Across New Jersey, the movement to create, manage, and share community gardens is growing.

Volunteers learn how to rope off each row of the community garden. Bea Gardella stands in the center in blue. (Photo by Stacey Slowinski)

“People are thinking about eating locally and eating healthier,” says Stacey Slowinski, chairman of the Tinton Falls, N.J., historic preservation commission.

Three of the borough’s commissions—open space, historic, and environmental—have banded together to create a community garden on the grounds of the historic Crawford House, located at 750 Tinton Ave., in Tinton Falls’ historic district.

“We’re honoring Monmouth County’s agricultural history,” Slowinski says. The house itself will be used by all three volunteer commissions not only as a meeting place, but also as a local history and cultural center and a focal point for the trail system currently under development.

Master Gardener at work

“The home garden and community garden are a big movement in New Jersey,” Bea Gardella says. “We’re trying to save as much farm land as we can.”

Gardella is a key contributor to the Crawford House community garden. A Master Gardener and president of the garden club at Seabrook, where she lives just eight miles up the road, Gardella has helped establish the plans and bring them to life.

Four generations of the Crawford family operated their butcher business out of the Crawford House for most of the 19th century. (Photo by Stacey Slowinski)

Among her accomplishments, Gardella gathered some of her Seabrook neighbors to raise funds for a fence at the Crawford House garden “to keep the critters out,” she says.

She has also been a proponent of growing food for the hungry both at Crawford House and at Seabrook. “I’m trying to encourage the gardeners [at Seabrook] to use the vacant garden squares for growing food for local food banks,” she says.

Likewise, a section of the Crawford House garden is managed by the Girl Scouts, and the food grown will be donated to local food banks.

Another section of the garden is dedicated to Friends of the Crawford House, a stewardship group for the house. Fruits and vegetables grown in this area will be sold at a local farm stand to benefit the house renovation project.

Garden layout

The entire garden area lies in a 50- by 90-foot space filled with 45- by 4-foot rows for gardeners to tend. “They’re like little farmettes,” Gardella says.

Volunteers work the ground and build rows for the community gardeners in early April. (Photo by Stacey Slowinski)

“It provides an opportunity for people who live in a condo or an apartment to have a garden,” she says, comparing the effort to the Victory Gardens of World War II.

Each gardener must apply for one of 25 spots and pay $20 once a year to cover the cost of seeds, hoses, water, soil, and other necessary items.

Slowinski says they broke ground with planting this spring and hope for a fruitful summer and fall.

Get gardening

To get involved with the Crawford House garden or to apply for a garden space there, contact Teresa Maltz at tmaltz@comcast.net or Stacey Slowinski at sslowinski@verizon.net.

Read next month’s feature on changes in Seabrook’s garden club, also run by Gardella.