Thriving Community Garden Feeds Fair Lawn Families

An organic oasis of okra, string beans, cherry tomatoes and crunchy cucumbers springs from the soil of the Sampson Road , across the street from the and Hollow Run Apartments.

The 29-plot Garden Committee project, now in its second year, provides small swaths of land where, for $10 per year, residents can plant and harvest plots of personal produce.

One of the plots is shared by all plot holders and designated as a giving garden whose crops are harvested and brought to the for distribution every Tuesday.

This year’s collective crop includes a mixture of herbs, vegetables, fruits and even a smattering of floral hops, for the bitter beer aficionado. 

“This year we have much more participation, we actually had a waiting list for the plots this year,” said Harriet Einschlag, who was instrumental in getting the garden off the ground a few years ago. “There seems to be a growing interest in town about it. We're very happy at the different varieties of plot holders that we have.”

Plot holders come from all over town, but many are apartment dwellers who live across the street and don’t have land of their own to grow on.

“We’re here in the morning and at night,” said Val Hot, who lives across the street from the garden and is in her second year as a plot holder.

She was out Sunday harvesting the family’s cucumber crop with her 12-year-old son Amer.

“They’re so tasty, we don’t even peel them,” she said, adding that after work her husband often grabs lettuce, tomatoes, basil and garlic right from their garden to whip up salads for dinner.

Natasha Kaminer, whose plot is a veritable jungle that bustles with mint, basil, peppers, tomatoes, beans, lettuce, okra, strawberries, peas, scallions, dill parsley and cucumbers, said she loves organically growing the lion’s share of her family’s produce in her garden plot.

“We look forward to it so much,” she said. “It’s fun, it’s delicious and it gives you a really good feeling.”

Beer connoisseur and Garden Committee member Chris Lauver, who designed the garden’s layout last year, is taking his first stab at growing hops in his plot this summer.

Lauver, a self-described “hophead,” who’s been brewing his own beer for years, planted both Cascade and Tomahawk hops that he ordered from California.

Eventually, he said the hops vines would grow to about 30 feet, gaining more than a foot per week at their peak. This year he’ll just be finding the strongest vines and cutting all the others back, so that next year he can actually harvest hops for his homebrews.

While the garden’s clumpy clay soil isn’t ideal for growing, Einschlag said this year’s crop has been far more prosperous than last year’s as plot holders have discovered techniques for enhancing growth.

“It’s kind of an experiment in progress,” she said. “Some people are finding out what to mix in the soil and what to use. And you can see that it’s been very successful in cases.”

Although it hasn’t always proven effective, the town has provided a makeshift fence to surround the garden and keep animals out. 

By the end of the year, however, Lauver said he hopes to install a more suitable 7-foot deer fence that’ll be entrenched a foot deep in the ground to keep animals from burrowing underneath. Lauver also hopes to build a shed in the back portion of the garden near the stream, where it’s too wet to grow anything but water-tolerant crops like blueberries.

Garden Committee chairwoman Jane Spindel, who for years had pushed the town to allocate land for a community garden, said the space has really taken great strides in the last year.

“Every time I come here I have to smile,” she said. "Everyone involved should be very proud of themselves."

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