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POSTED: Monday, Feb. 09, 2009

Gung-ho Cordata group wins $5,000 grant for community garden

Ben and Dee Andrews believe strongly in the value of locally grown food and the benefit of growing some of it yourself.

That belief fueled their successful effort to win a $5,000 grant to help the Guide Meridian/Cordata Neighborhood Association start a community garden. Work is expected to start early March, with the beds ready for planting early May.

Families have signed up for half of the 50 raised beds planned for the garden, and efforts are under way to spread the word to other would-be gardeners in the north end of town. Organizers hope to hold events at the garden, involve children, and provide any surplus bounty to needy residents.

"A community garden is about building community," Dee Andrews said.

Cordata is the first neighborhood to win a $5,000 matching grant from The Mary Redman Foundation. Grants will be provided to a Bellingham neighborhood each year for the next four years through the Community First! Gardens project channeled through WSU Whatcom County Extension. The deadline to apply this year is April 1.

"This movement ... I want to call it 'back to the land' ... is sweeping the country, and I get to participate in it here in Bellingham," said Becky Curtis, who oversees the project.

The Cordata garden will be installed in a grass field east of the north end of Cordata Parkway. Use of the land was donated by Bellingham developer Ted Mischaikov.

Last September, Mischaikov and other investors bought 72 undeveloped acres, plus 125 ready-to-build home lots, from national homebuilder D.R. Horton. Mischaikov wants to redesign the layout of Horton's proposed 428-home subdivision in Cordata. That will take awhile; in the meantime he's happy to let the garden blossom.

"It's going to be beautiful," he said.

And big, too. Plans call for 50 raised beds, each 4 feet wide by 16 feet long. There will be a tool shed, a fence to keep deer away, and a raised border full of flowers and food plants.

Chemical fertilizers and pesticides will be a no-no; but compost and advice from experienced gardeners will be plentiful.

Dee Andrews, a retired teacher, grew up in west Texas, where tumbleweeds were the most plentiful plant. Ben Andrews, a retired hospital administrator, grew up in Louisiana, the son of a wholesale grocer.

They enjoyed visiting the Northwest, and settled here a few years ago. Both are eager to get the Cordata garden going, and both talk of helping other neighborhoods start their own.

"You love to feel like you're donating something of value," Ben Andrews said. "It's our way of giving back."