WASHINGTON—On the surface, Jill Causa’s plot at the Newark Street Community Garden doesn’t look like many others. Besides being smaller than most plots in the area, she grows chili pepper, kale and watermelon –– plants that are not commonly found at this garden. In addition, lining her plot are unconventional items, such as a few Solo cups, a tennis ball and even a pair of firefighter’s boots that once belonged to her son.
“When you have a young kid at home,” Causa says, “you can’t afford all these high-tech gardening tools, so you have to get by with whatever you can.”
Causa has gardened at the Newark Street Community Garden for the last two years, and has already realized the effort that it takes to maintain even a small plot of land like hers.
She continues, “Last year I moved into someone else’s plot who didn’t take good care of it, so it’s been a lot of work to reorganize everything.”
The Newark Street Community Garden is the largest community garden in the District. Founded in 1974, it affiliated with the DC Department of Parks and Recreation the next year. It contains 200 plots run by 190 individuals, who all grow various vegetables, fruits and flowers. Some of the gardeners have been gardening on the same plot since the park’s founding, while others are new to taking care of a piece of land.
Guy Mendelson can be found at the garden almost every day, moving from plot to plot and digging or watering. “I’m actually very new to gardening,” he says. “Didn’t do any as a kid, but I was always interested. I read a bunch of books on gardening and watched everyone else [at the garden] do it so I could learn quicker.”
As being environmentally friendly becomes more popular, so too do these community gardens. Since Newark Street Community Garden is the largest of its kind in Washington, there is significantly more demand to obtain a plot here than at any of the 31 other public gardens in the city. According to former Garden Association President Susan Akman, there are 100 people on the waiting list, and they can wait as long as two years before getting their plot.
Plot owners can only be removed if they move out of the District or if they do not donate adequate time or money to the well-being of their plot. Mendelson chose not to wait that long, taking matters into his own hands.
“I was on the waiting list for almost two years before I got tired of waiting and asked a few people if we could share plots,” he says. “Many of them were too busy to manage the whole 10-hours-a-week thing, so they accepted my proposal.”
The plot-sharing deal benefits both parties, Mendelson continues.
“I have found that sharing a plot helps me gain a lot more knowledge than I would have had I had my own [plot].”