Beaufort again working to start community garden

An effort is again underway in Beaufort to start a community garden that supporters hope serves several purposes.

A garden in Southside Park could provide fresh food for those in need, teach children and adults how to grow their own food, and raise awareness for a little-known park neighboring many of the city’s residents in the Mossy Oaks area. The 40-acre park off of Southside Boulevard is city-owned property once home to a Beaufort-Jasper Water and Sewer Authority plant.

Its uses are limited by a covenant to passive uses, and a garden has long been part of the plan for how to use the space. But the budget for the park is limited.

Some area residents who comprise Friends of Southside Park have applied via the city for a grant to pay for supplies for the project. The Seeds of Change grants are $10,000 or $20,000 and include an online voting component open through April 18.

The project has the support of the city’s parks and tree board, city landscape architect Liza Hill, and has secured an agreement from a landscape architect to design and build the garden, said Gail Westerfield, who is heading up the effort for Friends of Southside Park.

Because of the land’s past use, the soil isn’t suitable for growing, so raised beds will have to be used. Building the beds could teach people how to grow in unsuitable places, Westerfield said.

“Everything we’ve encountered so far we think is an obstacle has turned into something cool,” she said.

Produce from the garden could go to area nonprofits, and nearby Mossy Oaks Elementary School has expressed interested in helping, Westerfield said.

School children and older residents will be invited to participate, and master gardeners and landscape architects could offer workshops, she added.

This isn’t the city’s first attempt at a community garden.

A garden downtown in the city’ Northwest Quadrant neighborhood included 40 plots and the participation of about 25 families, said Clemson Extension’s Laura Lee Rose, who helped with the project.

The garden had good participation but didn’t find another site when the property was sold after about a year, Rose said.

Pigeon Point proved too shady and had other issues, though Southside Park might have worked if it had been presented, she said.

Rose noted there are multiple ways to structure a community garden, either to provide for an area food bank or similar nonprofit, to plant large quantities of the same foods and share the product, or by designing plots for individual families.

The downtown garden included multiple plots, and Beaufort Elementary School students used the garden as a teaching tool.

Rose prefers a garden grown together with shared resources. The garden can become a multigenerational project, she said.

“We learn from each other,” said Rose, who lives on St. Helena Island and teaches a local master gardener class. “We had older families and young families — children and all — doing it, too.”

The park, off of Southside Boulvard near Battery Creek Road, isn’t completely barren.

Hill and an area youth leadership group planted tree seedlings to start a city tree farm last year. Fencing is up for a dog park, and walking paths are in the works.

The city decided a Beaufort County resident’s plan last year to create an urban farm, replete with chickens and fish, didn’t fit within the allowed uses for the property.

Westerfield, a freelance writer and editor who keeps minutes for city meetings, often hears from people who don’t know where the park is.

A friend who recently drove by the park told Westerfield the park “looks so sad.”

“We’re trying to make it happy,” she said. “I think it could be really beautiful over there.”

This story was originally published April 8, 2016 at 4:49 PM with the headline "Beaufort again working to start community garden."