"I do this because I need to dig in the soil," says Gail Barbosa, explaining why she spends weeks each spring toiling over a garden plot two miles from her King's Contrivance home.
Ask other gardeners what draws them to Columbia's three community garden sites and a variety of reasons unfold. Some want truly fresh, vine-ripened produce -- "real" tomatoes top the list.
Others are trying to keep down their grocery bills by growing their own vegetables. A few, including some immigrants from Southeast Asia, are growing exotic vegetables and herbs not available in stores here.
Their visions of the perfect garden vary, but these people have a common bond -- the need for a sunny plot of tillable land. And that's where Columbia Gardeners Inc. comes in.
Columbia Gardeners Inc., a non-profit organization run by volunteers, administers three community garden sites near the villages of Owen Brown, Long Reach, and Clemens Crossing, ranging in size from three to five acres. Each site is a neatly laid-out grid of individual garden plots, available tocounty residents whose gardening plans exceed the capacity of their yard at home.
"Lack of space was a problem," says Linda Schiffer, who turned to community gardening when she lived in a town house in Owen Brown. "But it wasn't the only problem. Our property had lots of trees. And in addition, the town house association had covenants thatprohibited anything that looked like a vegetable garden."
Columbia's community garden plots -- some 420 in all -- provide the space onwhich displaced suburban gardeners like Barbosa and Schiffer can pursue their gardening dreams.
Most gardeners concentrate on the serious business of producing food for the dinner table. Lettuce, beans, corn, hardy greens, onions, peppers, broccoli and, of course, tomatoes are among the common crops.
Many people also grow a few flowers on their 20 by 25 foot plot. Pumpkins and sunflowers, perennial favorites with children, are squeezed into family plots as well.
Growing things is not the only pleasure of community gardening. "I enjoy the other gardeners as much as I do the gardening," said Barbosa, president of Columbia Gardeners. "There is friendship and camaraderie. We commiserate about the weather, share the bounty of a bumper crop, or just a handful of herbs."
"And we learn ways of doing things we'd never imagined. I watched a woman create a spray for her seedlings bypouring buckets of water through a colander. I would never have thought of doing that."
