Posted on Sun, Jun. 27, 2010
Trent Gaines has been tending neat rows of sweet peas and peppers, corn and kale, in Haverford College's community garden for 52 years.
At 78, he knows exactly when he's going to hang up his tiller - after harvesting his last sweet potato and pumpkin in the fall of 2012.
"It's sad to see it go, but I'm getting old, too," said the retired postal worker from Ardmore.
The decision is not entirely his own. Haverford College has set an end date for its historic community garden.
No one is sure when the plot sprouted up. The college says 50 years ago, but according to some of the old-timers, it harks back to the Great Depression and was a Victory Garden during World War II.
But in 2013, the elite Quaker college will team up with another upper-crust Main Line institution, Merion Golf Club, to get ready for one of the biggest sporting events in the country, the U.S. Open.
Merion will host the tournament, but the off-the-links action will be at Haverford, which will rent out a portion of its 200-acre campus for corporate sponsors.
Instead of fruits and vegetables, hospitality tents will rise from the garden's fertile soil.
"The Open financially could not function if it did not have corporate sponsors," said Dick Wynn, the college's chief financial officer, who declined to disclose financial arrangements.
For those toiling below the ivory towers, the decision hurts.
"It's very sad," said groundskeeper Claudia Kent, standing by the garden, a peaceful oasis ringed by trees that provide a shady place to rest. "I like the gardeners. And they like it down there."
Community gardens have never been more popular, according to the American Community Gardening Association, citing the example set by Michelle Obama, who started a garden at the White House to encourage healthier eating.
That's nothing new to the Haverford gardeners, many of them retirees from working-class neighborhoods who have been feeding their families for years with the food they grew. At one time, the garden was more like a micro-farm, with 160 plots spread across several acres, but as the college expanded it was reduced to just 20.
The dozen or so gardeners who are left say they aren't angry about being booted out for high-paying customers.
"In 52 years, the college has been very cooperative with us," Gaines said on a soupy morning this month.
He was planting his usual bonanza of sweet potatoes - 1,200 plants, a crop that family and friends relish - when an old friend showed up.
"Get your work clothes on and your tools out," Gaines joked when he saw former groundskeeper - and gardener - Carmen Ianieri. "Hey, Carmen, when did you start working here?"
"Before you were born," replied a laughing Ianieri, 74, who retired in 2002 after 46 years at the college.
He said he had grown enough to feed his family of seven.
For these men, when the garden goes, a bit of paradise will be gone from their lives.
"I love it," said Steve Handy, 63, one of the youngsters and a former supervisor in Lower Merion's public works department, holding a stalk of broccoli that he had just picked. "I wouldn't trade it for anything. I look forward to coming up here every day."
So does 85-year-old Tim Jennings of Philadelphia. And James Pollard Jr., whose father, a well-known minister from Zion Baptist Church in Ardmore, has been digging in this soil for decades.
"I've been out here since I've been able to walk," said the younger Pollard, 38. "My brothers and I hated it growing up. Hated it. But now I love it."
He got his own plot three years ago "because I wanted to plant more than corn, squash, and beets," he said, getting a big laugh from the rest of the gang, who know his father well.
The U.S. Open will take place in mid-June 2013, but organizers will install temporary stone roads on Haverford's campus the previous fall.
The tents will take up five acres.
Merion, a long drive across Haverford Avenue from the college, doesn't have enough room, said Wynn, the college financial officer.
As part of the deal, Haverford will get its own tent and 100 tickets to the Open.
Golf fans who had been thinking of writing a big check to the school might want to get on that now. The tickets probably will go to "people who play golf and are interested in the college," Wynn said.
After the Open, Haverford may construct up to six new buildings, so the garden will not be back.
The gardeners were told they could move to Old Haverford Friends Meeting's garden.
Some were quick to snap up plots, but they are a third the size of Haverford's.
"I get done there in 20 minutes," said Handy, who easily spends five hours a day at the old garden.
He grows so much he can't eat it all.
It's a point of pride for many that they don't sell anything. If he has too much, Handy said, he puts up a table at his church and asks for a donation for his Boy Scout troop.
But it's easier just to give it away.
"If somebody's walking by and wants some lettuce," he said, "I give it to them."
Contact staff writer Kathy Boccella at 610-313-8123 or [email protected].
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