Helping Hands Whip Community Garden Into Shape

Instead of playing outside with friends, Eric Davies spent most of his summer gardening around New Haven — sawing down invasive autumn olive trees and heaving wheelbarrows full of dirt.

Davies and two other students served as support staff for the women who garden at Ann Street Community Garden, lending sturdy arms and legs to the heavy lifting and construction projects.

Its gardeners, affectionately called ​“The Golden Girls,” have green thumbs to coax plants to sprout, but arthritic knees that make it hard to bend or kneel. The students knelt and dug for them.

The Ann Street Garden makeover was part of a larger effort by Hill North’s community management team to fix up its neighborhood’s gardens, with $10,000 from the city’s anti-blight agency, the Livable City Initiative. Earlier this summer, coordinated by the New Haven Land Trust, teams of students built 10 raised beds, so gardeners could plant from a seated position.

For the past five weeks, Davies, D’Erica Suggs and Xavier Hernandez (pictured at top of story) have helped finish that makeover, filling the garden beds with soil and spreading wood chips over the surrounding dirt. Six students total participated in the program, but only three were consistent workers, Morgan Aery, their supervisor at the Land Trust.

“We enjoyed every bit of it,” said Almeta Hudson, the lead gardener at Ann Street.

Sound School student Davies volunteered because he needed to complete community service requirements for school. Hillhouse High School seniors Suggs and Hernandez were paid through the city’s Youth @ Work program, which places students in jobs around New Haven.

The three of them cleared weeds in other city green spaces, including Long Wharf and the garden at senior housing complex Casa Otonal.

Davies enjoyed the Long Wharf project the most. ​“I liked the view,” he said. A Boy Scout going on Eagle Scout, he has done a lot of work outdoors. Now, he can recognize many invasive plants, including the perennial Oriental bittersweet and tall, aromatic mugwort.

“We almost cleared a fourth of an acre” at Long Wharf, Hernandez said. ​“It was hard.”

Hernandez and Suggs were surprised that they didn’t know each other before this summer, despite the fact that they attend the same high school.

“Golden Girl” Martha Henderson (pictured, harvested tomatoes in hand) lives a couple of blocks away from the Ann Street Garden and has been working there for 30 years. These students’ help was ​“the best job we received,” she said.

Sometimes others from the neighborhood help them out with the tougher jobs, including ​“my sons if you catch them. If they’re not working,” she said.