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Valerie Villarreal carefully carries a plant cage out of the way during a Saturday morning workday at the community garden behind St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church. Daily Record photos by Denise Cathey

Last Harvest Looming

Community Garden
Sunday, July 29, 2018

Bright yellow sunflowers and the pink and orange blooms of echinacea are visited by butterflies and bees as a gentle breeze wafts through the mid-morning air in the one-acre community gardens located behind St. John the Evangelist Catholic Church.

Pepper and tomato plants, bean poles and rhubarb also dot the area that is imbued with a sense of being well-tended and wellloved. Divided into about 40 individual garden plots, the piece of land bordered on the back by the railroad tracks has been actively gardened since at least 1970, and possibly before that.

Matt Barnes and Valerie Villarreal, two of the current gardeners, have heard the space dates back to the World War II era when “victory” gardens were both commonplace and necessary, but they have been unable to find confirmation.

What they do know is that the garden’s future is very much in doubt. Earlier this year, the managers of the community garden got some bad news from the church — expansion plans were in the air and included the garden plots. “We were told that we had six months to vacate,” was how Barnes put it.

Matt Barnes plucks out weeds surrounding pepper plants in one of the garden’s many plots. 

If that were to happen, more than a plot of land would be lost. Barnes explained the space is loved not only by the 20 or so people currently using it to grow their own food — sometimes donating surplus to outlets like the Hays Caldwell Women’s Center and the Hays County Food Bank — but also to those who have come before.

“Some of the people who have gardened here in the past 10 to 20 years have gone on to start their own farms,” Barnes said, adding that traditionally, the space has allowed people to produce their own food despite the fact they don’t have yards or the ability to grow food where they live.

“It’s a beautiful piece of property, floodplain soil, and it’s on a well,” he said. No matter what the other garden expenses are, managers make sure there is enough money in the bank to maintain the well should it need attention, Villarreal noted.

Though they were surprised at the church’s decision, Barnes and Villarreal weren’t prepared to just abandon place and instead, opened up more of a conversation with the church.

“Things have changed,” Barnes said. “The church has plans but they are not concrete in terms of what’s going where.”

They are in the process of writing a letter of appeal to a church governing body but in the meantime, have learned more about what St. John’s would like to see happen.

Over the years, a tree line composed primarily of fast-growing hackberry trees have spring up along both sides of the garden, and Barnes said the church wants them both to go.

“They don’t like that it’s grown up,” he said. “They want to be able to see the back of their property.”

The community garden occupies a one-acre plot behind St. John the Evangelist Church.

There are also concerns about homeless people who camp in the easement along the railroad track. “They have had incidents,” Villarreal said.

To further their conversation with the church and hopefully build good will, Barnes and Villarreal and others are planning to enlist friends in a clean-up effort along both tree lines. Villarreal said that one garden plot is maintained by a group of young women who study horticulture at Texas State University and belong to a horticulture club who plan to recruit their fellow club members and classmates.

Others have contacts who are professional arborists and plan to volunteer their services, she said.

Both say they plan to put fall crops in the ground despite the uncertainty over the future. “They originally told us we have to be out by November,” Barnes said, “but with the appeal, we hope they realize the church can be a part of the garden, or they can let us keep half.”

“We’re happy to work with the church,” Villarreal said. “There was not a lot of conversation, but now we’re feeling better, now that we know the issues. We hope to be a part of the expansion plans. We think it can be positive.”

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666