By Deborah Gardner , Special to JTNews
It came from mud. It took on a life of its own. It grew enormous, bigger than anyone expected, possibly changing its community irrevocably.
It is not a golem.
It’s the brand-new Kesher Community Garden at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island. And on June 11, shortly before the start of Shabbat, dozens of community members and volunteers gathered in the garden pathways, amid already-blooming flowers and ambitious vegetable starts, for speeches, a little noshing, a shehecheyanu, and the garden’s official launch.
The idea for a garden is distinctly — if not exclusively — Jewish. Even the Talmud (Kedoshim 4:12) says, “It is forbidden to live in a town which has no garden or greenery.”
The idea of caring for the earth, or tikkun olam, resonates across all sectors of Judaism, notes Shannon Cruzen, the SJCC’s early childhood pedagogical coordinator. And since the community center attracts people from all across the Jewish spectrum, and even some from outside of it, there are benefits to something that resonates widely.
Kesher means “connection” in Hebrew, and the SJCC staff, volunteers, and community members who created the garden hope connections — to other people and to the Earth — will make up the garden’s most sizeable harvest.
The space reflects this goal. The large mandala-shaped garden, located adjacent to the JCC’s building, features sixteen P-patch-style individual and family garden plots, eight learning garden beds, a shed with tools and educational materials, a fire pit, and soon a worm bin and solar panel for educational purposes. Oxbow Farm will deliver produce boxes for community-supported agriculture shares. Space for a larger farm area is still being dug out.
The result is a therapeutic and nurturing garden for children and adults to gather, learn, share, and take care of the land. Even the individual P-patch plots feel more communal than separate; many feature small plants with tags declaring them to be gifts from a neighboring gardener.
“It’s really fun because we’ve got a whole bunch of other kids helping,” said 9-year-old Kiara as she tended her plot with her brother Antonio, 10, and sister Eleanor, 6. “You don’t just work on your own patch. If someone else is busy, you can water their patch and help them.”
The idea for the garden was in gestation for several years. The space was a mess — an enormous, soggy, muddy stretch of land, the site of a former house that had been donated. Nobody had thought of a garden there, not even Lisa Porad; the garden was her brainchild, born as she sat in a room with Matt Grogan, the Senior Operations Director at the SJCC, tossing out ideas.
She figured they’d tear up a modest-sized piece of lawn and plant a tiny garden. But momentum grew: The donated space by the center was available. The staff reeled in a committee of individuals and organizations.
“Once we started, it was one of those amazing things that person after person after person kept coming and saying, ‘How can I get involved? How can I help?’” said Porad.
She was surprised in particular about not just how many people have gotten involved with the project in significant ways, but who those people have been: Existing JCC members she would never have thought would care about a garden; people who had never been part of the JCC community; Jews and people who are not Jewish.
As the idea grew, so did the need for space and JCC leaders began to eye the plot of land next door.
“The space was a disaster. We had the mud to begin with, but we picked the rainiest spring in history to do this,” Grogan said.
The weather pushed work crews behind by three months, but those aspects that can’t be controlled are just, as Grogan said, part of the process.
As they worked, the gardeners met Heide Felton, founder of the organization Garden-Based Education, and Rita Howard, a therapeutic-garden designer and writer who has developed curricula for a number of local school garden programs. With Felton and Howard’s contributions, the vision expanded beyond a simple P-patch to a vibrant, educational setting to support the JCC’s school programs and other existing educational programs.
Support for educational gardens has blossomed in recent years, sparked in part by visible programs like Alice Waters’s Edible Schoolyard project in Berkeley, as well as local efforts. Northwest groups such as the Puget Sound School Gardens Collective advocate for and support school gardens, highlighting educational, developmental, social, and nutritional benefits.
Howard noted that educational benefits of gardening vary by age group, something good curricula must reflect. For younger kids, focusing on hand-eye coordination, detail, and sensory experience are critical. Digging builds skills and curiosity. Older youth can get more into the science of gardening, testing soil pH and temperature, sampling for insect life, learning about fertilization, or analyzing weather. But a garden educates anyone.
“Everybody eats, right?” Howard said. “So harvesting and eating works for all ages. There are so many people who didn’t have the experience of picking and eating fresh food.”
Perhaps, she said, that will be the key to its success.
“If we’re really serious about sustainability, we have to make sure kids have an understanding of the fact that food comes from the Earth,” she said. “That’s a real investment in sustainability.”
Besides, Howard added, there aren’t a lot of places kids can engage in meaningful work, and can share the setting and results of that work with a larger community.
To the JCC’s Grogan, it’s the bringing in of people new and old that really matters. Half the P-patchers had never been to the SJCC before, and are now welcomed into the community.
“When we had the first planting day, it was everything we could have dreamed of,” he said.
At the garden’s opening ceremony, a woman came up and asked Grogan if he recognized her. His face grew into a grin; now 36, she was a mischievous 6-year-old when she first started spending time at the SJCC.
Though Grogan has been at the center a long time, he said he never would have seen something like the garden coming 10 or 20 years ago. But the SJCC’s ideas have grown tremendously before. A tiny softball league formed 26 years ago, Grogan said, grew into the largest league in Washington State.
If the idea is ready to happen, and there’s momentum in the community, the right people will come along. “Be open to everything,” he said.
People have stepped up and donated their time, supplies, and labor, the equivalent of $70,000 in three months, including $20,000 in cash.
“People,” Grogan said, “want to be part of something successful — probably have been wanting to be part of something really good happening at the J. And this is something really good happening at the J.”
Families are on the waiting list for garden patches as the center builds more. Catie Morse, a naturopathic student, is now offering classes on medicinal herbs and naturopathic medicine. There is a lecture series, a senior gardening club, plans for a shelter, a platform for gathering and education, an oven, and other ideas. Once it is fully completed, the JCC will partner with local restaurants to serve herbs and vegetables it has grown.
Bent over a patch, a woman admired the plants and said to her companion, “I wonder what they’re growing.”
It might have been broccoli. It might have been connections. We’ll likely see more of both over the next few months.