By Karen Parr-Moody
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. – The scent of honeysuckle wafts over the Garden of Hope’s 10-feet-by-10-feet plots at 109 Canterbury Drive. They are freshly tilled and waiting for new members to pop their plants into the earth.
“All people have to do is go in and plant,” says Karla Kean, the UT Extension agent who directs the Garden of Hope program. “We prepare everything for them as much as possible.”
The Garden of Hope location at 109 Canterbury Drive is off of Madison Street near Walgreens; a second garden is at 108 Adkins Street in north Clarksville. The program is designed to give garden space to people who may not have full-sun land – or any land, such as apartment dwellers.
To adopt a plot, one simply pays a $25 deposit and a $10 plot fee; both are due by May 19 (the original deadline has been extended one week). The deposit will be returned at the end of the season if the adoptee follows the gardening guidelines.
The garden is a program operated by the UT Extension of Montgomery County. Email Kean for an application at kkean@utk.edu or call her for more information at 931-648-5725. The group is also located on Facebook.
Kean says there are several good reasons to adopt a plot.
“It’s a feel-good thing to garden,” she says, noting that gardening is also a great way to meet other people. “It’s an excellent opportunity for people to build community.”
The Garden of Hope also provides a way for gardeners to help others: The program asks that members donate one row of their produce to local food banks.
Still, Kean says there is one unusual obstacle for those who are new to the program or are hesitant to join.
“One of the main challenges that we have with the community garden right now is that a lot of people don’t know what to do with the fresh produce,” she says.
To that end, there is plenty of information online at utextension.tennessee.edu. There’s a search engine on the site that allows a visitor to look up anything from warm-season vegetable gardening to canning.
The site offers free downloads of PDFs of the information. For example, there is a 50-page “Canning Foods” guide from the University of Tennessee; it can be ordered for $5 or simply printed out on a home printer free of charge.
Kean says that people may not realize they can freeze or dry certain types of produce, either, and they may not know the first thing about canning.
“It’s kind of a lost art people have gotten away from by buying processed foods,” Kean says.
Vegetables seedlings are taking root in the Garden of Hope. Photo by Karen Parr-Moody
Karen Parr-Moody began a career as a New York journalist, working as a fashion reporter for Women’s Wear Daily, a beauty editor for Young Miss and a beauty and fashion writer for both In Style and People magazines. Regionally, she has been a writer at The Leaf-Chronicle newspaper and currently writes about arts and culture for Nashville Arts magazine each month.