The garden plots outside Peterborough’s Community Center have been refashioned into the Community Center Garden, and applicants are picking out their plots and sprouting seeds in preparation for the season. Kate Coon and Stephanie Latini are spearheading the garden’s new iteration, and started showing gardeners to their plots last week.
The name reflects the garden’s history and direction going forward, Coon said. It was previously known as the Cornucopia Community Garden. The Cornucopia Project developed the garden with the Recreation Department on the town-owned land beside Peterborough’s Community Center in 2012, and donated everything it grew to the Peterborough Food Pantry. Two winters ago, Cornucopia Project leaders announced their intention to focus on their other garden locations, and during the 2019 growing season they helped transition management to local volunteers, Food Pantry, and Rec Department personnel, Coon said. Although some residents confuse the two, the Community Center Garden is different from the community garden on Scott Mitchell Road, which is not owned or managed by the town, Coon said.
Donating the garden’s produce is still “very much a sensibility that we have,” Coon said, and some of this year’s plots are for the community supper in the fall and the Food Pantry. Other plots are now available for growers’ personal projects as well. “There are amazing stories for each of the beds,” she said. This year, some plots are reserved for families living at MATS, past and current Food Pantry clients, Monadnock Family Services programs, and a Cub Scout troop, she said.
Last year was a transitional year, Coon said, as Cornucopia stepped back from managing and Coon, Latini, and other volunteers stepped up. “It was very loose,” Coon said, and a lesson in what would happen to the garden with minimal management. “it looked unkempt, and kind of weedy and sad sometimes,” she said, when nobody was explicitly assigned to mow the lawn or perform other maintenance. Latini and her husband were among the natural leaders that emerged during the transition year, Coon said, and the 2020 season has a tighter management system for applying for beds, collecting the $10 plot fee, and formalizing the accountability among members with written guidelines and expectations.
“This year we’re not in a situation where we have to turn people away,” Coon said. They are still taking applications for prospective gardeners on the garden’s Facebook page. Going forward, she said their next goal is to make the garden financially self-sustaining.
Although all 2020 season activities will need to be compliant with COVID-19 recommendations, in the future, Coon said she hoped to raise the garden’s profile by holding events while the Farmers Market runs on Wednesday afternoons, such as a drum circle. There’s space for more beds in the future too, she said.