The future is now at Brentwood Farms Community Garden

   I saw the coolest thing I’ve ever seen in Portland and with the past staring me right in face, I saw the future. Upon leaving Evergreen Cemetery via Brentwood Avenue Sunday, I stumbled upon the Brentwood Farms Community Garden.

   The garden was a like a photo straight out of the history books. There was new fence built of bark-on posts, a scarecrow, two tipi-like structures fashioned from sticks stood at either end of the entrance and the pathways were topped in rough tree bark. It reminded me of the recreated gardens at Plymouth Plantation or Sturbridge.

   The garden was filled with people young and old. Community members were gardening together and having a seemingly good time doing it. The scene was all too perfect, and an example of exactly what needs to be happening on unused city-owned property – food production.

   The garden is located on a piece of land that is technically part of Evergreen Cemetery. Unused for many years, some very ambitious people from the Deering Center Neighborhood Association banded together to create a community garden where families would be able to grow their own food. The garden was established last year and quickly filled up. Seventy-five families, all paying a yearly maintenance fee of $35 per year have completely filled the allocated space, with many more on a waiting list. The families that were lucky enough to get a plot have done a great job cultivating their crops, with every bed weeded and sprouting one thing or another.

   You would think that with food prices soaring and an uncertain future for the agro-business that uses expensive and soon-to-be scarce fuels to not only fertilize but to transport food, that anyone in their right mind would consider this garden to be nothing but a good thing. As it turns out, you’d be wrong.

   I discovered that the garden was not alone when it came to having a group of volunteers who were passionate about the 2 acre parcel. It seems that Evergreen Cemetery also has an organization, friends if you will, that look out for they consider the best interests of the city-run treasure. They call themselves The Friends of Evergreen Cemetery.

   It seems that once the garden started to take off last year, the ‘friends’ took exception to the garden using abutting property that was slated for their “precious.” A plan was drafted to incorporate the land into the cemetery. It’s a great looking plan, too. There are evergreen plantings with asphalt sidewalks that swerve through the whole parcel. Basically, if you love Evergreen Cemetery like I do, you’d love what you’d see. Sadly, the plan has the same positive economic outlook as the city. We’re rapidly approaching a time where we can’t afford to have acres of unproductive lawn and the associated maintenance costs.

   A meeting held early last month that included the Deering Center folks, the friends and the Public Services department read like a cat fight. The first portion of the meeting was spent trying to get everyone to agree to not go to the media, and then flip flopping in the name of transparency. It was then decided that the friends should take all information regarding their plan offline until a later time – which they tried to do, although you can still see it. But the thing that was the most telling thing about the meeting was the assertion by the friends that “since the 1855 Howe Plan; all of Evergreen has been developed in parcels, in part, as the city aggregated land to expand Evergreen. So, historically, the Brentwood Master (the friends’) Plan is entirely consistent with established city practice.”

   In other words, the friends are saying “this is the way we’ve always done it.” But in the future, the way we’ve always done it isn’t going to work. The Deering Center Neighborhood Association deserves the support of the city and all of us for the work they’ve done in building community with a realistic nod to that future – a future that will necessitate the need for locally grown food. You’ll even have a chance to voice that support in person this Saturday, June 11, when the Brentwood Farms Community Garden will have an open house for us to come see what they’ve accomplished. The open house starts at 10am.

   See you there.