She spotted me, amongst the community garden beds that rent for $65 a year plus a required 16-hours of volunteer time, peeking under squash leaves, lamenting the overripe tomatoes that several gardeners hadn't yet picked.
"Pattie?" Stephanie Van Parys, Executive Director of Oakhurst Community Garden, asked as she dipped around the morning glory vines that covered an arbor that connected two beds belonging to the same family.
"Do you email them?" I asked. "Do you email the gardeners and tell them their tomatoes are ready or their zucchini is now the size of a major weapon?" as one was.
No, Stephanie does not email them to prod them to pick their produce. Most of them come, every day or two if they live nearby, as many do, or perhaps just on weekends, like the one gardener who is from Marietta, not around the corner here in this beautiful, historic renovated-bungalow hamlet of Decatur. Stephanie has enough to do with running this almost two-acre community jewel.
"Most community gardens are made up predominantly of the rented garden beds," Stephanie explained. "But here at the Oakhurst Community Garden, the beds are a part of a whole garden plan that is also part nature center, part botanical garden."
And it's true. There's a pond for box turtles, a creek, an educational garden where students from the City Schools of Decatur learn gardening, nutrition, exercise and sustainability from paid environmental educators. There's a cute chicken house and chicken run with three heirloom-breed chickens, plus a striking memorial in the woods to a favorite chicken that died of old age. There are compost piles, several sit-and-relax or meditate spots. And the newest addition to the garden, currently a work-in-progress in the children's play area where there is already a sand box, is an earthen playhouse being built of clay, sand and straw, with a stone base and recycled empty wine bottles in the walls for extra support. Eye-catching, colorful, three-dimensional art punctuates the entire garden, a huge mask here, a multicolored sphere there, a bottle tree, birdhouses, mosaic stepping stones, and more. The original house is even still on the property and is used for offices and classes, such as the 8-week All-Girl's Green Team class which teaches 12 middle-school girls how to be entrepreneurs, that was in progress when I visited.
The Oakhurst Community Garden is open to the public. Volunteers are much needed and always welcome. Tuesday nights from 7-8 PM are silent meditation times. And a roster of exciting new classes (in addition to a rainbarrel-making class scheduled for late August!) will be listed soon on the Oakhurst Community Garden website.
And if you are a gardener at the Oakhurst Community Garden who hasn't visited in a week or two, please go pick your tomatoes!
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