The History of the Community Garden From the early days of The Georgia Club there has been a sizable portion of property designated for a garden and dog park. As planned both areas have offered an opportunity to build friendships through common interests. While these areas have over time contributed to that goal, the garden in particular was an underserved and modestly used asset. It seems that the location lacked adequate sunlight, good access to water, and the structure of the garden was undersized and not funded properly to serve our growing community.
The Vision: In the past, many residents felt that they would be interested in taking part in a gardening effort; unfortunately, the resources were not available for making a project of this size come to fruition. This changed in the fall of last year when Bill Branan began discussing the possibility of developing a garden that would be both beautiful and functionally welcoming to our community. Last fall, Bill began to initiate conversations during periodic gatherings in the clubhouse, at the fire pit and essentially wherever there were people to talk about creating a new garden effort.
What Bill soon realized was that the interest was beyond what he had anticipated and if this garden expansion was ever to happen, there was a need to begin to recruit a team and encourage the club to support the effort. As the conversations advanced, people showed up to help. The first to join in to shape the Community Garden vision was Doug Turner. Between these two Bent Pine Community residents, a basic set of objectives were established:
- Develop a beautiful and highly functional garden that would be a welcome addition to TGC.
- Accommodate a growing group of residents from all over the club, that would enjoy quality time spent gardening, socializing and participating in healthy outdoor activities.
- Find funding support for the effort that would reduce the sizeable start up investment that would be borne by individuals.
- Develop self- funded efforts for support structure, education and ultimately sharing the fruit of the garden with others.
Building Momentum: Armed with the above vision, Doug visited with HOA president Dave Venghaus who found the idea very appealing. In hearing of the community’s enthusiasm, Dave arranged a meeting with the club leadership and subsequently the club owners. Again the support was evident, but there were many missing parts to the plan. Beyond a fairly sizable budget for repositioning the dog park, building fencing, and structuring plans to build out 25-30 gardening beds, it became evident to all that if we set out to do the project, that it was most important to do the job right.
It was important to note that neither Doug or Bill had any real hands-on development experience, so Keith Anderson’s offer of support was very welcoming. Keith outlined how to survey the property, arrange fill, level the site location and have a landscape design that would truly be an enhancement to the area. Dave Venghaus wanted to incorporate an even larger land area and include more beds to accommodate the anticipated community interest. Buy-in by these key individuals led to HOA and Club ownership financial support and access to additional development, landscaping, and skilled crew personnel and equipment that had not been built into the original budget estimate.
The Volunteers Show Up: In parallel with these discussions, others came forward expressing an interest in helping. GA Nasworthy and his son offered the talent and commercial experience of Nasworthy Landscaping to plumb and complete the critical irrigation and timed watering system. Tim Simpson of Bestco Steel Supply offered to engineer and fabricate hundreds of steel support pieces to make the garden beds both stable and easy to construct. Dean Koehn offered help to prepare the steel for assembly. Over 2000 board feet of 2” by 10” by 12’ pine was delivered and a volunteer crew cut the boards to size, ready for assembly.
The Real Work Begins: Not wanting to miss out on this garden season, the team set a completion target date of mid-April. A group of talented individuals worked on an accelerated plan. Keith Anderson from the Development Office, performed the civil engineering of the site over a weekend and further continued to serve as a conduit to secure equipment and crews to help with grading on short notice. TGC’s landscape architect was challenged to put together a plan to enhance the beauty and functionality of the design; he completed this within a week. Meanwhile Doug, working with John McMullen of TGC Golf Course Operations, arranged the dog park move, soil and fencing bids, and equipment to move material. Doug also rallied an army of men and women from several TGC communities to assemble 50 -12’ by 4’ raised garden beds, deploy thicknesses of cardboard to help tamp down weeds, move dump truck loads of garden material, as well as mulch for the beds and walkways.
That Brings Us to April of 2019: The Community Garden represents a truly amazing assembly of talent, creativity, manpower and community spirit that has resulted in an asset for all to enjoy. Today, all forty-nine plots are now in use with an area of the garden dedicated for use by Chef Ray to grow ‘farm to table’ vegetables and herbs for the Club restaurant. A modest fee structure is in place to cover water and event costs. The majority of the communities within TGC are represented in either having a role in building out the garden, or signing up to maintain a plot.
Wholesome Vegetables and Herbs, Organically Grown: We have a commitment to an all-organic gardening and maintenance program. We have general agreement to self-police and maintain a healthy garden using all-natural means to eliminate unwanted insects and utilize natural gardening amendments.
At present with the early signs of growth, our garden is filled with a wide variety of plantings. Among this year’s crops are several tomato varieties, a wide variety of peppers, okra, swiss chard, squash, eggplant, strawberries, horseradish, cucumbers and corn. To help with plant pollination, Master Gardner Debbie Cassady has installed an array of flowering pollinators at the garden center, with many more in the plan for surrounding the garden.
Planning for the Future: In the near future, we will build a common community tool shed to store our tools and materials, offer a bulletin board for posting community events and provide key information for gardeners. We are planning a gazebo adjacent to the garden for meetings and to serve as sun protection when you elect to sit a spell.
Discussions are taking place about the possibility of various plantings to beautify the front of the garden as well as installing off-street parking for golf carts. We are in discussions regarding how to handle off-street parking.
Education is an important element of gardening success and community enrichment. In that regard, we are fortunate to have a few master gardeners in the community, and we have asked Cyndi Ball of the Lazy B Farm in Statham to conduct periodic classes that will be open to the community.
The garden is open seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day, and we hope to see you soon! Huge thanks to everyone who helped build a Community Garden that we can all be proud of!
If you have any questions, please contact Bill Branan at bkbranan@comcast.net.