Garden | Levittown’s Award-Winning Community Garden Seeks Volunteers
Three years ago, Crystal Lecuyer of the Middletown Township Parks Recreation Department started with a blank slate: a 48′ x 48′ plot of land behind the Middletown Community Center building. After putting a plan together with other volunteers to try “lasagna” gardening, the garden has flourished, producing hundreds of pounds of produce each year that are donated to a local food bank. Volunteers are always needed to help maintain the garden and harvest vegetables.
Chris McCarron, Sesame Place’s landscape manager, Levittown resident and volunteer community gardener, suggested lasagna gardening in raised beds. The volunteer group, which included members of the Middletown Township Environmental Advisory Council, thought it was an excellent idea.
“We read Pat Lanza’s book on lasagna gardening that involved no tilling and layers of organic material,” Crystal said. “We began by laying cardboard and newspapers right on top of the existing grass without any digging or tilling. It’s an easy way to start a new planting bed.”
“Lasagna gardening” is an non-labor intensive method to create organic gardens popularized by Patricia Lanza in 1998 in her first book on the topic, “Lasagna Gardening: A New Layering System for Bountiful Gardens: No Digging, No Tilling, No Weeding, No Kidding!” If you don’t have the time or energy to create a planting bed, try this method.
Many gardeners will tell you about their great success with this low-labor method. When you alternate layers that may include grass clippings, leaves, newspapers (no color or shiny print), produce scraps, coffee grounds, manure, compost, peat moss, or wood ashes you will be surprised by the results. You can start layering an area now to be ready for spring, or you can start layering in the spring and plant right away. According to Lanza, it doesn’t matter!
No pesticides are used in the garden and Crystal tries to use recycled materials whenever possible.
“We take pride in maintaining an
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