Alexandra Bergstein
“A successful Summer crop is planted in the Fall.”
This saying is especially true for the Greenwich Community Gardens this year. The
Gardens are facing great change even as they celebrate their 10th anniversary. The
GCG Board also has to ensure coverage of the routine but labor-intensive gardening
issues that come up every year at GCG. The new year officially started last night with the election of the Board of Directors, headed by Alexandra Bergstein.
The elephant in the room was how GCG would deal with the departure of Founder
and Midsummer-Titania, Patty Sechi, recently moved to the warmer climes of the
Shenandoah Valley horse country and the new challenge of planting in its clay soils.
Patty made covering her official tasks look easy, but she also stepped in voluntarily
for anything that fell between the cracks, or when other members could not
complete their responsibilities.
The good news is that Patty has left behind a confident, motivated board. Not only does it understand how to work beyond one’s responsibilities, it enjoys doing so. Coupled with Alex Bergstein’s simple, but effective, organizing ability, the GCG appears to be in good hands.
Alex set up six committees organized along practical issues rather than traditional functional areas. She then invited board members to choose their committees, and sat back as new members fell into earnest discussion of who should be on each committee, but also what a given committee should be doing. Score one point for the new team.
The Board unveiled an exciting program of year-long activities to celebrate the GCG’s 10th anniversary: a film and speaker event; a mobile mushrooms class involving innoculating logs with mushrooms and watching them grow; nature walks; greenhouse growing programs; microgreens classes (in conjunction with the microgreens garden at Abilis, which now provides greens to area restaurants); a maple-sugar workshop; children’s garden education camps or clubs; open houses at the Armstrong Court and Bible Street Gardens; and a possible block party with the Greenwich Community.
The goal, of course, is to bring greater consciousness of gardening and the importance of local, organic agriculture to the residential, business, and governmental groups of Greenwich, as well as to learn from them how best they can fit gardening and agriculture into their programs and lives. GCG’s priorities are also to educate children and families in the importance of green spaces, gardening, and agriculture, even in the semi-urban environment of Greenwich.
See also:
PHOTOS: Greenwich Community Gardens 3rd Annual “Big Tomato,” a Farewell to Patty Sechi
Email news tips to Greenwich Free Press editor Leslie.Yager@GreenwichFreePress.com
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