The fourth garden patch organized by the Roanoke Valley Garden Association is taking shape on 13th Street Southwest in Roanoke. Volunteers, some of whom may work some of the small plots that will be doled out to applicants in the community, have been helping the Mountain View Community Garden take shape on recent weekends.
Steve Boehlen helped organize community gardens in Green Bay, Wisconsin before moving to the area. He was helping out on a recent weekend as the newest community garden started to take shape. “For people that have no yard or very little yard it’s an opportunity to grow vegetables and eat healthier,” said Boehlen, who saw community gardens bring people together in Green Bay.
Mark Powell, president of the Roanoke Valley Garden Association, expects about 40 plots to be made available on the 1/3-acre site. Some elevated beds that meet ADA standards for the disabled will also be constructed. Compacted pathways will make it easier for people in wheelchairs to travel along between plots. A pavilion and tool shed are also going up. Because it is in the Old Southwest Historic District everything must pass muster with the Architectural Review Board. “We had to be careful about colors and design – that goes for our [roadside] sign too,” said Powell.
Funding for construction came from the Roanoke Women’s Foundation and the City of Roanoke is leasing the site to the Garden Association. It’s being built on the site of an apartment building that was destroyed in a fire and then demolished. Powell contacted City Manager Chris Morrill and others, working out a five-year lease he hopes to have extended down the road. Local artists will put up murals on the site; neighbors and Virginia Tech’s School of Landscape Architecture and Urban Design were also involved with the layout.
Fall crops will go in soon and registration for 2014 begins in January. The RVGA also built a garden at Hurt Park Elementary that the school is tending to, so this is the fifth community garden if it is included. One planned for Southeast Roanoke near the Rescue Mission didn’t pan out when the soil proved to be “toxic” and unsuitable for plants, according to Powell. Funding that had been awarded for that project was used instead to start another community garden near RAM House on Campbell Avenue.
The Mountain View Community Garden will also feature a beehive that may produce honey, if beekeeper Meredith Withers can get the bees to cooperate. They weren’t producing much honey when Withers checked the hive last weekend, but that may be because they are still getting acclimated after having their hive moved recently.
“They’re a little disorientated and didn’t know where they were,” said Withers, who trained to become a beekeeper. A jar of sugar syrup had been attached to the hive, a temporary measure according to Withers. “They can use that to get food until they figure out where [nearby flowers and plants with nectar are],” noted Withers.
Having bees on site also means they will pollinate the flowers to be grown on trellises at the edge of the garden and in some of the spaces to be allocated. “We’ve lost a lot of bee colonies over the past few years,” said Withers, “so its great that people are getting interested [in bee keeping].” She called it Colony Collapse Disorder and said scientists aren’t really sure if it’s due to climate changes or other factors. Powell helped encourage Withers to learn the art of beekeeping; she also has a hive at her house.
In addition to heading up the Roanoke Community Garden Association – an idea that Powell said started after he and his wife decided they wanted to plant a small garden – Powell is also president of the Southeast Action Forum. The community group recently helped fend off a proposal to build a propane storage facility in Southeast Roanoke, one that many in the area felt was too close to nearby neighborhoods.
Inergy wanted to buy that property from a development company, on land currently rezoned light industrial, but community opposition persuaded the firm to back off before a proposal for rezoning came to the Planning Commission. “People in the neighborhood and throughout the city weren’t keen on the idea,” said Powell.
Sixty people turned out for a community meeting in Southeast to voice their opposition before Inergy backed off. A petition with hundreds of signatures and letters of support from other neighborhood groups helped make the case against rezoning as well.
“People just didn’t have a propane terminal in their vision for the community. There were safety and environmental issues,” noted Powell, who isn’t against propane terminals or economic development, but said neighborhoods close by, along with the Roanoke River and Greenway, could have been impacted by a spill or fire. They considered it “a long term threat to the neighborhood,” Powell said. His vision these days mostly concerns community gardens.
By Gene Marrano
