Planting a legacy in Hewlett

Dust off your gardening tools and make your way to the place known as the Community Garden Learning Center behind the Hewlett House on East Rockaway Road in Hewlett.

Though planting at the garden began a few weeks ago, an opening day is this Sunday from 10 a.m. to noon. It provides an opportunity for the community to visit and learn about upcoming activities and goals.

“Community gardens can easily become a center for community interaction as well as charity and I think that’s why we need more of them,” said Daniel Foster, a junior at Hewlett High School from North Woodmere. He is a three-year volunteer. “The garden has taught me so much about the importance of collaboration and balancing work and social time.”

The vegetables harvested from the garden are mostly donated to Cedarhurst-based Rock and Wrap It Up!, the Interfaith Nutritional Network in Hempstead and local church groups.

With garden advisor Bob Sympson, formerly of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County, student volunteers, mostly involved with the school district’s Youth Leadership, learn gardening and maintain the space. Youth Leadership is a group of several dozen middle school and high school students who aim to promote leadership skills and plan community events.

The Cornell Cooperative Extension connects the research efforts at Cornell University, the Cornell University Agricultural Experiment Station and the state Agricultural Experiment Station to enhance agricultural and natural resources in New York.

“Bob is the real garden master and the force that motivates us all to find excitement in maintaining the serenity of a garden,” said Dr. David Rifkind, a social studies teacher involved with Youth Leadership at Hewlett High.

Sympson, from East Rockaway, has been working with Rifkind and volunteers since the garden’s inception. A retired science and projects teacher from Valley Stream South High School, he served on the board of directors of the Cornell Cooperative Extension of Nassau County. He is also involved with the Historical Society of East Rockaway and Lynbrook.

“You would think they’re digging for gold,” Sympson said, of the joy he feels watching students harvest the potatoes he helped them plant. He spoke of how many parents and grandparents work alongside their kids and grandkids. “There’s always something to learn there.”

After a Sustainability and Systems Thinking conference in Chicago in 2010, the garden idea germinated, Rifkind said. He and Rose Panarelli, the district’s business education chair, toured community gardens, visited green buildings and a green market, and ate with students at restaurants in Chicago that got their food from local sources – food grown within 100 miles of where it is eaten.

Andrew Pareles, of Hewlett, is a Hewlett High senior has been involved with the garden since his freshman year. “The garden teaches us how to plan ahead and think about not only sustainability but growth and investment in the future,” he said. “The garden also serves as an escape from our world of technology back into nature, and it’s really wonderful to be a part of the cooperative atmosphere.”

After the conference, the students worked with the Hewlett-Woodmere Public Schools Endowment Fund to find a Long Island farm, and brought in a farmers market, Rifkin said. The students wrote a grant application to build a garden of their own. It took two years to officially break ground, literally, with the support of the community and school district.

“The garden brings a community of people together to work toward a common cause,” Mathew Pareles, Andrew’s twin brother, said. Mathew has also been involved with the garden since freshman year and added: “It’s fun to revisit the garden every week and see how it has progressed over time.”