After a winter's worth of weed growth, Jesse Fisher dug his hands into the soil to uproot unwanted invaders from the Catonsville Community Garden on an overcast day at the end of April.
Winter has finally left, and life was returning to the garden.
Community gardens are places where people can use communal space to plant and grow fruits and vegetables. Many people use the gardens because they live in an apartment or otherwise can't have a garden of their own. Others, like Fisher, enjoy being a part of the greater community and interacting with neighbors.
The beds Fisher cleared out will soon be planted with vegetables and flowers.
Some life has already returned — an Eastern tent caterpillar was crawling up a blade of grass. Neither the grass nor the caterpillar belong in a healthy garden, however, and both were thrown away.
While Fisher cleaned the gardens, his young sons, Nolan, 5, and twins Jack and Ryan, 3, played in the backyard of the Christian Temple, where the garden is located. Herbicide isn't necessary in Fisher's garden; he has a dedicated staff of three caterpillar hunters.
Work can be stressful, and a half-hour a day in the garden is how Fisher relaxes.
"Now that they're older, my boys help," he said. "It doesn't speed things up, but it's still fun."
Before Fisher had children, both he and his wife worked in high-stress jobs and ate out frequently, he said. His wife now stays at home with the boys, and the couple has made a move to more sustainable, nutritious meals, fueled partially by the community garden.
The community garden at the Christian Temple opened early last summer. Fisher grew two tomato plants, a pepper plant and a pumpkin. He got two harvests last year.
It's not enough to supplement his family's vegetable supply, he said, but can complement part of a household's diet if the space was used the right way. For example, if a person only grew lettuce and herbs, it would be possible to rely on the garden alone for those items.
Fisher grew up in rural Pennsylvania, he said. When he was 2, his family moved into a converted farmhouse with a large garden and raised stone beds. The garden was large enough to comprise a large part of what the family ate.
They moved from there after about seven or eight years, but the family interest in gardening stuck.
Fisher purchased his own home in Catonsville with his wife in 2007. Their garden is about three or four times the size of the small plot he keeps at the Christian Temple.
"There seems to be a renewed interest in returning to a kind of earlier way of eating," said Fisher, who described his parents as having grown up in the heyday of canned and process foods.
He said these gardens represent a move away from commercial agriculture, which requires a lot of energy.
The communal space also helps him connect with neighbors, he said.
"We might not run into each other in a different environment," he said.
Right now the garden has 12 plots, which are about evenly split between people seeking community connection and people who don't have garden space of their own — people who live in apartments, have shade-filled yards, or rent.
By mid-May the garden will have doubled in size, Fisher said. The expansion is to meet a wait list for plots, though there will be spare plots available.
The church is using leftover funds from a discontinued project to pay for the expansion.
There are no requirements to join the garden. The church assumes applicants live in Catonsville, but it's not specifically required. There are some rules, like garden maintenance, that ensure the limited space in the garden isn't being wasted.
Oella
In the historic Oella community at the edge of Catonsville, there are also plans for growth at a community garden which started five years ago. The garden has already grown from just a few plots to 31 in that time, and soon the Greater Oella Community Association, hopes to add a few more plots.
There are also plans to add a garden table, so one group members with mobility issues can continue to garden.
The table is essentially a garden plot, but elevated, so a person can garden without bending down.
On April 30, several people from Oella and other parts of Catonsville were at the garden, located at the Benjamin Banneker Historical Park and Museum, weeding and tilling the ground in preparation for spring plantings. Common chickweed has grown over spaces between the plots, and volunteers were plucking the plants and placing them on top of other weeds to suffocate the growth.
"We constantly have weeds," resident Amanda Lauer said.
The garden is bordered by woods on three sides, which contributes to the problem, she said. The open side faces east, ensuring the garden gets about six hours of direct light a day.
Lauer gets about a quarter of the vegetables she eats from the garden, she said.
"It saves a lot of money," she said.
Association President Jay Patel grows tomatoes on his plots.
"I don't have to buy any tomatoes all summer long," he said.
Patel said the garden was started with people who live in town houses, or who have shady yards, in mind. Patel also wants to encourage children to garden, so they can learn about nutrition, exercise while working, and gain a sense of accomplishment when their plants produce.
Apart from shade and space, another obstacle to gardening in Oella are deer. Julia Graham said she lived in apartments before coming to the neighborhood, and when she was finally able to plant a garden, more of it went to the deer than to her.
"It was hopeless," she said.
The community association garden is fenced in, keeping deer out.
The association also has worked with the county to get a dedicated watering line installed on the garden property; before, gardeners carried buckets of water from a building about 100 yards away.
Plots at the Oella garden cost $20 for a year, and vary in size from 5-by-8 foot to 8-by-16 foot.