COVID-19 virus has wreaked havoc with the human interactions that are at the heart of city life. But the virus hasn’t shut down community gardening. In an April 17 press release, the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture made it official: growing food in community gardens is an “essential” activity, on a par with shopping for groceries. So gardeners in Pennsylvania can keep on gardening without fear of running afoul of the ongoing stay-at-home order, provided that they adhere to guidelines calling for social distancing in the gardens, disinfection of tools, gates and other high-contact surfaces, and take other steps to reduce the risk of transmission.
“Pennsylvania’s community gardens will play a key role in supporting communities throughout COVID-19 mitigation and recovery,” Secretary of Agriculture Russell Redding said, explaining the rationale for allowing community gardens to remain open when so much else is shuttered. At a time when supply lines are challenged and many have lost their jobs, “providing a way for the most local food sources to continue is quite literally essential.”
The Philadelphia Department of Parks and Recreation reached the same conclusion in March, as Catalina Jaramillo reported for WHYY at the time. Community gardening is an “essential” activity exempt from closure orders as long as gardeners follow rules that, among other things, limit garden occupancy to no more than five at a time. That pronouncement gave the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society a green light to distribute 60,000 seedlings to more than 130 City Harvest gardens scattered throughout the city, and to gardeners to get them into the ground.
At Garden R.U.N. in Roxborough, we’re up and running and managing well enough under the new restrictions, which are posted at the garden gate. There’s certainly more interest in our garden than ever. After going several years with a few vacancies, we’re full this year and now have a waiting list. Our City Harvest plots are filling up with PHS seedlings, and we’ll have produce to start delivering to a local food bank within a matter of weeks. our contribution is likely to be more welcome this year than ever.
We’ve had to cancel a community cleanup day that was on the schedule last month, and our annual bagel brunch season-opener won’t happen in May as usual. But community chores—cleanup, trimming, weeding, preparing and tending the City Harvest beds—has been handled tag-team fashion by a succession of Garden R.U.N. members. We’ve greeted each other coming and going, from afar but in person nonetheless, which has been a wonderful thing in these days of social isolation. Our community garden is a community that the coronavirus can’t kill.