Township Gives Consent for Community Garden

The Chatham Township Committee voted 3-0 to allow a joint borough and township community garden at Woodland Park. Committeemen Kathy Abbott and Robert Gallop were both absent from the meeting.

The decision came after a discussion of what the operational process will be for this garden, a discussion which lasted 20 minutes and involved all three present members of the committee, multiple members of the Community Garden Advisory Board and current plot-holders, and the township administrator.


Gardeners asked the committee to give consent for the garden plots at Woodland Park, which is jointly owned by both the borough and the township. They also asked for $5,000 to help with the $22,500 cost of constructing the new garden, with the money to be paid back out of future plot dues.

The rest of the funds will come from donated material and labor, existing material (such as the deer fence at the existing garden, which can be removed and reinstalled in the new lot), capital funds and DPW personnel in the borough and an existing community garden bank account with about $7,000 from plot fees, donations and grants received in past years.

The existing community garden always had plots available for township residents, but members of the advisory committee said borough involvement was always at a much higher rate. One of the conditions the township committee placed on their permission was that from now on, "it should be a 50-50 venture," Mayor Nicole Hagner said.

This extends to people who had plots in the now-defunct garden, which was forced to close after PSE&G's North Central Reliability Project. If the committee gave their permission, Committeeman Bailey Brower, Jr. said, "you need to have a lottery for these plots," with no seniority for plot-holders from the current garden.

Paul Suszczynski, commonly known as "Farmer Paul" among gardeners, and Community Garden Advisory Committee Chair Katey DePinto, a former Patch freelancer, both said that under the plans for the new garden there would be 60 plots, enough for both the existing plot-holders and those on the wait list for plots.

"You're not hearing me. That list is not anything. It's gone. You don't exist anymore," Brower said, clarifying that he wanted the gardeners to take a new survey of all borough and township residents interested in gardening in the 2014 season.

"If there is a split of 35 borough residents interested and 25 township, no one's going to say anything," Committeeman Kevin Sullivan said. "But if there are 30 township people interested, we expect they'll all get plots."

Another issue was how long plot-holders should be able to keep their plots. The township committee suggested that after two years plots should be turned over to new gardeners who had been on waiting lists.

DePinto said she spoke with other community gardens in north Jersey and none of them had any such system of turn-over for plots. "The reason is there's natural attrition," when people move out of town, for example, "and it's a lot of work. Not everyone wants to do it year after year."

The committee dropped that condition, but was adamant that a new lottery for plots should be held with no preference given to existing plot-holders. They also want a new advisory committee formed with approval from both the borough and the township governing bodies, "to make sure it really is a joint garden," Hagner said.

Gardeners assented, and the township committee agreed to let Borough Engineer Vincent J. DeNave begin the work of readying the park for the garden.