By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT — To the gardeners working the soil in the Westport Community Gardens, the word “community” most clearly represents their goal — bonding with one another in a common space, growing what they wish in adjoining garden plots and cultivating an environmental and educational community foradults and children.

Currently, the gardeners say they feel threatened by a plan to rebuild or renovate Long Lots Elementary School that could destroy the gardens, according to scenarios being considered by the Long Lots Building Committee. 

The gardeners on June 27 posted an online petition — “Save the Westport Community Gardens and Long Lots Preserve” — seeking support for saving the community plots, which had nearly 1,400 signatures early Monday.

Three plans for Long Lots Elementary School, with the largest enrollment among the town’s elementary schools, are under consideration: renovating the school in its current site on the Hyde Lane campus; a hybrid project to remodel the existing structure and build additions, or constructing an entirely new school, likely in a different site on the campus from the building now stands. Only the plan to renovate the school where it currently sits would likely avoid claiming part, if not all, of the gardens.

The building committee is expected to make a recommendation on a final plan for Long Lots in late summer.

 The community gardens, located adjacent to the school for 20 years, are under jurisdiction of the town’s Parks and Recreation Department. 

The Long Lots Preserve, town-owned property adjacent to the gardens and the school, also could be used for the school project. The preserve is being cleared of invasive trees and plants, and replanted with native species, to enhance that site’s ecological value.

The gardeners say they were not notified in a timely fashion about the school construction options that could imperil their gardens. Several gardeners working their plots Saturday morning, and offering their harvest at a pop-up flower and vegetable market, said they want what’s best for the school — but don’t see why it might include bulldozing their gardens.

“There’s definitely a way of building the school and keeping the gardens,” said Skip Weverbergh, surveying the plot where he has planted eggplants and other vegetables. Weverbergh, who’s been tending a plot there for a year, ran his hand through the soil, picking up a clump of rich earth. “This is black gold,” he said “It takes 20 years — years and years and years — to get this kind of soil. It’s rich in everything.”

Like other gardeners Saturday, Weverbergh believes Long Lots students deserve the best facilities, but that plans should accommodate the areas needed for both the gardens and the school. “It’s stupid,” he said of the possibility of uprooting the gardens.

He is grateful for his fellow gardeners and the community that’s created as they work together. “I had some back surgery recently and three different people came to me and said, ‘We’ll help putting your garden in,’ ” even though he’s only been gardening there for only a year, Weverbergh said. “I didn’t even know them … It’s a real community.”

Donald O’Day, a member of the Long Lots Building Committee and District 3 member of the Representative Town Meeting, was escorted Saturday around the gardens by Louis Weinberg, chairman of the Westport Community Gardens.

“I came down just for information gathering,” O’Day said. “I want to know as much as I can to drive my decision.”

The Long Lots Building Committee is still in early stages of the planning process, he said, and meets weekly with the architect and construction manager for the project. The hope is that a plan will be chosen sometime after August, he said. 

On Friday, First Selectwoman Jennifer Tooker also toured the gardens.

Weinberg declines to call issues between the school building committee and the gardens a “controversy.” 

The gardeners would love to see the Long Lots students in a beautiful new school, he said. “But you cannot just start a community garden. It’s a 20-year project,” said Weinberg, a middle school science teacher who has a degree in environmental studies.

Two young men working their plot Saturday were Westport residents Kevin Pierce and Gary Castellanos. Although they have worked in community plots elsewhere before, this is their first year at the Westport gardens. 

Pierce, an environmental engineer, pointed out the carrots, sunflowers, lettuce and other flowers growing in their plot, and Castellanos, an investment manager, said they work in their garden at least every other day.

“This isn’t just a rectangle of land,” Pierce said. “Multiply it by all the [120 families] here. This is something special that Westport offers.”

A community gardener for eight years, Toni Simonetti was busy pulling weeds Saturday to get ready for the weed check the gardens undertake every few weeks to keep invasive plants at bay.

“I think that this is a treasure for the community … you can’t just move it out,” said Simonetti, a member of the gardens’ steering committee. She pointed out that asparagus plants take years to establish themselves by continuously enriching the soil, and that the gardeners have built not only wooden structures to contain their plants, but a grape arbor and even a bocce court for relaxation. It would be impossible to move the gardens to another location, she said.

“No one is against building the school. It should be an enriching environment for the students,” she said, but not by destroying the gardens. “There’s got to be another way.”

Preserving the preserve

The gardeners also worry the school project could claim the Long Lots Preserve, adjacent to the garden plots.

The preserve has been established to help subdue invasive plants and encourage the growth of native species, according to Weinberg. 

Supported by seed money from Sustainable Connecticut and the Community Forestry Small Grants Program, the preserve has also gotten donations and support from several nonprofit and environmental agencies in the area, including Earthplace, Connecticut Audubon and the Aspetuck Land Trust, totaling $40,000, Weinberg said.

Started in spring 2022, the rescue and restoration plan for the preserve’s land has been divided into four phases stretching over three years and in four different sections of the preserve. In each phase, the non-native and invasive plants are removed, and native plants planted and supported by the volunteers who work in the preserve.

The preservationists have already seen the return of some animals that had disappeared from the wooded area, and are even growing American Chestnut tree saplings, Weinberg said. The American Chestnut was obliterated by a deadly blight more than 100 years ago.

“The preserve is a wonderful example of environmental stewardship” that should be supported as a resource for children and others to learn about the environment — and certainly not destroyed, Weinberg said.  “What are we trying to teach our children here?”

Freelance writer Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist and journalism teacher for many years, was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman newspaper for 10 years and teaches journalism at Southern Connecticut State University.