Reconnecting Families breaks ground on a special kind of community garden.
by Amy Selby and Melanie Crissey
Marietta has a long-standing love affair with gardens. A quick tour of Cherokee Street, Church Street and Whitlock Avenue—each brimming with lush rhododendrons, sweet smelling magnolias and gardenias, and the brightly colored puffs of hydrangeas—tells you folks know their way around the gardening shed.
Just up the road from Glover Park, at the intersection of Lemon and Hunt Streets, a community garden has taken root. But this garden isn’t just any garden. It is a healing garden. One where more than just flowers grow.
Last fall, Debbie Ponder, Executive Director of Reconnecting Families and self-admitted brown thumb, began cultivating two large patches of earth with a vision of a bountiful harvest. These once abandoned lots are now the Reconnecting Our Roots Community Garden, a garden dedicated to help children and families lead drug-free lives.
As you enter the garden’s gates, the serenity of the space draws you in. It is blissfully quiet despite its proximity to the hustle and bustle of the Marietta Square. Inside are raised beds with squash ready to pick, jalapenos, carrots, banana peppers, and row upon row of tomato plants. Looking around at the wooden boxes of overflowing herbs, the large gazebo, and the shaded picnic tables, it’s hard to imagine that this idyllic space was an empty lot this time last year.
The garden has received a warm welcome from the community. The project’s largest donor, Zion Baptist Church, donated the two plots of land to Reconnecting Families. An Alpharetta branch of BB&T donated special garden beds for a children’s garden, decorative benches, and blueberry bushes. The Rotary Club of Marietta donated and installed a storage shed. The garden has also received grants from the Cobb Community Foundation, Food Well Alliance, the Cobb EMC Community Foundation and the support of the Cobb County Extension and Leadership Cobb.
Beyond garnering support from local businesses and foundations, the garden gives back a joyful harvest to the neighboring community. With the help of five master gardeners who mentor the garden’s twenty beds, participants of the Family Dependency Treatment Court are invited to enjoy the garden while earning community service. Some neighbors and volunteers work early in the garden to pull weeds in exchange for small shares of overgrown herbs and vegetables. Most clippings go to the Treatment Court to share with mothers and families there. But the beautiful bounty of soil tilled pales next to the garden’s greater purpose. Here is a place to restore bonds, to embrace new friends, and to dig out all the pesky shoots to make room for fruitful vines. For treatment court participants managing sobriety, the garden offers simplicity and respite from challenges outside the gates.
What is truly special about this garden is how kind and supportive everyone is with one another. When a smaller boy gets tired from carrying a shovel as long as he is tall, an older kid runs over to help. When one especially energetic boy takes off running with a pair of garden shears in his hands, every mother in line-of-sight collectively jumps to call out, “Oooh – no running with those!” and they all smile together when the boy slows to a walking pace. This is family. This is community. This is the garden.
There are sticks to clear from the ground, dirt and hay to move, and floors of the shed to be swept. Sticky, sweet basil bushes require trimming and shiny banana peppers need to be picked. It’s hard work, yes, but it’s rewarding. One particularly strong girl puts all of her weight into her trowel, digging around a stubborn plant. Noticing her theatrical approach to weeding, a young woman supervising laughs, “What are you doing?” “I want to get down to the roots!” says the girl, as she leans left and right, wedging her shovel into the mulch. And getting down to the roots, to the heart and soul of growth and life, is what this garden is all about.
Reconnecting Our Roots Community Garden is located at 271 Lemon Street in Marietta, GA
Learn more about the garden online: reconnectingfamilies.org/garden
Photography by Emily Ryals