By Anne W. Semmes
There is a need in Greenwich with some 800 families registered as food insecure, reports Neighbor to Neighbor (N2N). Thus, there’s an impressive ground swell across town to bring aid to those families with healthy garden-grown produce. Yes, for years some garden produce has been regularly delivered to N2N by the Greenwich Land Trust, and the Town’s two Community Gardens on Bible Street and Armstrong Court. But a signal was sent out across town from Julie Des Champs, founder/director of Waste Free Greenwich of the need to “Grow a Row” of gardens to meet that need.
Enter Kim Gregory, alert to the needs of nature in the town, who serves on the Town’s Sustainability Committee as well as chairing the advisory board of Greenwich Audubon. Why not create a veggie garden at Audubon? Would the Hortulus Garden Club like to partner in creating it? Eunice Burnett, Hortulus member and another force for nature, tells the creative story, while she is busily planting in that new garden at Audubon, with her story beginning at that meet and greet Coffee for Good.
“Coffee for Good is our de facto headquarters and we sit there and try to solve the world’s problems…we really can’t solve the world’s problems in a big way, but we can locally.” Present was Gregory, also a Greenwich Garden Club (GGC) member, involved with Garden Club America (GCA). Gregory knew of that GCA Common Ground Grant allowing $10,000 to serve underserved neighborhoods. Hortulus member Veronica Richter is chosen to write up the grant with the Audubon garden named “Birds Feeding Neighbors.” “It seemed a natural connection and excellent use of funds,” tells Richter,
That resulting garden now measures 28 x 50 feet and is bursting with vegetables – and pollinators. “The beds were installed in the beginning of April,” tells Burnett, “And it’s like a rolling planting of vegetables since then. We’ve already harvested all the spinach, so we replant with other things…we just added more tomatoes. Look at how beautiful this is.”
She adds, “The idea with these native plants encircling the garden, which is what we’re doing right now, is that these native plants attract beneficial pollinators that will help to pollinate the fruit bearing vegetables but also attract predatory insects. And these predatory insects will actually eat the things that eat your vegetables… And it also draws the birds that will come and eat the caterpillars that you don’t want… So, it’s like a beautiful symbiotic ecosystem here that is achieved without chemicals.”
Those plants Burnett is planting around the border “were seeded and grown by Dan Brubaker of the Greenwich Land Trust. And he has sold them to us at a deep discount because of what we’re doing here.” Gregory just then welcomes workers from Troy Nursery bringing a donated stone bird bath with two perched stone birds. “Troy has become our partner and they’re providing us with trees and redoing our pathway here.”
Also arriving is Courtney Spade, Brunswick School director of service leadership and sustainability with her Brunswick sophomore son Luke, who with other students is helping with harvesting, weeding, and watering.” All the while Hortulus president Anne Louise Bostock and Adrienne Westerfield, past Hortulus president are busy gardening. Not present is Catalina Wieser, a GGC member whose husband Robert helped build the garden fencing. And count GRTA member Rusty Parker for bringing in needed manure, and a list of other gentlemen contributing, including Gregory’s husband Grant. Richter expressed gratitude for their having “built, hauled dirt, seed started, planted, watered, and engineered electric fencing…. This is truly a community program with the generous sharing of land from the Audubon to support our neighbors who may experience food scarcity.”
So, there was a recent first delivery of garden produce from Birds Feeding Neighbors to N2N, allegedly weighing four to six pounds. The person weighing and delivering is Karen Saggese who has played an instrumental part in the Birds Feeding Neighbors kick off. Saggese serves as well on the Town’s Sustainability Committee where she co-chairs the Food Systems Sector. And she is Food Rescue Co-Site Director for Fairfield County. Saggese had barnstormed with Gregory on creating a garden at Audubon.
To learn more, we visited with Saggese and Brent Hill, executive director of N2N, meeting up at Hill’s N2N office. Saggese shares how her job is to collect the garden produce across town, weighing it and bringing it to N2N. She shares there are now three drop-off sites she picks up from on certain days each week in summer – Greenwich Land Trust, Greenwich Audubon and from a designated Waste Free Greenwich Tent located alongside the Old Greenwich Farmer’s Market.
Surprising it was to learn from them just how that “Grow a Row” initiative has reverberated across town. (And, as of yet there’s no listing of private home “Grow a Row” gardeners contributing.) Hill cited a new garden a-growing at Putnam Cottage. “We just got the topsoil down,” he says, “and they just put some things in the ground, so they haven’t yielded anything yet but we’re looking forward.”
At Nathaniel Witherell, there’s the Parsonage Road Garden, now contributing “one hundred percent.” “They’ve been dropping off the herbs on Monday,” tells Saggese, “They gave us Swiss chard… basil, parsley, thyme and romaine lettuce. So, they’ve been giving us a lot of good stuff.” Add contributions from the Bible Street and Armstrong Court Community Gardens, Greenwich Land Trust, and now Birds Feeding Neighbors.
“And we get deliveries from Connecticut Food Share,” tells Saggese, “They provide to multiple food pantries in the state. Last week they dropped off Bok Choy and fresh herbs.”
Stepping into the grocery-filled room at N2N, with shoppers coming and going, we approached a wall of fresh vegetables, peppers, and cucumbers, with more bunches of greens seen through a refrigerator.
“Turnover is pretty quick,” tells Hill. “We have over 800 households registered. So, we’re averaging 500 coming in weekly. So, the great produce that comes in – it goes out the door.”
