Tinton Falls plans a community garden

Tinton Falls plans a community garden
Public meeting on garden set for July 9 at 7 p.m.
BY KENNY WALTER Staff Writer

TINTON FALLS — The seeds for a community garden are being planted in Tinton Falls, where planning got underway last week.

The borough's Environmental Commission held an exploratory meeting on June 16 at Borough Hall to discuss the possibility of creating a community garden at the historic Crawford House on Tinton Avenue

Environmental Commission Chairman Jonathon Cohen, commission member Jeffrey King, Historic Preservation Commission Chairwoman Stacey Slowinski, and Councilman Andy Mayer were among those who attended the meeting.

Cohen said the Crawford House, which is borough property, is the proposed site for a community garden, adding that other sites may follow.

"We could be doing it at more than one place," Cohen said.

The June 16 meeting was a brainstorming session at which resident Teresa Maltz was unofficially named to lead the community garden committee, which for the time being is an ad-hoc committee.

"It won't be a formal committee," Cohen said. "It is just an activity we are going to do."

Many different ideas for the type of community garden were discussed during the meeting.

"It can have different purposes," Maltz said. "You can have a historical garden, you can have a victory garden or you can have a kid's garden.

"You can have a combination of them all," Maltz added.

The group's tentative plan is to meet once or twice a month over the summer and have a formal plan in place in time for the annual Tinton Falls Community Day, which is scheduled for Sept. 26.

"So maybe by Community Day we can have a vision and plan laid out," Mayer said.

One of the main reasons the group wants to pursue the idea is that the community garden could become a meeting place within the borough.

"Basically, it's a place where people gather," Maltz said. "It will bring the community together.

"We have a lot of ball fields in this town but we don't really have a place where we can gather and have an intergenerational component," she added. "We need to have something that's going to bring us together."

Another idea discussed at the meeting was the possibility of holding farmer's markets at the Crawford House during the summer to try to drum up some revenues to get the community garden started.

"We can have a couple of weekends of farmer's markets at the Crawford House," Cohen said. "The profits from that could help offset the costs."

"A little seed money," Mayer added.

Maltz cited the website, www.communitygarden. org, as a helpful tool in getting started with the community garden.

She listed nine steps the website advised groups to take in order to start the community garden.

These include: form a planning committee; choose a site; plan and develop the site; organize a garden; secure insurance; set up a new gardening organization; organizational considerations/by-laws; how to manage the garden; troubleshooting.

A possible problem that was discussed was how to deal with animals that would be attracted to the garden to forage.

"I think we have to have a critter situation," Slowinski said. "There are serious groundhogs and I'm sure there are deer. So we have to have some critter strategies."

Cohen acknowledged that it may be too late to harvest this year and that the summer will be spent more likely as a planning time for next year's growing season.

The next meeting, which will be open to the public, is currently scheduled for July 9 at 7 p.m. at the Crawford House on Tinton Avenue.

Contact Kenny Walter at

kwalter@gmnews.com.


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