The new Community Garden Campus will support the Conservatory.s Growing to Green program and be a place where all people can gain ideas for their own gardens, volunteer, or just sit, relax and enjoy the gardens. The four-acre campus will be located in the southeast corner of Franklin Park—anchored by the Caretaker’s House.
The Caretaker’s House is a two-story Tudor style house built in the 1920s for the first caretaker of Franklin Park, James Underwood. Unused, but “buttoned up” for a number of years, the Caretaker’s House will be restored as the centerpiece of Franklin Park’s new Community Gardens. Contained in the Caretaker’s House, which will be renamed the Community Garden Center, will be a Community Gardening Resource Center, Community Meeting Room, and offices for both Growing to Green and the American Community Gardening Association.
Surrounding the Community Garden Center will be a signature garden designed by Julie Moir Messervy, co-creator of the Master Plan. The garden will consist of a series of sub-gardens that will demonstrate to homeowners how to make the outside of their houses as wonderful as the inside. Unique to Franklin Park, this Landscape of Home Garden will be a place to learn, relax and enjoy the possibilities that can happen when we work with nature.
While the Community Garden Center will be the heart of the Community Garden Campus, the Education Pavilion will be the center of educational programming on the campus. Designed to look like a brick carriage house, the Education Pavilion will have multiple doors opening onto surrounding terraces and gardens. Within the building, children and adults will learn about conservation, the environment and community gardening. Also housed on the Community Garden Campus will be a new Community Gardener Training Program.
Surrounding the Education Pavilion will be culinary and floral demonstration gardens such as an international cuisine garden, aromatherapy-cutting garden, a formal herb garden, and a culinary parterre garden. These gardens will offer volunteers the opportunity to garden without taking on the responsibility of a full-time garden. But for those who would rather have their own garden, the Campus will contain community garden plots that can be rented for a nominal fee. No one will lack for ways to get their hands dirty—or learn about conservation, health, nutrition and community gardens—in this new, unique facility.