MUSCATINE, Iowa — Saturday was a good day to get rooted in community gardens during the community garden open house at the Riverview Center.
Though the turnout wasn’t as big as she would have liked, Annette Shipley, the Muscatine County Coordinator of the ISU Extension office and the Master Gardener Coordinator, said she’s still excited about getting community members involved in one of the six community gardens throughout Muscatine.
If anyone is interested in being a part of the community garden, she says she’d be happy to help get them connected. All they have to do is give her or Master Gardener Kay Walter a call at the ISU Extension office at 563-263-5701.
In glancing around at the different garden stations at the open house, where the coordinators of each garden were manning their displays, Shipley noted the variety of the gardens. One garden is on private property (Solomon Gardens), another is on public (Taylor Park). Mulford and Wesley-MCSA are both church gardens and East Campus is a school garden.
“We can offer everyone a different experience,” Shipley said proudly.
Lee Falkena, a science teacher at East Campus who is coordinating the East Campus garden, was the only coordinator to have a partner Saturday. Sophomore Brandon Moore was on-hand to talk about his part as “overseer” of the gardens, a self-awarded title which Falkena amended to “leader” with a good-natured chuckle. Moore’s helping with the garden’s design — determining how to use space efficiently — and helping oversee the garden’s plants.
The garden at East Campus was started last year and lessons from it are integrated into the science curriculum. Falkena’s goals are to involve more community members, particularly students’ parents, and have the students teach them about gardening as they go.
Across the room, J.R. Hendricks was standing in for coordinator Adam Thompson at the Taylor Park table. Hendricks was part of the Leadership-Muscatine group that got the garden at Taylor Park going.
“I had no idea what a community garden was,” Hendricks admitted, but now he and the rest of the group say they’re excited to get the garden going. They planned on having the plots in their garden — a combination of normal plots, enabled plots and youth beds — set up and ready to go by now, but the weather hasn’t been cooperating. Saturday, though, brought some hope to Hendricks with its sunshine and warmer temperature.
Hope also came in the form of helping hands.
A group of about 15 AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps) members lead by fellow member Justin Jenkins stopped by to see if they could volunteer at the gardens, an offer met with enthusiasm from all parties.
The NCCC team has been in the area working with Louisa County Conversation in environmental stewardship. Jenkins said he was inspired by the community garden effort, citing its similarity to urban gardening in his hometown, New York City. The group plans to help get the gardens ready to go for the people who plan to plant in them.
Team leader Elizabeth Siliato, who is following Jenkins’ lead for this project, said, “It seems like it’s gonna be really great.”
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