Chinquapin Organic Gardens Spring 2009 Newsletter
In this issue:
• Message from the chair and vice chair
• T.C. Williams students return to Chinquapin
• In memoriam: Gardener Glenn Hartley dies
• Tillers for hire
Welcome back and
welcome to our new gardeners at Chinquapin Organic Gardens!
It’s spring, and the official gardening season at Chinquapin
Organic Gardens is now under way. Have you gotten out to work in your
plot yet? The weather is perfect for spring planting and the water is
turned on, so be sure and spend some time in the gardens.
Don’t forget that all gardens need to show gardening activity
by May 1. Take some time to read over the Chinquapin
Organic Gardens Regulations so that your plot is in
compliance: And don’t forget all gardening in our plots is
organic!
With the
limited budget the Alexandria Department of Recreation, Parks
and Cultural Activities faces, we are thankful that the garden plot
rental fees have not been affected. We encourage you, out of respect
for the opportunity that the city has provided for us, to all work
harder at keeping the garden plots looking good and well kept, for the
neighborhood and for your fellow gardeners.
We encourage you, in that light, to join us when we hold our Chinquapin
Gardens Community Workdays. We must also be mindful of the number of
gardeners who are on the waiting list and who would welcome the
opportunity of being part of a unique urban experience. The Chinquapin
Organic Gardens Advisory Board will work even harder this year, through
use of the monitoring teams and with the City of Alexandria to "weed
out" those who do not follow the Chinquapin Organic Gardens Regulations,
which are on our Web site. We encourage you all to participate with the
board to make these, your gardens, the best experience possible. Thank
you to all who have served on a monitoring team.
As the chair and vice chair of the Chinquapin Organic Gardens Advisory
Board, we would like to give you some highlights of our activities:
• Project
Discovery, now the T.C. Williams Discovery Garden, will
continue this year in spite of budget cuts by the City of Alexandria
(see article, below). We have two gardening areas set aside for their
activity. Lorien MacAuley, who spearheaded this wonderful experience
for T.C. Williams High School students, has moved away, but not in
spirit. We would like to thank her for her efforts. However, your
fellow gardeners and Board members, Amber Kim Dewey, Dale May, Chuck
and Jeanette Cisney, Martha Brown and Charlie Kellett, with the
assistance of Brad Kukuk, a volunteer, who worked tirelessly with the
students and Lorien last year, will continue to promote involvement of
youth in gardening. Special thanks go out to Patrick Earle, a biology
teacher at T.C. Williams, who will also work with our board members and
the students. Let Amber
or Chuck
know if you can help.
• Giving Gardeners, an initiative headed by gardener and board
member Maura
Burns,
is a program to distribute our extra produce to the needy. We will try
to make the program work again this year. There will be a place and
times during harvest season for depositing your excess produce. Maura
will be transporting the goods to places like Alive &
Carpenter’s Shelter. It would be wonderful if you could volunteer
to help Maura and consider donating once collections begin.
• Our garden’s webmasters, Michele Late and Roy
Wright, continue to update our Web site. If
you haven’t checked it recently, you will find a whole new
look the next time you do. Let us know what you think! For feedback on
the Web site, e-mail Michele
or Roy.
• The Chinquapin Organic Gardens Advisory Board will soon be
scheduling our 11th Annual Potluck Picnic. We trust that the 11th will
be even better than our 10th anniversary celebration last year, which
attracted a record crowd. We look forward to those special dishes
prepared from produce from the gardens.
• To make sure our gardens look nice and the regulations are
being followed, we will continue with the same streamlined monitoring
process that we did last year. There will be three monitoring reviews
by the teams, which are comprised of a board member as team leader,
supported by gardeners who volunteer for specific dates. Those dates
are: May 2
(Maura Burns),
July 11
(Margie Lomax
and Lori Hartmann)
and Dec. 5 (Maura Burns and Bill Hohe).
Please e-mail the team leaders to volunteer, per the regulations. The
City of Alexandria will continue to monitor the compliance in between
these review dates. 
• We are still seeking ideas about how to make improvements to
the gardens and would welcome yours. We are thankful for the services
provided by the city, such as trash pick up, weed whacking and water.
We trust that the city will continue to supply mulch and wood chips. We
appreciate the administrative help and monitoring by John Walsh
of the Department of Recreation, Parks and Cultural Activities.
