Another Garden Grows In Newhallville

Rows upon rows of tomatoes, kale, radishes, zucchini, eggplant, spinach, basil, and Brussels sprouts have sprouted atop the site of a former dilapidated church building on Shelton Avenue — as part of Newhallville’s newest community garden.

That garden is called the ​“Newhallville STREET Garden.” It sits on 0.8 acres of land at the corner of Shelton and Ivy.

A wooden sign at the garden’s entrance states that the land was donated by Mt. Zion SDA Church, a Hamden-based congregation that has owned that lot for decades. In recent years, the property has been home to a vacant former community center with a crumbling roof and broken windows.

That building has been demolished — and in its place has grown a garden.

On Sunday, UConn professor Stacy Maddern showed off how the formerly blighted lot has been beautified and put to good use as a haven for locally grown vegetables.

Maddern is the garden manager at the new plot. Harris & Tucker School director Kim Harris and her Newhallville preschool students are the visionaries behind the effort. Those students will be taking the lead in getting the word out, and the food out, to Newhallville neighbors in need of fresh produce. 

In addition to Maddern and Harris, key movers and shakers behind the new garden include Carlota Clark, Elizabeth Knight, Stephen Cremin-Endes, Thomas Bonitz, and Adam Rawlings.

“It’s about building relationships in our community,” Harris said about this new garden. The young students who will tend to this plot under Maddern’s leadership are from the neighborhood. They in turn will be charged with helping distribute the food — to food pantries and directly to the homes of seniors — elsewhere in Newhallville. 

“It’s not just about gardening,” Harris added. It’s about trying to answer the question: ​“How do we really inspire possibility” in Newhallville?

Maddern said he’s been laying the groundwork for this garden for a number of months, including by spreading woodchips and building eight-inch ​“hugel mounds” so that veggies can take root far from the underlying lot’s lead-contaminated soil.

Sunday served as a sort of debut for the garden, as Harris included the plot as a top on the first annual ​“Taste of Newhallville Community Festival.” Other stops included the Inspire Your Way Center at 324 Shelton Ave., the Learning Corridor on the Farmington Canal Trail at Shelton Avenue and Hazel Street, the Harris & Tucker School at Newhall Street and Goodrich Street, and ​“The Adventure Park at Spurle Space” on Shepard Street.

Steffon Miller paused by the new Shelton-Ivy garden, his phone out as he video-recorded the transformed lot. He said he’s in support of ​“anything that does something to revitalize the community.” He praised this newest community garden alongside existing agricultural greenspaces on Starr Street and a block south on Shelton.

This is ​“awesome,” longtime Newhallville resident David Chambers said as he sat behind the controls of a DJ table in the corner of the garden. He said he was playing some jazz — including Euge Groove’s ​“Just My Imagination” — to help draw attention to the verdant new addition to the neighborhood.

“Community support. That’s all it needs” to thrive, said fellow Newhallville resident Brother Born, as he also stopped to admire the garden from the Shelton sidewalk.

Former Newhallville Alder Delphine Clyburn also praised the garden, as she took a horticulture lesson from Doreen Abubakar a block away at the UrbanScapes Native Plant Nursery across the street from the Learning Corridor.

“I think it’s awesome,” Clyburn said about the new garden. ​“Now the children are learning about how food is grown.”