San Margherita
Garden evokes past of Italian migration to city’s west side.
Dick Capuano is among the few remaining descendants of the early Italian settlers who established Columbus’ Far West Side community, which is now giving way to development.
One thousand eight hundred times this spring, Dick Capuano bent to tuck a young tomato plant into the earth. He’s coming up on 70, so he feels it more than he used to. And there’s no real way to cut corners, not if you want to honor your heritage and impress your customers, and Capuano aims to do both.
“It’s a lot of work,” he said. But the labor still pales next to the rewards. To grow a perfect tomato on the ground his immigrant grandparents first tended more than 100 years ago is a joy Capuano can’t resist, and he has persisted, tilling and planting and harvesting long after the family home was leveled to make way for road improvements.
Few descendants of the early Italian settlers remain in San Margherita. The Far West Side community built around limestone pits is now giving way to development, and Capuano’s huge garden at Trabue Road and McKinley Avenue is never far from orange barrels and bulldozers.
“San Margherita is going to be gone,” said his wife, Connie. “The face is totally changing.”
Her husband prefers not to talk about that and what it inevitably means for the land, at least not in August. August is for eggplant and peppers, zucchini and heirloom tomatoes.
“It’s been a real good year,” said Capuano, a retired carpenter who lives in Hilliard and commutes to his garden. “Rain, sun, rain, sun. It’s just been a perfect growing season.”
He wears a Vietnam veteran ballcap and a T-shirt emblazoned with his nickname, “Tomato Dick.” The Capuano vegetable stand is painted like the Italian flag and never wants for business.
“We were out in Montana for a while, and they do not have tomatoes out there — not like these,” said Hilliard resident Stephanie Gorenflo. She filled her paper sack, paid by the pound and told Capuano she’d probably be back tomorrow.
Gorenflo smiled as she walked to her car. She also wore a tomato-themed T-shirt, one with a quote from the writer and humorist