Allan Appel Photo
Maddy Kern likes helping her mom defeat knotweeds and thistles because it benefits her family of four. When she knelt in the dirt on English Street, she had a bigger purpose: bringing an abandoned Fair Haven community garden back to life.
The Hopkins School senior from Hamden joined a legion of horticultural volunteers who swept into the English Street garden between Rowe and Ferry and the Grand Acres garden on Grand and Perkins to give those New Haven Land Trust (NHLT) sites a new life and a new look.
For the fourth year, seniors at Hopkins joined their teachers and fanned out across the Greater New Haven area 180 strong to render 5,000 hours of service between June 1 and June 4.
One of the several targets of the Hopkins Senior Community Project energy was the English Street garden, which had in effect been abandoned for a year.
“It was in a state of neglect because the coordinator left, and because when it’s in neglect, no one wants to be involved,” said NHLT director Chris Randall. How to address the cyclical problem?
Enter the young man- and woman-power of the Hopkins seniors and English teacher Ian Melchinger.
Tuesday the grass and weeds stood belly-button high from fence to fence. By Wednesday an open, wide, and delightful space full of potential had emerged. A barbecue grill, picnic tables, and a bricked plaza also surfaced from the weeds appearing like artifacts of a better time.
What was particularly satisfying to Kern and Melchinger was that the neighbors were already noticing. As Melchinger worked, a neighbor on Peck Street came across to talk. The neighbor told him she’d been watching the garden every day, wondering when someone would do something with it.
“She talked about peppers and jalapenos, and then we started to chat about growing tomatoes,” said Melchinger. “Then she asked for a key to get access.”
Melchinger said another neighbor came up to him and said, “I’ve lived here for three years. Never knew it [the garden] was here.”
Kern said when she looked up from her labors, she noticed cars slowing down on Peck and English to check out the revival in progress.
Meanwhile, across Fair Haven at Grand and Perkins, another crew of fifteen Hopkins kids were not so much liberating the surviving hostas and rebuilding the rotted lumber of the raised beds as lending a hand to the re-design of what will become NHLT’s signature garden.
When NHLT and Architects for Humanity sponsored a contest for a garden design that would become a look that NHLT could “brand” on its 48 citywide sites, local architects Britton Rogers and Derek Byron (center and right, with Chris Randall, left) emerged as the winners.
On Wednesday, they were showing the Hopkins kids how the “living wall” they conceived will zig and zag along Grand and then Perkins. It will have mesh cubes filled with soil, and flowers will grow on the outside facing the streets. Herbs will grow on the inside.
Cubes of metal mesh and seed will also form a kind of living light sculpture in the center of the garden, said Byron. There will be recycled glass and with some bulbs inside powered by a solar panel. “It will collect light all day and at night cast a glow in the garden,” he said.
The falling-down shed on the site will also be rebuilt, using recycled pallets, as a kind of community pavilion. With the pavilion, the garden can be used for activities beyond planting.
“This should start a trend in New Haven community gardens,” said Ben Koizim, who is bound for Wake Forest University to study science.
The bill for all this was $750, thanks to the oodles of free labor from Hopkins kids like Westvillians Nicole Lawrence and Peter Neeley (pictured), who constituted a hoeing and raking team. They did allow themselves a break to taste the sweet strawberries that were already coming up.
Chris Randall said the contest winners’ signature design is being first implemented at Grand Acres because it is one of two sites that NHLT owns around the city; the other is Winchester Gardens.
On English Street, the Hopkins kids finish up on Friday by going door to door and inviting the neighbors back in.
“This is not a one-off project for us,” said Dan Kops, who’s coordinating the Hopkins volunteers.
In the past, Hopkins students have also worked with Yale’s Urban Resources Initiative to plant shade trees for the farmers market in nearby Quinnipiac River Park.
In the fall Maddy Kern goes off to Tulane University to study science and then perhaps go to dentistry school. Other Hopkins students will follow in her footsteps and work for NHLT throughout the year, Kops said.