• The board continues with a checking account to help defray
expenses for such activities as the Community Workdays, the picnic and
Web site costs. We feel it is unfair to have these costs borne by a few
dedicated gardeners over and over. We are asking for donations of $5 or
more. Please send your check to your chairman, Marlin G. Lord, at P.O.
Box 2778, Alexandria, Va., 22301. You will be issued a receipt.
We are proud of our organic gardens. We would like to encourage you to
give us feedback and assist the Chinquapin Organic Gardens Advisory
Board in planning, preparing for the future and working for
improvements to the gardens. Thanks to gardener Michele Late for the
continuing newsletter, and to those who write articles offering
gardening tips helping us learn about the gardening experience. If
you’d like to write an article for this newsletter, please
contact Michele.
Remember, you have a board looking out for your interest year-round. We
will appreciate any of you who would like to serve on the board. We
limit the meetings to one hour, and they are held at T.C. Williams High
School. Meeting
dates are listed on the Web site.
Please take note when the new gardeners arrive, welcome them and
perhaps even offer some gardening pointers. And maybe they will have
some for you! We trust you are all looking forward, as we are, to a
great gardening season!
Happy gardening!
— Marlin G. Lord,
chair, and Kathryn A. Brown, vice chair
T.C. Williams High
School students return to Chinquapin
As the gardening season is upon us, Chinquapin Organic Gardens is happy
to welcome back students from T.C. Williams High School. The T.C.
Williams Discovery Garden will again have students tending to their
garden plot while learning about and reaping the benefits of gardening!
The
garden is a joint program between T.C. Williams High School and
Chinquapin Organic Gardens. The garden plot is used for school lessons
in the areas of biology, culinary arts and special education. The
garden plot is primarily tended to by the Garden Club of T.C. Williams
and thrives through the assistance of the entire garden community.
Volunteers are an important aspect to the garden and we all can
participate and serve as mentors and role models to the youth involved
in this project.
This year we hope to have a very successful season as the T.C. Williams
Garden Club is planning to organize a plant sale (details forthcoming),
continue donating produce from the garden to local area food banks and
will have weekly educational sessions in the garden.
We hope to have an exciting year and we’re happy to hear
input into how this initiative can continue to grow and create learning
opportunities for both gardeners and students.
Also this year, we are excited to have two co-coordinators from the
Chinquapin Organic Gardens to help with the program and integrate
garden volunteers with program activities. We welcome volunteers at
anytime to join us with this exciting program.
For more information, please contact co-coordinators Amber Dewey or
Brad
Kukuk. (Pictured: T.C. Williams students attend to their
garden plot in 2008)
— Chuck
Cisney
Longtime gardener
Glenn Hartley dies
It is with a heavy heart that we report that longtime Chinquapin
gardener Glenn Hartley died in January 2009.
A resident of Woodbridge, Va., Glenn was the president of Atlantic
Realty and a former Army lieutenant colonel. He also served as vice
chair of the Chinquapin Organic Gardens Advisory Board 
for
several years, and was one of the board’s founding members.
Glenn was always happy to give gardening advice, especially to new
gardeners. One of his favorite tips was to tell gardeners that they
should always knock the dirt off of the roots of the weeds they pulled
before tossing them out, as Chinquapin dirt is too good to throw away!
Glenn was very generous and often gave away his extra zucchinis and
tomatoes to other gardeners.
Glenn was often seen at the gardens with fellow gardener Mildred Fajna
and at the Chinquapin Gardens Potluck Picnic, where he was proud for
many years to bring the hot dogs that were served.
Glenn will be missed by all of us at Chinquapin Organic Gardens.
(Pictured, from left to right, are Mildred Fajna, Marlin Lord and Glenn
Hartley at the 2006 potluck picnic, at which Glenn and Mildred won a
gardening award.)
— Michele Late
Tillers for hire
Looking for help with the weeds in your plot? For a fee, a tilling
service will come to your plot and help you out. These tillers have
told us they are offering service this year:
• Carl Gatlin: 703-836-3911
(*Does not
imply endorsement by the City of Alexandria nor the Chinquapin Organic
Gardens Advisory Board. Individual gardeners contract with tillers at
their won risk.)
To
suggest a topic for the Chinquapin Organic Gardens Newsletter or to
volunteer to write an article, contact Michele
Late,
editor.
