Christy Anderson had an idea that took root and grew into First Fruits Community Garden of Maumelle.
“My grandmother had a big garden; my parents had a big garden. Apparently, I inherited their green thumbs. I’ve always grown. How else are you going to get homegrown tomatoes?”
She said an employee in the business she and her husband own is a member of the Central Arkansas Agrarian Society, and they were talking about community gardens.
“I said, ‘Why does Maumelle not have a community garden? This is ridiculous,’” Anderson said.
Anderson wanted to share the experience of gardening, as well as the produce, with her fellow residents of Maumelle.
“It was one of those you get an idea stuck in your head, and it won’t go away until you do something about it,” she said.
Anderson is one of five women at First United Methodist Church of Maumelle who raised money to create the community garden in 2013 at the church on Edgewood Drive.
“It wasn’t really a church project, but the idea came from the Bible,” Anderson said. The verse she referenced is Deuteronomy 26:12: “When you have finished setting aside a tenth of all your produce in the third year, the year of the tithe, you shall give it to the Levite, the foreigner, the fatherless and the widow, so that they may eat in your towns and be satisfied.”
A work day is scheduled to begin at 9 a.m. Saturday at the garden.
“Several of the plots are a little overgrown,” Anderson said. “We’ll be clearing out the paths, clearing out some of the beds. We’re going to put cardboard on the available beds and straw on top of that and call it done — basically pretty it up.”
The garden contains 66 plots, about half of which are still available for residents to rent, she said. The plots range in size from 4 by 4 feet up to 6 by 8 feet. The cost for a plot ranges from $20 to $30 a year.
“That covers basically water and maintenance,”
Anderson said.
In addition to cleaning up the site, some of the gardeners will start “sticking stuff in the ground” on Saturday, Anderson said. “They can’t help themselves. You show a gardener an empty plot, and they have to stick their hands in the dirt,” she said.
Anderson said she talked to Maumelle Mayor Mike Watson about where the garden could be created, but he said there wasn’t much city property that wasn’t being used.
“Not all ground in Maumelle is blessed with good dirt,” she said. “I was at the church one day and I went, ‘Duh.’ We’ve got this big empty lot, gravel lot —
nothing was going on there.”
Beth McElroy, another of the garden founders and church administrator, said the most important requirement is that gardeners give some of their bounty away.
“Share a portion of everything you grow with someone in need,” she said, adding that some people give produce to Hope Ministry Alliance in Maumelle. “It’s up to them; we don’t police that.”
Anderson reiterated the point, and she said it doesn’t matter to whom the extra food is given. She said she often shares the extras with people on the street she lives on.
“We don’t care who; just give it away,” she said.
Anderson especially enjoys growing tomatoes, as well as lettuce, peas and “the usual vegetables,” she said. “Lately, I’ve been getting into the wild stuff.”
Anderson said she went to Greece and saw boiled wild greens on the menu, and she asked what they were. “They said, ‘Dandelions, whatever,’” she said. After that, Anderson said, she started growing and eating dandelions.
“What you grow is up to you. If you just want to grow tomatoes, and that’s all you’re into, that’s fine. If you want to grow nothing but flowers, that’s fine,” she said. Gardeners may visit their plots as often as they want.
The mission statement on the church website for First Fruits Community Garden of Maumelle states: “We provide an educational
community garden for improving the health and wellness of Maumelle.”
Anderson said the community garden is used as a teaching tool on Tuesday nights when an employee of the Arkansas Educational Television Network does a gardening show from that location.
“In the past, we’ve had classes on things you can make with whatever you grow, the herbs or whatever,” Anderson said.
“It has, absolutely, been very successful,” McElroy said. “It’s beautiful.”
Anyone who would like to rent a plot can go to the First Fruits Community Garden of Maumelle Facebook page to download an application and take it to the church, 1201 Edgewood Drive, or download the First United Methodist Church of Maumelle’s mobile app to apply. For more information, call McElroy at (501) 851-2377.
Senior writer Tammy Keith can be reached at (501) 327-0370 or tkeith@arkansasonline.com.