From left, Volunteers are busy at work in the Sanford Community Garden – too busy to look up for the camera.
By Kevin McKeon, Maine Master Naturalist
Shortly after Mousam Way Land Trust acquired what is now known as The McKeon Environmental Reserve on Blanchard Road, the trust’s directors endorsed the creation of the David and Linda Pence Community Ecology Center, honoring the generous folks who completed the fundraising efforts for the “Blanchard Project” — a land acquisition comprising a major portion of the reserve’s property. The center is envisioned as the activity hub for folks, holding a kid-oriented library and an environmental learning space for meetings and classes; a small workshop for making bird nesting boxes, bat houses, informational signs, and other eco-oriented projects; an ADA-accessible outdoor restroom; a greenhouse, and a nursery to propagate various plants for the trust’s and other civic groups’ various botanically oriented projects. Those projects could include self-guided, placarded nature trails and habitat restoration projects. Another section of the reserve Eco-Center is the Sanford Community Garden. Here’s a bit about the garden’s formation, beginning in 2018.
The reserve’s field next to a barn, and a windmill-styled hand water pump installed to a very productive drilled well sparked a vision: “Let’s build a community garden, an offering sorely lacking in the Sanford area,” said Dr. Bud Johnston, trust co-founder and longtime president. Public engagement is always sought with trust functions, so this became a joint project involving the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s York County Master Gardener Volunteers program (MGV). Volunteers planned and designed the garden, while Dr. Bud began the quiet and tedious work of securing funding. Generous donors, organizations, and local businesses answered Bud’s grant applications and calls for help, as did the Maine Master Gardener Development Board. With sufficient initial funding secured, building began.
A neighboring sawmill, Against the Grain, supplied the boards for the 27 4-foot by 12-foot raised beds. Another nearby sawmill’s recycling operation supplied composted soil, which tested perfect for gardening. Deer fencing, posts, tools, water supply materials, nuts, bolts, screws — we now had plenty of toys to play with!
A friendly plumber removed the old hand pump and installed a pressurized system. Trenches were dug, lines and cables run, and garden hose manifolds designed, built, and installed. The annual United Way Day of Caring organization found some energetic folks to work alongside some pre-enrolled raised bed gardeners and trust members. Steel fence posts were driven into Maine’s rocky soil, and holes dug for wooden corner and gate posts — which were expertly fashioned by carpenters that just happened to be among the Day of Caring folks. Unbelievable, right?
Building the Community Garden was a multi-step process. Photos: Keven McKeon
While the posts and gates were being placed, Master Gardener volunteers (you thought they just grew plants, right?) joined others to assemble the raised beds. A helpful neighbor drove his tractor from his tree farm through some of the reserve’s 2 1/2 miles of woods trails to help fill the beds with the composted soil as they were built. Yet more volunteers raked the soil level in the beds as some volunteers’ kids played in a “sandpit” they found — the foundation for the now-installed greenhouse donated by the former Springvale Nurseries.
Learning as we go? Mishaps, you ask? Well…
A gravel delivery truck slid off the very slippery, waterlogged access road in April 2019, the sixth wettest on record, and “re-located” my family’s raised bed of asparagus. That wet and late spring – the second week in April delivered four inches of snow – resulted in the soil at the vendors being too muddy to load into the trucks, so the delivery was delayed by three weeks. Then, the roads were weight-limit posted, so the trucks couldn’t drive on them ’til the postings got lifted!
When the soil was sufficiently dried and the road postings were lifted, the Community Garden’s access road was too muddy — so the soil got dumped in our neighboring driveway. (Notice the “s” on the word “trucks”? That was 55 yards of soil in the driveway!)
Anyway, the raised beds were finally ready and protected with deer fencing. The initial two gardening seasons showed the need for more beds, so an expansion project increased available beds to 67. Five-foot-wide gates have now been swinging open and closed for eight years, allowing community gardeners access to their assigned beds, with plenty of watering hoses, and wood chips spread along the fencing perimeter and between beds. Off-road parking, table and chairs set under the shade of a grape arbor, and an accessible outdoor restroom add to the enjoyment of this Mousam Way Land Trust public offering: Everything is free, and tools are available in the tool shed. Local businesses continue to donate seed packets, maintenance supplies, and various unsold plants to the hands of excited, eager gardeners.
The seeds sprouted, the plants grew, and Sanford Community Garden continues to blossom during its eighth year of public service. Recently offered at the Pence Center are accessible raised beds on a wooden deck, adjacent to ADA parking, and equestrian trailer parking for a few riders. The garden has hosted several years of the University of Maine Extension’s Kids Can Grow program, helped challenged folks of all ages feel valuable and connected to community, provided food to various local pantries, and offered volunteering opportunities to folks of all ages. Fundraising, including plant sales, is planned to provide greenhouse availabilities for approved gardeners’ and civic groups’ projects.
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