Saturday, June 20, 2009  |  1 Comment [ View ]

Gardening for the good of the community

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Her first foray into gardening is taking all the patience that 3-year-old Matisse Rich can muster.

"It changes a little," the Ogden tot said. "I like to watch it."

Matisse and mom Heather Rich are among the first crop of gardeners to rent plots in the community garden, behind Grounds for Coffee, at Harrison Boulevard and 30th Street, on Ogden's east side.

"Matisse has always wanted to garden," said Rich, 38, as her daughter tried to fathom the difference between tomato plants, marigolds and weeds. "We live behind Weber State, and our yard is solid trees. We're really enjoying this. Sometimes we bring a lunch and eat at the picnic table, and watch people garden."

Grounds for Coffee owners Suzy and Dan Dailey purchased the plot just west of their shop, thinking they might put in a drive-through.

"After pricing the addition and thinking about staffing, and thinking about cars idling all day, we just couldn't get excited about it," Suzy Dailey said. "So we started to think about what else we could do. We know that the Wasatch Community Garden in Salt Lake has a waiting list of between two and five years. We thought, 'Geez, that is something people really want and need, so we decided to throw out the idea of a community garden, and people got really excited.' "

The square-foot way

Conceived last fall, the organic garden now consists of 30 garden boxes, 4-by-12 feet and suitable for square-foot-gardening techniques. Each box is filled with a soil-free growing mix, inspired by the recommendations of square-foot-gardening guru Mel Bartholomew, of Eden.

Each box is rigged with a drip irrigation system, and pathways are mulched to keep the mess minimal, even during this year's unusually wet spring. Boxes rent for $25 a season, with an additional $15 charge to help fund the watering system in the first year only.

"The location is perfect, and people got really excited about the project," Dailey said. "We've got a long waiting list, and we only wish we had more boxes to rent."

More than 60 people are on waiting lists for the boxes.

Seven of the grow boxes were donated to local charities, and are tended by those groups and by the garden community. For the remaining 23 boxes, the Daileys tried to choose gardeners who were novices and really wanted to learn.

Learning the ropes

Alicia Kirkman, who describes herself as an Ogdenite currently living in Roy, admits she is a beginner.

"I have never had a garden before in my life," she said. "Dan and Suzy pitched the idea, telling us we would have boxes prepared for us and three master gardeners to answer questions. That was a big draw for someone like me, with so many questions."

Dale Torgerson, who teaches horticulture classes for Utah State University, is one of those on-call master gardeners, taking questions by e-mail and occasionally dropping by the site.

"I was kind of surprised, actually, at how many people jumped right in," Torgerson said. "It's been really positive, for the volunteers and the gardeners. People have asked questions about what to plant and when to plant it. I haven't gotten too many questions about watering yet, we've had so darned much rain. People really want to learn, and they've been adding trellises and even garden art. It's been a really fun experience, for me, anyway."

Kirkman, 37, has kept her salsa garden, of tomatoes and peppers, basic.

"I'm just happy to be learning," she said. "It's been fun watching things grow. If one tomato survives to the end, I will consider this a success."

Pay it forward

Education was the goal from the beginning, Kirkman said.

"Dan and Suzy said the goal is to educate the community, and keep the information going," she said. "After people get the skills, the goal is for them to garden at home so new people can come in and learn."

Dailey said she and her husband are novice gardeners themselves, learning along with everyone else.

"We have a garden planted in some raised beds we built in our backyard last fall when we started looking into square-foot gardening," she said. "My husband volunteered when the Wasatch Community Garden in Salt Lake was building a straw bale greenhouse, and it was all really interesting, how they put it together and how they could extend their growing season."

The Daileys live in Salt Lake City, but saw more business opportunity in Ogden when they decided to open a coffee shop 19 years ago. They have commuted ever since.

Other features of the community garden include children's classes at 8:30 a.m. and 11 a.m. Thursd

ays. The free classes cover a variety of topics. One recent class taught children to make decorative steppingstones, and each c

hild made one to take home and one to leave for use in the garden.

On the street, on the north edge of the garden plot, volunteers have built a community herb garden. Dailey hopes that once plants are established, area residents will feel free to come snip a few herbs for their salads and dinners.

The cities of Clinton, Syracuse and North Salt Lake have organized or are setting up community gardens for residents on city-owned property. But this private garden project has drawn more interest than Dailey ever would have guessed.

"It's just been a really fun project that we have enjoyed and the gardeners have enjoyed," she said "It's

fun to look outside of our business and see people working away on their plots

. It's a great place to take a break, and we've made so many new friends. Gardeners are the nicest people. It's a win/win situation."