Girl Scouts plant community seeds in Swampscott

SWAMPSCOTT – They have no trouble collecting canned goods, pasta, and peanut butter for the local food pantry. But a group of Girl Scouts has decided to freshen up the pantry menu – and a vacant playground – by constructing a community vegetable garden.”We always get canned goods for everyone but thought it would be nice for them to get fresh vegetables from the garden,” Girl Scout Cadet Mary Alice Brennan, 11, said.Girl Scout Troops 60321 and 78005 are building a raised-bed, community vegetable garden at the former playground behind St. John the Evangelist Church on Humphrey Street. The project is in partnership with the church (where the troops hold their meetings), and the girls and volunteer parishioners will tend the garden and donated harvested vegetables to the church’s food pantry. The girls said the pantry served more than 50 families a week from Lynn and Swampscott, and they hope to have at least one fresh vegetable option available every week during the season. The project will also earn the girls a Silver Award, which is awarded for a project that identifies and addresses a unique community need.But the award isn’t the real goal.”Ever since we started this, we don’t really think about getting the award, we just think about how we’re helping people,” Eli Delia, 11, said.The girls began the project this spring by researching the ideal growing conditions for several types of vegetables. Troop Leader Holly Schmidt said a local landscape architect saw the girls checking out the site and volunteered to design a garden plan with about 18 raised beds measuring 6 feet by 2 feet.Meanwhile, the girls are building a Seed and Soil Fund by holding weekly bake sales after Sunday Masses and organizing a community yard sale to be held Sunday in the church’s parking lot. The girls are also writing all the local landscapers and landscaping businesses to ask for donations of soil, manure, and plants or supplies.The goal is to get the garden in the ground by Memorial Day, Schmidt said. The girls have devised a regular schedule of shifts for weeding, watering and harvesting, and they are welcoming any volunteer parishioners or community members who would like to help, Schmidt added.But before the first bean is picked, the girls have a lot of work to do.The former playground is actually made up of cement slabs that have been covered with several inches of gravel, thick landscaping fabric, and several more inches of mulch and soil.So about a dozen girls Wednesday evening shoveled mulch and soil into wheelbarrows and hauled it to the corner of the site to be sifted. Once a section of fabric was cleared, groups gathered to roll it back to expose the gravel on which they would be building the beds. Other girls created “window boxes” out of plastic gutters hung on the perimeter fence with zip ties.”It’s for strawberries, and herbs and various hanging plants,” Allesandra Amore, 13, said.Of course, amidst the work, there was plenty of laughing and fun. The folded-over tarp apparently makes a great place to practice back handsprings, and Izzy the Great Pyrenees provides as much distraction as help with digging.”I’ve been on a lot of committees and councils in church, and I’ve never seen a group more organized and dedicated than these girls,” Maureen McDonnell, the director of religious education at St. John’s, said as she watched the girls at work. “It’s just so nice to give people something like fresh fruits and vegetables – it’s great to give soup, canned goods and pasta, but (fresh food) is something that is really important for growing families.”Then McDonnell smiled.”And I think they’re having a good time out here,” she said.