Monmouth Community Garden

After visiting Monmouth’s Community Garden today, two things struck me- the first being the sense of community I both saw and felt, and the second being the effort that has been put into the garden since its opening in 2009. When Shawn Ferard, an anthropologist from Villanova decided to study his Masters in Social Work at Monmouth, I am sure that creating a community garden was not his initial intent. Yet after eight years and over fourteen thousand pounds of produce donated to various organizations in the community, his community garden is still a huge success.

As we watched from afar, three community garden members were hard at work in their plots of land they each took care of. The director of the garden described in detail how each member pays thirty dollars for their own private plot and in return they also have to care for an equal plot to be donated. In addition, I found it so intriguing that they maintain a pollinator garden to keep the bees working. Since there have been many environmental concerns with the disappearance of the honey bees, the fact that this garden right outside of campus is making an effort to keep up the population in the area is really amazing. This plot of

In one year alone, the garden rakes up a whopping one thousand three-hundred-dollar water bill. Yet, even when very minimal people garden in the winter the water pump still costs the gardener’s money. They have installed a deer fence, a rodent blocker, have had several picnic tables donated by TKE (a local fraternity on campus), and use no pesticides in any of their gardening, it appears to me the pride everyone has in this community garden. These gardeners and volunteers take time out of their own busy days to keep and maintain not only their own gardens, but the fresh food to be donated to the charitable organizations that rarely ever have anything besides canned