The Verona Community Garden doubled in size this year and this summer’s gardeners are hoping their harvests will grow likewise.
Erika Grothues, a first-year gardener, has planted lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and sugar snap peas. “They were a request from my son,” she says.
Patricia, who just wants to be known by her first name, has got tomatoes as well, along with eggplant, cabbage, Swiss chard, basil and three kinds of mustard greens. Her 4- by 8-foot bed is a step up from the pots she had used on her condo’s balcony. She loves the tips she gets from her fellow gardeners and from Carol Thomas, the retired HBW science teacher who is the garden’s manager. “I’m with a community who can help teach me,” Patricia says. “I’ve learned so much.”
Verona created the Community Garden in 2021. Located on the grounds of H.B. Whitehorne Middle School just behind the main municipal parking lot, the garden uses a lottery system to select people who pay $30 to $60 for the growing season. While the Department of Public Works provided some of the labor needed to start the garden and set up the sturdy fence around it, everything else is funded by grants and fundraising, like this year’s paver blocks effort. The Landsberger Foundation has given $50,000 over the last four years and the garden got $10,000 from Sustainable Jersey and another $2,000 from Sustainable Jersey Schools.
Seven of the garden’s beds are a teaching space for HBW students, like the Mandarin class that is growing Chinese vegetables. Other beds are earmarked to raise produce that will be donated to the Human Needs Food Pantry in Montclair and to the senior citizens building near Verona High School. Some individual gardeners also donate what they grow.
Marilena Stoicescu is in her third year with the garden, and still learning. She tried a “three-sisters” planting last year, putting corn, beans and zucchini next to each other. “It fed the bunnies,” she says. This year, she started the corn earlier, so that it could be ready to support the beans. She also planted several kinds of radishes, but some didn’t like the early heat. They will be dug up and replaced by another crop. “I enjoy the gardening experience so much that I volunteer on the garden committee,” Stoicescu says.
Diane Conboy (below), who is a speech-language pathologist in Verona’s public schools, is working on a different project. Tucked in among the lettuces and carrots in her bed are several kinds of native New Jersey plants. When they are ready, Conboy will transplant them to a designated area in the Community Garden for plants that attract pollinators, the insects that help fertilize plants. But in the meantime, there are carrots to harvest. “Just taste these,” she says.
The photos for this story were taken by Ryan Tsang, who will graduate Verona High School with the Class of 2024. He is participating in the Senior Capstone project by sharing his photographs of Verona. The story was written by his editor, Virginia Citrano.
