DEL.ICIO.USDECATUR
From unruly weeds to a garden spot
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Friday, March 13, 2009
Where others saw a snarled mass of kudzu, Decatur High School senior Anna Rose Gable saw tomatoes, blueberries and sunflowers — the makings of a community garden.
It took two years. And a lot of pleading, sweat and dirty, nicked fingers. But the first shoots of romaine lettuce now peek out of the dirt at what once was an overgrown, brambly corner of school property by Commerce Drive and East Howard Avenue.
Kimberly Smith/ksmith@ajc.com
‘My goal is to get as many things figured out and in place and people here and knowing what they’re doing,’ Decatur High School student Anna Rose Gable says about the garden.
There is still work to do. But families can plunk down $65 for a plot just in time for the spring planting season. Gable also is working with a sustainable landscape designer on a conceptual plan that envisions a nature trail, orchard and student-run “farm,” using one corner of the two-acre site for students to grow food and sell it to local markets and the school cafeteria.
“My goal is to get as many things figured out and in place and people here and knowing what they’re doing,” Gable said, giving a quick tour before sinking onion sets and pieces of potato into one of 11 raised beds on the site.
Gable interned her freshman year with Decatur’s thriving Oakhurst Community Garden. Inspired, she spent time her sophomore and junior years tending sungold cherry tomatoes, lavender and peas in a small bed by the campus’ main building.
But she had her eye on the overgrown corner across campus. It took more than a year of research and pleading, but she got the OK. Her project will be included next week in a tour of gardens.
Gable, 18, faces decisions about where to go to college, which likely means handing off her baby to others. In the meantime, she at least will get to see a first season’s bounty.
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