The Hamburg Community Garden is growing on a vacant lot on Apple Street, a place for residents to grow their own organic vegetables.
The spearheads of the garden project are Hamburg residents Heather Youpa, a certified functional medicine coach and advocate for plant based lifestyles; her husband Joshua Youpa, Hamburg Borough Council President; and Josh Butz, a Pennsylvanian Game Land & Native Plant Preservationist.
“I believe that optimal well-being requires personal ownership, education, and a loving community. Awareness leads to empowerment and a support system is necessary for lasting positive change. That is my hope for the community garden,” said Heather Youpa, garden visionary and facilitator. “I hope it becomes a safe and exciting place for people to enjoy other like minded people and that it adds to the culture of Hamburg.”
“I have a small yard and I’m sure others do too, so I thought it’d be good to have a spot for others to garden and meet others that liked to garden,” said Butz, who lives in Tilden Township just outside of Hamburg. “I love the idea of community and think it’s great when like minded people can get together and learn from each other.”
Butz hopes this brings more awareness to the environment.
“Allows people to look past the grocery store shelves and see where their food comes from and that all wildlife is important all the way down to the smallest pollinators. Without them there are no fruits or vegetables.”
While the project has been years in the making, they achieved much progress this summer with help from volunteers. They cleaned up the lot, removing trash and stone. They built a retaining wall and added a bench.
A building once stood on the site where the old Smith’s Dairy had their local milk delivery operation. The old building’s remaining back wall has been painted white.
“I’d love to have a local artist put a mural there and really tie in the community efforts like it’s already been doing,” said Youpa.
Mulch has been added and nine raised box gardens were built and filled with soil. Recently, they planted wildflowers along the retaining wall and planted late season tomatoes from which they hope to donate the harvest.
The raised boxes, which are about 10 by 4 and one foot deep, will be available to community members to use next growing season.
“It’s like a hidden treasure,” said Youpa. “It came together really nicely.”
Contributors of the project include Deena Kershner of the Our Town Foundation in Hamburg, Lowes of Hamburg, soil provided by Danelle Koch of Keystone Landscape Supply, Brett Folk of Folk Paving Inc., Jesse Adams of Action Adams, Dan Bailey of Zion Church and the teen volunteers of the J.O.Y Crew (Journey Cafe), Dustin Merkel of Tree Top Service, Larry Miller, and Jena and Jesse Warke of Bottom of the Bowl.
Thanking everyone involved in the project, Youpa said, “I’m just thankful that I had the opportunity to do this with so much help and support.”
Youpa explained how her idea for a community garden in Hamburg took root in 2015, originally starting as a personal endeavor. At that time, Youpa volunteered for Rodale Institute in Kutztown and her husband had built her a raised box garden so she could grow her own organic vegetables at home. Thinking others likely want to garden but don’t have the space, Youpa wanted to give Hamburg residents the opportunity to grow their own organic vegetables.
Inspired by the Kutztown Community Garden, Youpa reached out to the garden’s founder Robyn Jasko, author of “Homesweet Homegrown.” Both Youpa and Jasko are Kutztown University alumnae.
“She gave me a little mentorship which was really nice. She told me it was totally possible,” said Youpa.
Teaming up with OTF, Youpa said it made sense to collaborate with OTF to have more community involvement. “Deena (Kershner) has been very helpful throughout the entire process.”
Kershner said that the idea to create a community garden surfaced a few years ago when the OTF Southgate Neighborhood Committee was more active. When the Manager of Southgate moved to Virginia, a lot of the activities the committee planned did not come to fruition, said Kershner. About two years ago, Youpa shared her idea with Kershner.
“I provided her with all the information I had on how to create a garden; however she already was very knowledgeable and very eager to get it started. Vreeland Wood (of V.J. Towing & Recovery), who serves on the OTF Board of Directors and also was an active Southgate committee member, offered the use of his land when the idea resurfaced,” said Kershner.
Kershner said that the Youpas and Butz have really stepped up to the plate to organize this community garden and hopes the garden provides neighborhood camaraderie and a place for residents to grow their own vegetables.
“It has taken a little longer than expected but that is because there was a lot of hands-on labor involved with a very limited number of volunteers,” said Kershner. “When the Journey Cafe students (the J.O.Y. Crew teens) helped out (mid July), it really sped the process along.”
Youpa said the teen volunteers from Journey Cafe was an answered prayer.
“I was so close to giving up on the community garden for this year because it was going to take so much work to get finished for planning for next year,” said Youpa. “They were phenomenal,” said Youpa about the teen volunteers. “They had fantastic team work. You could really tell that they care not only about the volunteerism but the project itself… They really felt dedicated to the project for what it was.”
The nine raised box garden beds will be available to Hamburg residents for the 2019 growing season with the hopes that gardeners follow organic guidelines. Interested residents can buy a box for the season for $30, starting the end of the 2018 season to start planning for the March 2019 season.
“My favorite part is how remaining persistent and sticking to the vision of the garden and as it came to fruition, it really did bring the community together,” said Youpa. “That made it feel like a dream come true.”
