Principal’s retirement puts Ford garden in question

LYNN – Vegetables planted at the Ford School and Cook Street are flourishing and expansion is underway despite some uncertainty that could spell the demise of at least one of community gardens.”Of course we’re worried,” said Rob Lang, a co-manager of both gardens. “Claire is our champion, our hero.”Ford School Principal Claire Crane announced her retirement earlier this summer, which leaves some fearing that her replacement could do away with the community garden the covers nearly one-third of the school’s perimeter. Highland Coalition President David Gass said he is hoping that won’t happen.Lang said until they hear otherwise, he along with co-manager Steve Lewis, will continue on as usual, which includes growing, creating and starting Friday serving up some of the harvest for during Friday lunches in the garden.Wednesday Lewis and Lang worked dismantling the large triangular aquaponics feature that was established just last year.Aquaponics combines raising fish with hydroponics, which is cultivating plants in water. Built a year ago, the Ford School feature included a large pool area for fish and an extended open greenhouse where plants were expected to grow in pots fed by ever circulating water and nutrients from fish excrement. Unfortunately the experiment failed.Lang said it was simply the wrong kind of set up but they have since learned from their mistakes and Broad is building a new, smaller system with an attached greenhouse. The old system also took up a chunk of what Lang called prime planting real estate, which he is happy to reclaim.”It will become a winter garden with greens and hardy types of plants,” said Lewis.North Shore Cycle on Western Ave. has donated old bike rims that once the spokes are removed make perfect hoops for securing the plastic that makes up the greenhouse sides and ceiling, Lang explained.Behind the school in Cook Street Park Gass worked with two city youth workers on a new section of the newly established community garden.The Highland Coalition petitioned the city last spring for permission to establish a community garden on the top tier of the park that is crisscrossed with stone walls that date back to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Work Progress Administration program established in the 1930s. The goal was to take back the park from gangs, Gass said.He said they were able to hire five teens from the city’s youth work program to help with the project that took a plot of land and divided it into 34 lots. Some lots included raised beds for older gardeners. The entire garden is overflowing with tomato plants laden with green fruit, a patch of large cabbage. There are also broccoli plants and a patch of corn, neither of which are ready for harvest.Gass called this first year of the Cook Street garden an experiment. While the Ford garden focuses on science and is used as an outdoor classroom for students, the Cook Street garden is all community driven.”Half the plots are neighbors and the rest belong to the Congo Development Center or the Iraqi community,” he said. “This has been training for us, figuring out who to give plots to and trying to get the neighbors on board.”Gass said he knew the Cook Street project wouldn’t work unless the neighbors agreed to the project and after several meetings most did. One abutter even let the group set up a cistern to catch rain water off his roof, others are what Gass calls watchers.”They keep eyes on the garden,” he said.Gass said he would have liked to expand the garden outward but he’s faced opposition from dog walkers that wanted to keep it as is. He does hope to eventually add more features, including a mural along the back wall by artists from RAW Art Works.”But we’re not getting too fancy this year,” he added. “We’re keeping it pretty simple.”