Bike Springfield!

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1. Gardening the Community Youth Farm

The starting point of the Bike Springfield! A Garden Tour is at the Gardening the Community Youth Farm at 326 Central Street in Springfield. Gardening the Community, a program of the Northeast Organic Farming Association/Massachusetts Chapter, Inc., is a youth-centered community based agriculture program. Our farm is on Central Street in the heart of the Maple High Six Corners Neighborhood. We grow fruits and vegetables on formerly abandoned lots while learning about and practicing agriculture, environmental stewardship, and community development. GTC was started in 2002 and continues to employ 12 youth for three seasons every year. This year we started a cutting flower business so our land is bordered with bright sunflowers, zinnias, salvia, and more! Also on our land, you will see tomatoes, potatoes, turnips, corn, cabbage – as well as popcorn, peanuts, and watermelon. We irrigate our crops through drip irrigation to conserve city water – and we don’t use any power tools to save fossil fuels as well as keep a peaceful garden environment. On the tour of our garden, you will learn about other methods of organic gardening and water conservation, as well as get to meet the great kids that are part of our program. The garden tour will end at our garden as well. When all have finished the tour, we will celebrate Springfield gardens and youth activity in the city with local food and fun!

2. & 3. Beaumont and Dickinson Community Gardens

These gardens are one program of Concerned Citizens for Springfield, an all-volunteer non-profit community development corporation working on blight remediation in Forest Park. Undertaken as a blight prevention activity, the gardens were first planted in 1998 on city-owned lots formerly occupied by deteriorated multi-family houses. Both sites were assessed to ensure that soil in the cellar holes was safe for planting food crops and were amended over several growing seasons with municipal compost delivered free of charge by the Department of Public Works. The back of the Dickinson Street garden be maintained as a grassy area because of potential contamination from water run-off from the street and yard uphill. The community garden program is coordinated on a volunteer basis by a CCS board member who also has a garden plot in the Dickinson Street garden. A propagation bed of daylilies is maintained at Dickinson Street and made available free of charge for beautification of traffic islands and terraces around the city.

Garden plots of approximately 15’ x 20’ are made available to individual households for $15.00 per year. However, fees do not cover program expenses which include water bills, installation of underground hydrants, snow plowing, ornamental plantings, caretaking and rototilling. Three families garden at Dickinson Street, and six families at Beaumont Street. Plots are seldom available, because CCS gardeners tend to return year after year. Plant waste from the gardens is recycled on-site using composters purchased from the DPW.

Beds of daffodils, day lilies and colorful annual flowers planted at the front edge of both gardens beautify the streetscape and hide the weeds that sometimes get ahead of every gardener. This year, the Dickinson Street tree belt is newly planted with ornamental grasses, sedum and day lilies, while on Beaumont Street, the tree belt was restored by a neighbor last year.

Over the years, vegetable crops in the CCS gardens have included collards, tomatoes, potatoes, turnip greens, okra, peas, corn, squash, watermelon, rhubarb, garlic, shallots, kohlrabi, mesclun, lettuce, cucumbers, broccoli, strawberries, herbs peppers and eggplant. Flowers have included daylilies, daffodils, marigolds, cleome, zinnias, sedum, grape hyacinths, snapdragons and cosmos.

Concerned Citizens has been active in the Forest Park neighborhood since 1995. Activities beside the community garden program have included graffiti remediation; concentrated code and zoning enforcement; purchase, rehabilitation and resale of 12 housing units; demolition of 70 housing units in deteriorated buildings and construction of five owner-occupied in-fill two-family houses. CCS also owns and rents a four-family house at the corner of White and Revere Streets.

4. Hayward Family Garden

The third garden on the tour and the first garden to be stopped at is the Hayward Family Garden on Eton St. It is a small garden that is intensively planted with flowers, displays an elder’s bonsai collection, has a few tomato plants, has three trellises with grapes and wisteria, and a super-sized squirrel-proof bird feeding station that attracts a wonderful diversity, and all this is hidden behind a modest 1927 framed house on Eton Street, out of sight and even knowledge of most neighbors. Will be loved by those who celebrate hidden inner city private pocket pastorals and may learn something from seeing one of them.

