Lasagna Gardening and Creation of Common Ground Garden
We began the creation of the GLGWL Common Ground community garden in January of 2021. We were offered a plot of land on Poplar St. that was unable to be built on due to a high water table by Mayor Jesse Dwyer. This is a picture of the original plot.
Since we didn’t want to dig down into the wet soil, we decided to use a lasagna gardening technique to build up onto the soil! Lasagna gardening follows the concept of actual lasagna in which you layer different elements to smother weeds and build and enhance fertility. We tested the existing soil to ensure no poisons, etc.
We gathered some neighbors and smothered the grass with cardboard collected from local businesses. After covering the area we were planning for the garden, we covered the cardboard with wood chips donated by the Village and the GWL Maintenance crew, we had yards and yards of wood chips and spread them evenly over the cardboard.
We were going to buy wood to make raised beds but realized that that’s an expense we don’t need and decided to create mounds with beautiful soil donated by Bill Greene of Sustainable Warwick and a few yards of compost donated by Warwick DPW.
We started planting right away in April of 2021, even before we built our fence, just to get started.
Chad Pilieri and Justin Morgan designed our excellent fence and garden. The fence was the most expensive part of the garden, but we were helped by a $1,000 donation from Home Depot and another $1,000 donation from Sustainable Warwick.
The Common Ground Community Garden is a garden that truly belongs to the community. Our philosophy is that everyone is welcome; we have no membership fee or work requirements to be a part of our garden. We welcome full participation and have open hours during the growing season on Wednesday from 6-7:30 p.m. and Saturday from 9:45-11 a.m. Whenever we do anything new or exciting, we have a free and open workshop to show how we do it and various events with the Scouts, local schools, and anyone interested.
We plant as much as possible from seed and never use chemicals to fertilize or pesticides in our garden. Our philosophy is to let nature run its course as much as possible.
