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Heather Cole, of Butler Township, uses a hoe to break up dirt in a plot at the Butler Township Community Garden on Sunday. She’s already thinking of how to make the project bigger and better next spring.
Fred Adams photos/for the times leader
A scarecrow guards one of the plots in the Butler Township Community Garden.
With a successful community garden recently established in Butler Township to serve as a model, an alliance of Hazleton area organizations hopes to build a second community garden in southern Luzerne County, but in a more urban environment.
Butler Township officials last spring partnered with the Center for Landscape Design and Stewardship to create a community garden near the municipal building on West Butler Drive.
“We kind of did it in record time. We started talking in early March … and had an opening day celebration at the end of May,” said Krista Schneider, president of the non-profit.
Schneider works for Barry Isett & Associates, the township engineer. The township acquired 88 acres behind the municipal building to expand the township’s recreation park, and officials in March tasked the engineer to develop a master plan.
Township manager Steve Hahn told Isett representatives that Butler officials wanted to include a community garden, and Schneider told him about the center, which was incorporated in 2008 to promote environmental and community sustainability through education, demonstration and public outreach.
“We started working together. I did the design, the township put in a water line and the path,” Schneider said.
State Rep. Todd Eachus, D-Butler Township, secured a $10,000 legislative initiative grant for the project, and the First Federal Foundation donated $3,250. The grants paid for an eight-foot-high deer fence around the property and materials for the water line, paths and tool shed. Isett donated time to stake out 50 garden plots that can be leased each season by the public.
Children who participated in the township’s summer recreation activities planted a children’s garden in one section. Local individuals, businesses and organizations leased the garden plots for the season and planted and maintained them.
And there were four raised beds to accommodate elderly gardeners who weren’t up to the physical challenge of bending down to tend a plot.
This past weekend, several volunteers and plot leasers spent a couple hours weeding and harvesting the fruits – and vegetables – of their labor.
Among them was Andrea Fendrick, of Sugarloaf Township, who volunteered as the children’s garden coordinator.
“They enjoyed the planting, seeing how the things they planted grew. They were very eager to water, but they didn’t have to do that too often this summer. … They didn’t really mind the weeding,” Fendrick said of the approximately 50 children who participated in the recreation program.
Over in the leased plot section, Nevin Baskin, owner of Mountain Valley Family Martial Arts, his wife Lee and their son Nevin Jr., 7, were weeding and harvesting the vegetables and fruits that Baskin’s karate students planted earlier this year in their “Black Belt Garden.”
“We read about what Krista was doing, and I have my students participate in several community service projects. … I thought this would be a great way to teach them about self-sufficiency,” Baskin said.
“When you learn a form in martial arts, there are a lot of mistakes you make. It’s like growing vegetables. You have to weed out the mistakes just like you weed out a garden. The analogy was perfect for them to understand.”
Baskin proudly pointed out his students’ 50 tomato plants, 50 pepper plants, carrots, herbs, corn and cabbage, and was pleasantly surprised that the watermelons and cantaloupes – two fruits he never tried planting before – were doing well.
“This was a real experience. … When we first started gardening, we had so much rain, it inhibited us from preparing the soil. If the weather doesn’t cooperate, you can lose all the money you put into it. My grandfather was a farmer in the area. I really got an appreciation for some of the difficulties they face. What a learning experience,” Baskin said.
Schneider and officials from Hazleton Area School District and Concerned Parents of the Hazleton Area see the potential for a similar learning opportunity that can be incorporated into the curriculum at one of the district’s elementary schools.
After learning of Butler Township’s garden and of a grant from The Times Leader for such community projects, Concerned Parents teamed up with school district officials and the center to plan a garden near Heights Terrace Elementary-Middle School in Hazleton and apply for the newspaper grant.
Although disappointed that another group won the $1,000 grant, the group is determined to keep the project idea alive.
“It’s a win-win all around. You’re creating something that the entire community can be proud of, … you’re educating students to the benefit of conservation and preservation of natural resources,” said Hazleton Area Deputy Superintendent Francis X. Antonelli, who previously was principal at Heights Terrace.
“What we were trying to do here at the school (is) incorporate it into the science curriculum and also into the activities of our ecology club,” he said.
Storm water runoff from the Heights naturally drains through that area. Having students help construct a cistern as a holding pool that could be used to irrigate the garden is one example of a learning opportunity, he said.
“We also have kids here, quite frankly, that aren’t really academically oriented, but they are kids who are interested in trades. We would take those kids and they would be active participants in preparing the land for the community garden – landscaping, for instance,” Antonelli said.
Eugenio Sosa, president of Concerned Parents, said his group is involved in the project “as families because many immigrants come and they have a tradition of harvesting the land. It would be a way to give continuation to our children on how things grow.”
School board member Elaine Maddon Curry said the garden would be a good way to get people thinking about eating healthier. “We also think it would be a great way to bring the community together and maybe have a lot of our new immigrant families working together with other families and growing a garden. So we’re going to try again to find funding,” she said.
ON THE NET
HOW TO HELP
Learn more about the Center for Landscape Design and Stewardship and community gardens at .
Anyone interested in helping to sponsor the Community Garden project at Heights Terrace Elementary-Middle School can call Krista Schneider at 578-5903.
To see additional photos, visit www.times
leader.com