Community Garden (a.k.a. What Joshua Does with His Days)

Vacant city lots transform into family-tended gardens
By Lavinia DeCastro • Courier-Post Staff • May 10, 2009

Less than a year ago, 9-year-old Alex Checo came home from a school field trip clutching a small tomato plant. "He was so excited," said his mother Martha Checo. "He said "Mom, let's go. We have to plant it.'" Checo didn't share her son's excitement. "At my house, we don't have the space to grow a garden," she said.

She did it anyway, setting the plant down in the small patch of dirt at their Cramer Hill home.
"We had so many tomatoes, if you came in and took a couple, we wouldn't even notice," said Alex, a student at the St. Anthony of Padua School.

Although the family's garden is still small, they now have room to grow as many vegetables as they would like. The Checos were among the first families to sign up for their own plot at a new community garden in a city-owned lot on the corner of 29th Street and River Road, across from Von Neida Park. "We're going to have more throughout the city," said City Council President Angel Fuentes during Saturday's groundbreaking ceremony. "This is just the beginning."

The garden, one of about 20 sprinkled throughout the city, is the result of a partnership between the city, a group of local churches and the Camden Children's Garden. About half of the community gardens in Camden are on city-owned properties, said Children's Garden Director Mike Devlin. The other half belongs to faith-based organizations, he said.

"This is a good partnership with the churches," Fuentes said. "Imagine if each church could select an empty lot near them and beautify it. I think it would make a huge difference in the city."

The lot in Cramer Hill is among the 5,000 to 10,000 abandoned properties in Camden.
For the past five years, the lot was a neighborhood blight. Trailers that served as a police substation from 1994 to 2002 still sat there, abandoned. "We put up the trailers and within a couple of days, folks came here and firebombed it," Fuentes said, blaming the damage on drug dealers who sold their wares on the corner of 28th and Heyes streets. When the city restructured its police department the trailers were no longer needed.

Tired of seeing the abandoned structures, four Cramer Hill churches belonging to a group called Camden Churches Organized for People decided to do something about it.

"We got together with the Children's Garden and asked: "What can we do with this site?' " said Mandi Aviles, director of youth ministries at St. Anthony. With the help of a group from Volunteers of America, the staff at the Children's Garden prepared the first nine plots to be planted then used part of a $250,000 Robert Wood Johnson grant to supply seeds and plants. Those who participate in the program have to sign an agreement with St. Anthony and the Cramer Hill community garden committee to take care of the land. "The first step is to get the gardens going," Devlin said.

On Saturday, volunteers were busy planting the more than 500 plants and seeds bought with grant money. With a little help getting started, neighbors usually stick with it, Devlin said.
"Gardening is popular in every culture," Devlin said. "It's as popular in Haddonfield as it is in Camden." And the demand is growing. There are more community gardens popping up this year than any other previous year, Devlin said. So many, in fact, that Camden County ran out of the wood chips it has provided free of change for many years. The wood chips are used to divide the plots. "We used them all up," Devlin said.

Membership in the Children's Garden club has climbed to include more than 70 families and 30 nonprofits. For their $25 to $60 annual dues, members have access to free plants, seeds, fertilizers, fencing and other planting materials. The National Gardening Association estimates that 9 million more households will be gardening this year, a 19 percent increase from last year.
For the residents planting the gardens, the benefits outweigh the amount of produce they can harvest.

"I think it's going to restore a lot of the hope that was lost here," Aviles said. "We see so much negative that we forget that there are things that we can do that are positive if we just get together and do them."