Above: For over four years, a Southborough neighborhood has been using its open space as a bountiful garden for doing good. (2021 photos from Facebook)
In 2020, residents in the Pine Hill Road area decided to use their open space to help feed people in need of help by planting a “Victory Garden” during the pandemic. When the pandemic wound down, the volunteers didn’t walk away from the effort.
The Pine Hill Meadow Garden’s charitable bounty has thrived thanks to continuing volunteer efforts. Here is this summer’s update, including information on how the community can pitch in:
Now entering its fifth year of operation, the Pine Hill Meadow Garden has hit a major milestone. Last week’s deliveries took to 5 tons (10,000 pounds) the total of fresh produce delivered, since its inception, to shelters and food pantries in Worcester County. Local beneficiaries have included the Southborough Food Pantry, Southborough Free Fridge, the Veterans Shelter in Worcester, the South Worcester Neighborhood Center and the Marlborough Community Cupboard.
Since it was founded in 2020 in the height of the pandemic, the garden has steadily grown in size, productivity and crop diversity. This year the garden has undertaken two major initiatives. First, a second area was cultivated and is devoted to fresh corn. Moving the corn out of the lower garden makes room for other vegetables. Second, the garden has added some “culturally relevant” veggies to acknowledge the diversity of communities in the Worcester County area. Included in this list are the Jilo, an eggplant popular in Brazilian and Nigerian cooking, collard greens, magda zucchini, used in Middle Eastern cuisine, watermelon radishes and a renewed effort to successfully grow bok choi. Other new crops this year include peppers, bell variety and hot, kohlrabi, turnips and regular eggplants With the garden’s expansion, we are hoping that the 2025 season will surpass our highest total season’s deliveries, from 2022, of 3,000 pounds. None of this would be possible without the help of the neighborhood which supports the 26 A open space parcel managed by the Pine Hill Meadow Trust and the garden with both financial support and significant labor by a dedicated group of neighborhood volunteers. Several special shout outs this year are in order. First, two Girl Scout troops and a group of Boy Scouts have helped in the garden this year – from seed bed preparation to planting and harvesting and building a temporary fence to keep the coyotes out of the corn. A shout out also to Algonquin Regional High School, which circulated information about the garden, together with a sign up for students interested in helping, and also to those students who took on the task. A final thank you to River’s Edge Garden Center in Framingham. In keeping with the support that they have given us in all of our seasons, they donated 150 Japanese eggplant seedlings at the beginning of the season and then, when winding down their season, they invited us to take any unsold vegetable seedlings to transplant in the garden.
July and August are busy months in the garden for maintenance and harvesting. If you would like to help out, you can sign up here to join us in garden activities. Youth and community groups are welcome.
To support the garden, donations can be made to the Pine Hill Meadow Trust, Inc. C/O Kathy Cook, 11 Greystone Way, Southborough, MA. 01772. The Pine Hill Meadow Trust is a registered 501(c)(3) and your donations are deductible to the extent allowed by law.
You can read more about the garden from posts in past years, here.
