Community gardening has been around for a long time - as far back as the days of ancient Mesopotamia and Plato's Athens. More recently, the industrial revolution of the early 19th century gave impetus to the first wave of urban farmers in Europe. Disease was rampant and mortality rates were climbing due to abject living conditions and malnutrition, primarily in inner cities. Government and private initiatives began to promote the use of vacant or unused land to help the underprivileged. Though the main focus of these gardens was economic, the intrinsic value of gardening was also recognized as giving the poor a sense of self-sufficiency, confidence, and well-being from improved nutrition and a little recreation.

In the US, economic necessity was the basis for early community gardening. The Potato Patches of the 1890s, the Liberty Gardens of World War I, the Relief Gardens of the Great Depression, and the Victory Gardens of World War II - all were products of government initiatives, but there was an agenda. During the wars, urban farmers were considered to be home-front soldiers helping to sustain not only the troops abroad, but also the moral and cultural framework of America. After World War II, the gardening movement declined. In the 1970s and 1980s community gardening resurfaced in the U.S., mostly as a counter-culture statement - skeptical of government, big business, and the food industry.

Community gardening in the Hudson Valley became popular in the 1970s, just as it was taking off in the greater urban centers of New York and Philadelphia. Larry Sommers took the lead and coordinated over 30 community gardening sites in Orange, Sullivan, Dutchess, Putnam, and Rockland Counties. Sommers availed himself of federal funding to make him and his successors salaried employees for six months of the year for several years - until that funding dried out during the Reagan years. Luckily, dedication and love of gardening generated enough momentum to keep the community gardens from folding.

Today, beyond the economic rewards of growing one's own food, participation in community gardening has also become an aesthetic and social choice. Ray Miller, an avid gardener and one-time president of the New Paltz Gardens for Nutrition who has populated many a garden with his sexy Egyptian onions, says, "The community garden of today is a community itself. People come to meet others who share similar sensibilities about health, food, the environment, politics, and even art." Alison Pratt-Szeliga, a member of the Capital District Community Gardens, says, "I live in Albany in an apartment building, and without a garden the closest thing I would have to an outdoor space of my own would be my fire escape. Now I walk two blocks and I have my own space to be outside while growing veggies, planting flowers, and meeting my neighbors."

What most community gardens seem to have in common, despite variations in each site's resources and intentions, is an enthusiastic and committed workforce. This point is quickly made clear to anyone looking to join the community gardening circle. It's not easy to find a free plot, and once gardeners arrive they're loathe to leave. A series of phone calls to area gardens proved that unclaimed communal space in the mid-Hudson Valley does not lie idle for very long. By June all spaces generally are allocated and gardeners have staked their claim to the land.

WHERE TO GROW LOCALLY
The New Paltz Gardens for Nutrition was founded in 1976 as part of the counter-culture movement, aided, no doubt, by the economic incentive of double-digit inflation during the 1970s. Today the gardens encompass a large grid of 150 individual 20-by-20-foot plots filled with vegetables, flowers, herbs, bushes, and trees set hard against the Wallkill River on a five-acre flood plain. The gardens have running water for gardening and a separate line of potable town water; three years ago, a solar-powered electric deer fence was installed around the entire grid. Gardening tools, wheelbarrows, and lawnmowers are provided and are maintained or replaced yearly. Unlike other gardens, New Paltz is not re-plowed each year. While this means that gardeners can return year after year to their ever-growing perennials, it can also mean that newcomers may have to work hard to undo what their predecessors left behind. And there's another risk: flood. In 1984 the gardens were submerged under six feet of water shortly after the soil was plowed and the plots staked out.

Hidden from most major roads, the New Paltz gardens have a cloistered feel, and the atmosphere is friendly. Visitors can enjoy the aromas wafting from each unique plot, whether it is filled with exhibitionistic peonies or shy, retiring herbs like lemon thyme. There is a stunning variety of plants on display, and quirky individual touches grace nearly every garden plot. Sculptures, bird feeders, hand-painted signs - all point to the gardener's personality and vision.