Companion Gardening
Invitation Oxford
August 2020
Tucked behind the Old Armory Pavilion, in what was once a little-used baseball field, the Oxford Community Garden has grown over the past decade from a scratchy patch of compacted red soil and Bermuda grass into a half acre of lush flowers, vegetables and fruiting shrubs, thanks to the work of dedicated volunteer gardeners.
On a recent spring day — before the COVID-19 pandemic changed the nature of social gatherings — the garden was bustling with people during its monthly work day. New gardeners were being assigned plots. The old hands weeded a dense row of communal blueberry bushes. Meanwhile, garden member Andrew Gordon sat beneath a honeysuckle arbor plucking a harp for the workers’ enjoyment.
This is a far cry from the garden’s earliest days. The seeds of the idea to start a garden anyone in the community could join began with Oxford resident Susie Adams. On a trip to Finland for work, Adams saw her first community garden.
“People had their chairs out there and their kids out there and they were hanging out and they had art in the garden,” Adams said. “It seemed like such a neat community place. I thought, ‘We have to do this in Oxford!’”
