By Gretchen Webster

WESTPORT–The future of the Community Gardens depends less on where the gardens will be but on how the gardens will be governed – will they be run by the Parks and Recreation Department or by the gardeners themselves? And, most important, who will carry the liability for the garden property?

That concern surfaced at Wednesday’s Parks & Recreation Commission meeting when member Ronald Clarke asked whether the gardeners held liability insurance. They do not. In that case, “the town is liable,” Clarke said.

Consideration of Burr Farms tabled

The Parks and Recreation Commission begins to hammer out a plan for a relocated Westport Community Gardens - Photo Gretchen Webster
The Parks and Recreation Commission begins to hammer out a plan for a relocated Westport Community Gardens – Photo Gretchen Webster

 The gardeners have been eying the town-owned Burr Farms Field property in hopes of getting town permission to plant there next spring. They want to avoid missing another growing season after their gardens on Hyde Lane were dismantled for the construction of a new Long Lots Elementary School.

But that was not why the Community Gardens discussion was on Wednesday’s agenda, Commission Chair David Floyd told the gardeners. “This is not about locations,” he said. The plan was to look at bylaws and administrative documents on how community gardens can be established.

Bylaws

Some gardeners bristled. They had come to the meeting carrying their own bylaws and rules, and some took offense that Recreation Director Erik Barbieri had assembled documents from community gardens in other towns instead of basing the new garden’s structure on the bylaws and regulations the Westport Community Gardens had put together years ago.

“Let’s take our regulations and edit them,” said Laureen Haynes, a member of the garden’s steering committee. The gardeners had their cultivating hours reduced and their parking blocked at their Hyde Lane location, then lost this growing season “even though there’s no [school] construction yet,” she said. And now, the Parks and Recreation Commission presents them with other towns’ garden bylaws instead of working with the Westport Community Garden’s established protocols, she said. “This feels like a complete erosion of the garden community.”

PRC can help

But collaboration between the gardens and the Parks and Recreation Department is the key to successfully relocating the gardens, both Floyd, and Parks and Recreation Director Erik Barbieri agreed. The department staff could help bring them wood chips or even help till the gardens, Barbieri told the gardeners.

But the legal issue with liability does have to be addressed, Barbieri said.

“If we don’t have a partnership, we won’t have a community garden,” said Commission member Chrissy O’ Keeffe. “Hopefully, this could be a win-win. The intent is not to micro-manage the Community Gardens. But there are advantages to being part of Parks and Rec.”

Next steps: Before the commission’s August meeting, members will review the Community Gardens’ existing bylaws alongside the comparison set circulated by Barbieri. Gardeners were asked to do the same so both sides can merge, revise, or adopt policies together – including how liability and insurance will be handled.

Westport Parks and Recreation Commission Public Meeting

Wednesday, August 20, 7:30 p.m. 

Westport Town Hall
Conference Room #201
110 Myrtle Avenue
Westport

Westport Journal’s recent articles on the Parks and Rec.

Gretchen Webster

Gretchen Webster, a Fairfield County journalist for many years, has reported for the daily Greenwich Time and Norwalk Hour, the weekly Westport News, Fairfield Citizen and Weston Forum. She was editor of the Fairfield Minuteman for ten years. She has won numerous journalism awards over the years, and taught journalism at New York University and Southern Connecticut State University.

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