Sowing Seeds of Community

Story and Photos by Linda Blake

Past the new development houses and condominiums at the north end of Whatcom County, the wide, smooth paved street turns into a lumpy, freshly graveled road. The road leads to a large fenced area in the middle of a big grassy field surrounded by tall fir trees, distant mountains and the endless blue sky.

Inside the 8-foot-tall fence are a dozen people too busy to take notice of the picturesque surroundings. Fifty wooden, raised garden beds, each measuring 4-by-16 feet, sit waiting to be filled with rich, dark soil, and volunteers will fill them one wheel-barrow at a time.

Piled high are huge dump-truck loads of topsoil. Just inside the fence near the work shed are boards, plastic buckets, coiled hoses, rakes, shovels, trowels, roles of wire fencing and sheets of cardboard. All these materials, combined with the sweat of volunteer labor and a yearlong planning session by the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood Association committee, are transforming the once empty field into the reality of Cordata Community Gardens-a 14,500-square-foot nonprofit garden space open to the public.

An electrical cord snakes out of the work shed running to the end of the drill in 72-year-old Ben Andrews's hand. Andrews, one of the garden organizers, is up on a ladder, and Bill Smith, a Washington State University Master Gardener and official consultant for Cordata Community Gardens, is steadying boards that will fit above the smaller walk-through entry gate.

"I'm just not sure if we can make our start date on May 1, 2009," Andrews says. "We don't have water hook-up yet, and the beds aren't ready for planting. But we are trying for it because people are wanting to get on with it."

People all across the country are "wanting to get on with it." The recent headlines about the economic crisis, tainted food and poor nutrition have helped inspire a sense of urgency in transforming the Victory Garden idea of the Eleanor Roosevelt era to the Community Gardens of today. Growing one's own food has even taken on a social justice aspect. Gardening can be a way to make a political statement about inequities in the U.S.'s current troubled food system.

"Change is coming to food," says Sara van Gelder, editor of YES! Magazine. "As the global economy unravels, and as the implications of peak oil and climate change sink in, interest in alternatives to the current food system is growing. People are reconnecting with the land and with community."

Ben Chester agrees with van Gelder's ideas about the importance of developing alternatives to the present system of agriculture. Chester, a 26-year-old Western alumnus, majored in philosophy and has studied permaculture gardening. He divides his time between Seattle and Bellingham, volunteering with another new community garden, and says he has noted the surge of interest in gardening food.

"Community gardens are sprouting up all over the Seattle and Bellingham area," says Chester. "This is definitely a now trend."

Even before the projected opening date of May 1, all 50 raised beds at Cordata Community Gardens rented for a $35 annual fee, and a waiting list was started, says Dee Andrews, 63-year-old garden organizer and Ben Andrews' wife of 22 years.

"I know of five other community gardens that are in the planning stages since hearing about this one," Dee says. "And that's a good thing because the hope was that Cordata Community Gardens would be a role model for future gardens."

Whatcom County is home to three community gardens managed by the City of Bellingham Parks and Recreation Department. Robin Eldore, 31-year-old office assistant for Bellingham Parks and Recreation department, says every year for the last three years garden spaces have been reserved earlier. She says all 198 city garden plots have been taken.

"I definitely think it is related to the economic downturn this year," Eldore says.

Eldore says she has been gardening the last five years because she appreciates the therapeutic benefits of gardening and is also addicted to homegrown sugar snap peas.

But, reasons besides therapy, the economy, or food security exist, which inspire people to grow their own food. Eldore knows of a gardener at one of the city community gardens who wants to help her husband, who has cancer, by growing healthy fresh foods without pesticides.

During World War II, Roosevelt called her White House garden a Victory Garden, and urged Americans to start their own gardens at home, according to the American Community Gardening Association Web site. Roosevelt claimed food grown by civilians would help with shortages from wartime rationing, and more mass-produced food could be sent overseas for the troops.

Victory Gardens not only became a social phenomenon that 2 million Americans participated in, but the gardens encouraged communities to share nutritional and gardening advice while putting homegrown food on the table.

Lorena Shah, a 30-year-old Cordata resident and Western alumna, returned to Bellingham in January 2009 after 18 months abroad in Spain, where she finished her dissertation for her master's in art history. Now, she and her new husband rent a condominium near the Cordata Community Gardens. "There is a different culture about food in Europe and I got used to it," Shah says. "I got used to eating fresh, locally grown food. Almost everyone grows food and cooks at home there."

Shah has never gardened before, but when she found out about the Cordata Community Gardens she could not wait to sign up. The economy crisis also inspired her to try growing her own food, as the jump in food prices was shocking to her when she returned from Spain. Produce prices can be two or three times more expensive in the U.S. as apposed to Europe, Shah says.

Although the Andrews are the driving force behind the creation of Cordata Community Gardens, they say the garden is the result of countless hours of volunteer effort and advance planning from many community members.

The Andrews have lived in Bellingham for the past three years, and hope to start four more community gardens in north Whatcom County to help satisfy the huge demand for gardening spaces.

Ben Andrews says he sees community gardening as a way for people to prepare for coming social changes brought on by economic and environmental influences.

"We need to relearn how to feed ourselves with quality food," Ben says, with a slight southern accent.

At the Washington State University Whatcom County Extension Service office, Master Gardner Jill Cotton says the recent surge of interest in gardening is being driven in part by the current recession.

"My phone has been ringing off the hook with people asking for help with starting a garden to supplement their food budget," Cotton says.

Cotton says the implementation of the new Whatcom County Extension Service program, called Community First!Gardens, could not have come at a better time for Bellingham residents. The program offers help in the form of matching funds of $5,000 to approved applications for neighborhood community gardens.

The Cordata Community Gardens is the first recipient of a $5,000 grant from the Mary Redman fund affiliated with the Community First!Gardens Project. These kinds of gardens offer affordable garden plots, tools, community support and education from master gardeners for beginning and advanced gardeners.

A community garden can serve as a gathering place for diverse neighborhood residents. The gardens are known for their "potluck get-togethers," seed exchange parties, and education seminars, which are held at community garden sites.

Studies have shown community gardens create social benefits, in addition to the economic, nutritional and environmental issues families are dealing with.

"One of the main themes established by research is that community gardens act as a catalyst for community building," says Andrew Walter, who has a Master in Landscape Architecture. "The combination of the public and participatory nature of community gardens increases social contact between people, and thus helps build a sense of community."

Shah tells one of the volunteers she is already having visions of all the gardeners getting together to have a "Mid-Summer Nights Dream" party at the garden.

"These gardens can inspire you to think of these things: get going, and you are just pulled into it," Shah says.

Though the Cordata Community Gardens did not make their opening date, the Andrews say they are not worried; the seeds of a growing community have already taken root.