5. The Brennan-Staub Homestead Garden

The fourth garden on the tour is the Brennan-Staub Homestead Garden on Marlborough Street. This family’s backyard is a diversified fruit and vegetable garden, which also has honey production and chickens. The couple grows most of their own food, preserves it all for the winter months, and saves seed year to year. The garden recently had local and national press – starting with a piece on NPR, leading to a Today Show clip on NBC, and with front page coverage in The Republican (Springfield’s paper). To view some of the coverage, go to the following links:

NPR link
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5427293
Today show link:
http://video.msn.com/v/us/msnbc.htm?g=1CB9013C-37BD-468E-B633-B4F7F729AD6E&f=00&fg
Republican link:
http://www.masslive.com/search/index.ssf?/base/living1/1155025716280780.xml?

Or just come in person and enjoy the most delicious fresh salsa in the world while touring this garden!

6. Happy Hands Garden

The fifth garden is the Happy Hands Garden on Acorn Street which is a collaborative effort between the Bay Area Neighborhood Council, The Girls’ Club, and American International College. The land is owned by the city and is adjacent to the Girl's Club and AIC property. The current garden is 80' x 20' and is busy with activity throughout the spring and summer. Under the direction of Ms. Erica Daniels, the children have prepared the site, planted, nurtured and harvested it. They have engaged in community service such as making soap for the homeless. The program is planning on being involved with more planting in the neighborhood this fall. This year the garden has tomatoes, cantaloupe, squash, carrots, broccoli, onions, raspberries, blueberries, strawberries, a large variety of herbs and spices and flowers. The crowning glory this year are pumpkins!

The garden began in 2005 when American International College in Springfield (AIC) began a new initiative for building better community relationships. The college wanted to reach out to the community and work with groups and residents toward neighborhood improvement. Mr. Alvin Paige, assistant to the President, and Jan Zeigler, his assistant, held many meetings at AIC to discuss how the college could create better awareness of neighborhood issues, open its heart and soul to a deeper respect and appreciation for all life, and ways to look to the future, especially for the children surrounding the college area. Soon after, the Girls’ Club entered into the conversation along with many residents, students and city officials. AIC joined the Bay Area Neighborhood council. Jan Zeigler proposed a community garden. The group wanted to wanted to create something hopeful, positive and lasting and now the garden has completed its second season!

The youth and adults of the garden will be serving mint tea for refreshments and showing off their garden to all biking participants!

7. Massachusetts Career Development Institute

The last garden on the tour is the new flower garden at the Massachusetts Career Development Institute (MCDI) on Wilbraham Ave. The executive director, James Morton, describes the garden: “The thought of developing a community garden had been perculating for quite some time, but we took the first steps toward making it a reality in the Springfield of 2005, when we participated in Springfield College's Spring Humanics in Action Day. During that event, students from Springfield College aided us in clearing the acre parcel adjacent to our building. Thereafter, we applied for a small grant to purchase seeds. Once we successfully secured funding for seeds, we began to develop plans for the development of our garden/learning lab project and the garden expanded from there. One third of the approximately three acre parcel is owned by MCDI and the balance is owned by the City of Springfield. The garden is supported by MCDI (its students and staff), a multitude of volunteers from area colleges, the City of Springfield, Worthington Pond Farm and Garden, the Rabbi Gurland Fund, Springfield College, Dunbar Community Center, Martin Luther King, Jr. Community Center, and our neighbors. The mission of the garden is to beautify our community by taking an area that had been regularly used for illegal dumping and convert it into a field of flowers. The goal for next year is to expand the garden and its use by growing flowers and veggies that will be sold to residents of the "Hill." We also plan to lease plots of garden space to area residents. This year any students, staff, area residents and organizations were invited participate in the cultivation of the garden and to pick fresh flowers for personal use. We grew a wide variety of flowers and the garden became the home for bees, yellow finches, rabbits, butterflies and critters that only come out at night. Since cultivating the gadren illegal dumping has subsided; traffic along Wilbraham Avenue has slowed; folks are stopping to ask questions about the garden and to pick bouquets of flowers; our students have enjoyed sitting amongst the flowers; and we have all been blessed by the beauty that abounds. The garden has been a gift for many of us.

This page was last modified on January 21, 2008 at 5:33:26 PM.