July 2009

Aaron and our new outdoor commune:
“Sometimes the work stops”

Photos by Diana Kohn

Garden guru Aaron Lavellee nets in his plants to keep deer out.

Aaron Lavallee saw the pillaging as soon as he walked up to Takoma Park’s new community garden on a Sunday morning in June. Green orbs that had been hanging in plain view the day before on tomato and tomatillo plants were missing, snipped off.

“Deer,” he said resignedly. They had nosed under the bird netting Aaron had affixed as a canopy to thwart them. “They know all our tricks.”

He reattached the netting to bamboo stanchions in his corner plot and then began touring the full stretch of eggplants, Swiss chard, peppers, nasturtiums and assorted other vegetables and flowers that about 40 gardeners are tending on a public lot in the Pinecrest neighborhood.

There were more deer tracks but no evidence of more feeding. “Guess they’re pretty selective,” he said. It appeared the deer had singled out his plot because of the prime pickings. That his plants were the only ones with recognizable fruits, advancing faster than anyone else’s, was fitting. Aaron is the sage of this garden, the dispenser of old-time advice at the age of 29.

Annie Preston, her dad Jim, and Aaron commune with nature.

He lives around the corner, on Eastern Avenue. He moved to town 18 months ago to pursue a master’s degree in communications at George Washington, coming from New Hampshire, where he made a hobby of growing edibles in public settings.

Students of higher learning might be a dime a dozen around here, but someone with credentials as a community gardener is a much rarer find because, since colonial days, community gardens have been virtually unheard of in Montgomery County.

Enter Valerie Ervin, who represents Takoma Park and Silver Spring on the County Council, and who earlier this year was able to persuade the County parks department to turn over the sloping Pinecrest property, vacant for years, to land-deprived people willing to get their hands dirty for the sake of fresh food. Valerie took notice of Aaron at a public gathering in April. “You have to know your stuff to get from A-to-Z in a garden, and he knows his stuff,” she said. And so he was asked to be the go-to guy for other gardeners, most of them novices.

The small allotment of land, less than an acre divided into sections about the size of a dining room, ten feet by twenty, puts a premium on technique.
Aaron built five-foot-high obelisks out of bamboo so his heirloom squash can climb vertically. He had seen clusters of bamboo on parkland, and, sure enough, parks rangers were happy to give carte blanche to him and as many hands as he could muster. “A crew of us went out with serrated saws and went at it,” he said.

Annie and Aaron commune with vegetables and each other.

There was plenty of bamboo to share with his gardening partners who made poles for beans and makeshift fences (to keep out their own toddlers) and four-square towers. They also made low barriers out of chunks of concrete, excavated during the tilling phase, to detour rains that had been steadily sloshing through.

The rains were primarily a blessing although they did leave a helter-skelter of wood chips from walnut trees chain-sawed during the clearing phase.

Everything happened one-two-three. The walnuts had to go because their root systems contain the toxin juglone. Next the grass and weeds were churned over (and debris from an old house brought to the surface) by a disk-tiller, an implement of the prairie. A black bulbous-looking plastic cistern was delivered on a flat-bed truck, and, tapping into a fire hydrant, a worker filled it with water for the dry heat ahead. Another truck brought in several cubic yards of leaf mulch.
“Originally we were going to mix in the mulch through the whole garden with the tiller, but some of the gardeners are vegan, and we couldn’t guarantee the mulch is free of all animal matter,” Aaron explained.

Those who wanted mulch had to dig it in with shovels, but better that than sticking seeds or seedlings directly into the clay soil. Mindful of how hard Mother Earth can get, one gardener was attempting, experimentally, to bypass her. He had placed seed potatoes atop the ground and covered them with layers of straw. If all goes according to plan, he will remove the straw in fall and scoop up his crop. “He got the idea somewhere on Google.”

At the mulch pile, substantially depleted, Annie Preston was scraping the blackened, crumbly leaves into a bucket for her father Jim’s plot at the top of the slope. He was pulling weeds.

“It’s probably going to be more Annie’s garden than mine,” Jim said amiably. “She’s the farmer in the family.” After graduating from high school last spring, Annie spent several months in New Zealand apprenticing at organic farms.

Aaron sauntered over to chat. “I’ve met more people in the past month than in all the time I’ve lived here,” he said. “Sometimes the work stops, and we just stand around and talk.” Once the growing season is over he hopes to gather the gang together for a finger-licking harvest party.

A picnic table is already at the site, courtesy of the parks department. Aaron has been impressed by the generosity and alacrity of the official organizers. While Valerie pushed county bureaucrats into gear – “she definitely does not operate at government speed” – Mayor Bruce Williams and Third Ward rep Dan Robinson worked the city end. Mike Welch, the city gardener, brought over irises and other flowers. To replace the walnuts a budding orchard of pear, apple and fig trees was planted, and a blueberry patch.

A few weeks after breaking ground the place had the look of an oasis. “There’s just one thing,” Aaron said with a small hint of impatience.

“Yeah, what’s the plan?” Annie asked.

“Well, they said it’ll be soon, very soon, maybe next week. They’re supposed to build us a split-rail fence and top it with black netting, pretty high up, so the deer can’t jump over.”

Donna: new on Council, but not for long

The obvious question came up on July 6 at the swearing-in of Donna Victoria to serve as the Ward Six rep on the City Council. Why is she willing to put term limits on herself?

Donna, who moved to Takoma Park with her husband Chris in 1992, is the consummate down-to-earth activist. She’s an officer in the New Hampshire Gardens Citizens Association and a PTA officer at Rolling Terrace, where their two children are in Spanish immersion. She does mustard pulls in Sligo Creek. She gets sweaty fixing up playgrounds and parks.

“You want something done in that neighborhood, ask Donna,” said Mayor Bruce Williams, singing her praises.

But under the conditions to which Donna agreed she will be in office only six months, finishing up the 2007-2009 term of Doug Barry, who moved with his family across the District line in May. In the November election she will step aside and leave the field to others.

Next year, she explained, she will be too busy for the local political life. She is a pollster in her day job, and her time will go to state and national candidates in the 2010 elections. Then, too, Donna has never seen herself as a politician at any level. “That’s not who I am,” she has always said – except for right now.