflowers and marijuana. You don’t need to grow a lot of your own herbs. At the front of each community garden in both towns is an herb garden, full of plants such as basil, rosemary, chives and chamomile, that are free for any members to take.
How to get started
Behind the Maplewood Community Garden at Town Hall are greenhouses, one of which is open to residents to rent space – $30 for a 9 square foot bench – if you want to start your plants early. The green- house is run by the Maplewood Garden Club (not to be confused with the Maplewood Community Garden, which is separate).
For anyone who might be reading this and muttering, “Ah, I don’t have a green thumb,” don’t be deterred! “You cultivate a green thumb,” Lewis-Chang says. “None of us are born with it.”
There are tons of resources to help you get started – or if you already have experience, to learn more.
The Maplewood Community Garden and the Maplewood Garden Club bring in speakers to offer advice to their members on everything from what to plant to watering techniques, pest control and more. The Rutgers Cooperative Extension also has great gardening courses, and you can contact a master gardener with questions.
The Maplewood Garden Club also has a youth gardening program, run by Monika Hannemann, a biology teacher at Columbia High School, who worked at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for 10 years. It’s free for kids ages 3-18. They start seeds in the greenhouse in early March and then start planting snap peas, one of the early cold crops. Kids get first crack at the produce they grow. The rest is donated to local food pantries such as the Community Fridge on Springfield Avenue. They also do fun activities such as greenhouse scaven- ger hunts, pollinator tracking, leaf prints and cooking demonstrations using fresh food from the garden. Kids can still get in on the youth garden by emailing youthgarden@ maplewoodgardenclub.org.
“Working with kids is wonder-ful. They are hard-wired to be curious, investigative, and enthusiastic,” Hannemann says. “They love to dig and turn soil – squealing when they find worms and caterpillars – water plants (and everything around them), and watch tiny plants grow into the very food they eat. Many kids tell me it’s magic – and it is, in a way – the magic of science!”
It’s also a way to get kids to eat their vegetables.
“Kids often really like to eat radishes, kale, lettuce, and tomatoes once they’ve been part of growing them in the garden,” Hannemann says. “Many tell me that they taste way better than the ones in the grocery store, which is 100% true!”
Maplewood and South Orange community gardens have Facebook groups for members to share photos, ask questions and keep up with the latest events.
There’s also a Facebook group, called SOMA New Jersey Gardening, started by Joy Yagid, who was one of the founding members of the Maplewood Community Garden and whose name is, for many, synonymous with gardening in Maplewood. It’s a great place to ask questions and share photos. One of the most frequently asked questions is: “Is this poison ivy?” Fun fact: Yagid says that’s how the group got started! People were always asking in the SOMA Lounge group if something was poison ivy (or PI as many refer to it), and everyone would tag Joy, so she gave the people what they wanted– a gardening group.
What to plant
Not sure what to plant? “Plant what you eat. Eat what you plant,” Yagid says. “My rule of thumb is: Grow things that don’t travel well that you will eat. You can buy tomatoes in the store, but they’re bred to travel, so they don’t taste as good,” she says.
Lettuce, kale and herbs are easy to grow, as are carrots, beets and radishes. Yagid advises
against planting zucchini. It gets too big, and you can buy it at the farmer’s market. And,
importantly, she says, read the tag on the plant for how to care for it!
What does Yagid love about community gardening?
“Anytime you can get people away from their phones and their screens and outdoors in nature is a
good thing,” Yagid says. “I can’t think of anything better than just to be with other humans and
plant a garden.”
Giving back
The South Orange Community Garden requires gardeners to donate a portion (less than 10%) of their produce to local food pantries. A team of volunteers collects the pro- duce on Saturday mornings starting around July. (You can opt-out on a given weekend if you need your produce.) Last year, they donated more than 700 pounds of food. In Maplewood, one of the gardeners
also collects produce for local food pantries. There’s also the South Orange Elks Rent Party
Garden, a volunteer-run community garden at the Elks Lodge on Prospect Street. It grows more than 2,000 pounds of produce each year that is donated to local food pantries such as St. Joseph’s and Our Lady of Sorrows, and partners with other community initiatives such as SOMA Justice to provide bags of food to local families. It’s always looking for volunteers (of all levels) to help plant,
harvest and deliver food to local food pantries. Email rentpartygarden@gmail.com to get involved.
Bringing people together
The season starts and ends with a clean-up day in the community gardens. Both towns also
have potluck gatherings at the garden throughout and at the end of each season, where
members can bring a dish using something they grew in the garden. The Maplewood Community Garden also has a tomato party in August, where gardeners can share their favorite tomatoes and recipes, and sample other gardeners’ tomatoes.
“It’s an opportunity for people to make connections, get great recipe ideas and say, ‘Oh, what did you try this year that worked? What didn’t work? What would you recommend?’ ” Thomas says.
So, what’s the secret to gardening?
“The secret of gardening is realizing that you are a small part of a much bigger thing,” Yagid says. “Once you accept that, there’s a humility that sort of releases you from unrealistic expectations you have on yourself.”
Cindy Perman is a freelance writer, editor, pet sitter and backyard gar- dener who has lived in Maplewood for 15 years. She is still in pursuit of the perfect tomato to grow in New Jersey.
Comments