May 24, 2018 6 min read

After a winter that dragged its cold and wet weather well into spring, there wasn’t much for gardening enthusiasts to get excited about until late April. That’s when Hazel Murray and Peggy Brown sprang into action, dug into the muddy earth and got busy beautifying the Mon Valley’s multiple garden projects. There’s plenty growing in the gardens around the Mon Valley, including Donora’s Community Garden at Second Street and McKean Avenue, and the Pollinator Garden in Monongahela.

How did these ladies with green thumbs get involved? Both Brown and Murray are Penn State University Certified Master Gardeners from Washington County – a title that requires a yearlong course of study, plus 50 hours of volunteer gardening in the first year alone. After that, Master Gardeners are completely volunteer – which makes the effort even more amazing.

“My grandparents and parents were avid vegetable gardeners, and my mother prized roses,” Brown explains. “My sisters and I were always watering and weeding. I had friends who were Master Gardeners. For me, it was just a question of having the time for classes and volunteer work.”

Likewise, Murray grew up with a love of gardening. “I have been interested in gardening since childhood,” she remembers. “My earliest interest was manifested in attempts to be helpful on my grandmother’s tobacco farm when my family visited during summers in the ’40s and ’50s. As an adult, I maintained the lawn and did a little backyard gardening at my home in Ohio.”

As a wife and mother of two, Murray didn’t have time to undertake the Master Gardener program until she moved back to Pennsylvania to care for her mother years later.

Creating a community garden takes – literally – members of the community putting in time and hard work to grow vegetables, flowers and other plants. Donora’s Community Garden is being funded through anonymous personal donations and some business gifts. Brown says some Monongahela residents are also actively working to start several community gardens in their city.

“I’m excited to see this happening,” she notes. “They are a lot of time and energy to get off the ground.”

Murray began work on the Donora Community Garden three years ago. “Community gardens vary in how they are run, but share the common idea that plots of land can be tended by people in the community for the good of the community,” she says. “Most community gardens have some rules about how the plots are assigned, what can be planted and hours of operation.”

The benefits include a local source of healthy food, bringing together people of all ages for a common cause and converting vacant lots from eyesores to eye-catching landscapes with reduced stormwater runoff. “A community garden is successful to the degree that the community wants it to be and is willing to work together for its success,” Murray says.

She recalls all of the work by Donora volunteers who “cobbled together resources to clear the lot, acquire a garden shed, fencing and supplies to build the raised beds.”

Last spring, they built 19 raised beds, filled them with soil, built fences and mulched the pathways. Residents signed up and planted seeds and vegetable seedlings. “By fall, the garden was full of tomatoes, pumpkins, greens, corn and other vegetables,” Murray says. “Working in the garden gets people out of doors and moving about. In the garden, people find common ground that can serve as the basis for understanding and camaraderie in other community issues. The garden itself can be a place of beauty, comfort, and, not least of all, the source of fresh nutritional produce.”

The next time you pass the “Welcome to Monongahela” sign at the intersection of routes 837 and 88, notice Peggy Brown’s Pollinator Garden project. A city council member and friend approached her three years ago asking for help to plant flowers there. “Ken (Kulac) is an extremely busy architect, so last year, I took over the garden myself,” Brown says. “I pulled a lot of weeds and planted the beginnings of a pollinator garden, as I thought there needed to be a focus for the plantings.”

A pollinator garden is an area of specific native flowers, shrubs and trees designed to attract pollinators like bees, butterflies and birds that also host eggs, caterpillars and larvae. “It needs to be in bloom for as much of the year as possible,” Brown explains. “With the grant from the Washington County Community Foundation, I’ve purchased plants and shrubs. I’ve also received some donations of plants from local residents.”

Brown hopes the garden attracts pollinators, as well as residents and visitors. She’s hoping to have it become a Certified Pollinator Garden and is applying for certification from the U.S. Department of the Interior as a national Million Pollinator Garden. “My direction is to use it to teach others in the community how to start their own pollinator gardens,” she says. “We’re going to have one of our gardening classes that Hazel and I do at the YMCA at the pollinator garden. I’m hoping the schools can bring children to see the monarch caterpillars in September and then teach them how to help save our pollinators and why that is important.”

Brown and other volunteers also help to beautify the rest of Monongahela by maintaining the planters along Main Street with flowers for spring and with decorations for the holidays. “People stop us when we are out fertilizing or cleaning up offering compliments,” she says. “City Council has given us money to purchase supplies. Lowe’s donated the dwarf cypress, which are planted. We think overall it adds to community spirit. Lots of people have asked if they can do a planter. We recognize them with their name on a painted plaque in the planter. We think it helps make people proud of their city and to look for other ways of becoming involved.”

For information on the Donora Community Garden at Second and McKean, contact John Bedner in the Donora borough office at 724-379-6600. For the community garden at Donner playground, contact Mark Boyer, director of Donora Public Library, at 724-379-7940. For information on the garden series at the Mon Valley YMCA, call 724-483-8077 or visit www.monongahelavalleyymca.org.