Our Town | written by: PAMELA DEY VOSSLER | photos by: BAMBI RIEGEL | riegelpictureworks.com
Cherry Lawn gardeners (from left): Emily and Sally Kirby, Dorothy Shergalis, Jim Brewer, Nick Sortori, Nicole Rivard, Elaine Scott, Tricia Connelly and MaryLouise Morgan
At Cherry Lawn Community Gardens, the roots run deep, no matter how long you’ve been lucky enough to have one of the 60 plots located here. The passion for dirt, growing things and hard work that exist in these gardens add up to immense satisfaction guaranteed to provide the kind of grounding from which all things feel possible.
Do it alongside like-minded others as the gardeners here do, regardless of how much else you may or may not have in common, and you wind up with the kind of community nearly all of us seek, whether we know it or not.
Cherry Lawn Community Gardens connect the old and young as families come together across generations to carry a plot (and so much more!) forward for an aging or ailing relative challenged to conjure the bending, stooping and pretzeling of body parts necessary to keep the weeds back, prune the perennials, plant the annuals and tend it all.
The Gardens are glue for dual-working parents in demanding professional jobs, like the couple who carved out a reading nook beneath a charming arbor amidst the plants for their four young children—a place for memorable, sustaining time together.
Allison Hansen and her two-year-old Hadley, second and third generation community gardeners
It is a place where people of all ages from opposite ends of town who would not otherwise meet bond over the best ways to hold weeds at bay, fertilize (as long as it’s organic—that’s all that’s allowed in the Gardens) and coax along all manner of things, as well as share plants. It is a place to grow things when there’s too much shade in your own yard, not enough space, or you have no yard.
Established by the Garden Club of Darien in the early ‘70s on town-owned property in the northwestern part of Cherry Lawn Park, the community gardens became a town program when the Club relinquished it in 1975 to a team of volunteers who see to all the chores required to keep the Gardens running smoothly. They have run it autonomously under the town’s umbrella since then. Gardeners pay $30 annually to the town for water, electricity and some other administrative support. They do the rest.
A Coordinating Committee led by Dorothy Shergalis, who has been president since 2011 and worked a plot since shortly after moving to Darien in 1977, sits atop it all. The other members of this leadership group are Jim Brewer – vice president, Tricia Conley – secretary and Elaine Scott – treasurer.
“We have a wonderful committee,” said Dorothy.
Under this group, there’s a boss of wheelbarrows and carts, others for hoses; still others see to the fountain generously installed for a nominal fee by Fox Lane Builders to keep the birds away from the tomatoes in droughts and happily hydrated in any weather. It was a volunteer (Pam Shear) who painted the beautiful sign over the entrance to the gardens. There’s a volunteer in charge of the fence that surrounds the approximately .8 of an acre on which the plots are staked out, another for the plots, someone else for the shed in which shared tools are kept, one for chips and mulch and a chief of even the bulletin board.
Every gardener also participates in a clean-up day each year and is responsible throughout the growing season for keeping the weeds down on the pathways to the north and east of their plot. They must start their garden by the middle of May, put it to bed by the end of October and keep weeds to 25% or less of their garden. There are inspections.
Despite the rules, “It’s very informal here,” insists Dorothy, as it can be only when everyone pitches in with such a shared willingness to do their part as they do at these Gardens.
While there are 40 people currently on a wait list for gardens, plots do occasionally turn over—four last year, though some years it’s only one.
The gardeners here plant raspberries (more than 100 bushes in one garden alone!) and rhubarb, sweet peas and squash, broccoli, romaine tomatoes and basil, poppies, peonies, zinnias, loofah and more, with each garden as unique as the grower behind it.
“That’s the joy of gardening here,” said Dorothy. “It’s not uniform. You can do your own thing. It’s not bureaucratic. There’s no formula,” she added.
The Gardens mark time with connectivity and continuity, as the five rosebushes in Dorothy’s garden so clearly attest. There’s one for each of her grandchildren—now ages 11 to 19, born of her three children who grew up in Darien as Dorothy cultivated her plot in Cherry Lawn. The variation, beauty and permanence of these Gardens are enough to make even the brownest thumb itch—this place to connect, to create, to belong …with many ways to grow.
To learn more about the Gardens, visit darienct.gov/1534/Cherry-Lawn-Community-Gardens.
