Community garden guidelines sprouting in Lynn

LYNN – Community gardens are growing in popularity, but the city has lacked any sort of governing policy until recently.”The Cook Street garden kind of led the way when it comes to building a community garden on public land,” said Kristen Pechulis, director of Lynn Food and Fitness Student Alliance and Mass in Motion Lynn coordinator. “But because there was no format or policy, we decided to create one.”Pechulis teamed up The Food Project, North Shore Community College, the Highland Coalition, which was behind the Cook Street community garden, and several other agencies to develop a set of guidelines for community gardens in the city.Parks Commission Chairman Steven Babbitt said the commission supported the initiative but asked Pechulis to tweak the policy a bit.”It’s a good thing we just want to make sure it’s done right,” he said.Babbitt said the commission doesn’t want to micro-manage community gardens, but it does want to make sure they are held to a certain standard.The plan is to establish a Garden Council under the Parks Commission that will hear petitions for community gardens as well as deal with complaints, Pechulis said. Details, such as which parks have the space for a community garden, also need to be ironed out, she added.The city has more than 30 parks and playgrounds but not all would make good homes for a community garden.”Some are really utilized just for play, but some have space that is underutilized,” Pechulis said.Cook Street Playground was a proving ground in that respect. The sprawling, three-tiered property has playground equipment as well as basketball courts, but the top tier was largely neglected and overgrown until the Highland Coalition created its community garden.Other details of the policy include using raised garden beds. Babbitt said by allowing only raised garden beds, it excludes concerns regarding soil contamination. Making sure there is a garden supervisor to keep an eye on things and make sure the garden isn’t neglected, figuring out water sources and making sure participants agree to the garden rules are also included in the new policy.Pechulis said there will also likely be a nominal fee, but other issues, like the actual garden rules, plot preparation and violations, are still being ironed out.Pechulis is confident the program will work in general. She said she and people at The Food Project have received a lot of support in regard to current community gardens and the idea of having more.In fact, while the policy is still facing a revision or two, Pechulis already has an eye to the future.”Ideally, if we’re successful with this project, we would like to expand and use vacant lots as well,” she said. “One vision we (Mass in Motion) had was to try and change the landscape of Lynn, and we can do that by doing things like changing empty lots into community gardens, to make it more beautiful. We’re starting slow.”