City hopes farming rule grows on residents
Winter Garden sprouts different urban growth
Scott Billue envisions an acre of blueberries, red tomatoes and lush green arugula, cabbage and kale when he looks at the overgrown lot he plans to rent for Matthew’s Hope, the homeless ministry he heads in Winter Garden.
“I’ve got it plotted out,” said Billue, who wants to grow fruits and vegetables to eat and sell using aeroponics, hydroponics and more traditional nonchemical farming techniques at the site. “We’re going for all that.”
Winter Garden, a former citrus town now best known for its hopping downtown, a fun stretch of the West Orange Trail and the Crooked Can Brewery, reached into its agrarian roots last week to enable him and others who want to plow the earth. City commissioners approved a new “urban farming” ordinance.
“It seemed odd that a place birthed out of agriculture had no agricultural zoning,” said Billue as he stood in a 1-acre lot in front of the Budget U-Pull-It salvage yard on Ninth Street
north of Colonial Drive.
The new rules, which define an urban farm as “an establishment where food or ornamental crops are grown or processed to be sold or donated,” are a step toward encouraging bigger home gardens, said Eric Rollings, who chairs Orange County’s Soil and Water Conservation District.
He said more communities are relaxing rules for home gardens.
Orlando, for instance, is greener since a 2012 turf war with Jason and Jennifer Helvenston, who replaced their lawn in College Park with carrots, kale and bok choy.
The city at first hit the couple with code-violation fines after a neighboring property owner griped that their yard on a deadend street “looked like a farm.”
Orlando later drafted new rules to let the couple keep growing.
The Helvenstons’ 25-by25-foot yard, visible from Interstate 4 near the Princeton Street exit, produces 500 to 1,000 tomatoes a season, Jason Helvenston said. They eat some, can some and give some away.
They’ve taught others how to garden smartly and cut grocery bills.
“We’re not doing anything crazy,” he said.
Rollings, whose yard on Muriel Street in Orlando will be nothing but vegetables this fall, said until recently yards like his were frowned on in many neighborhoods.
“It used to be — and often still is — everybody wanted that perfect Windermere look, if you will, that really thick, turf grass, precisely edged with the exactly rounded azaleas and stuff like that,” he said.
While many homeowner associations still forbid them, in places where they’re allowed, urban gardens often are admired.
“We’re pulling away from that stigma slowly,” Rollings said. “It’s now becoming not only socially responsible but socially acceptable. Before, a neighbor might go, ‘Well, would you just look at that yard?’ Now, it’s more likely they say, ‘I don’t care what the yard looks like, they grow the best tomatoes.’ ”
In Winter Garden, the new ordinance fills a gap in city code that didn’t specifically address agricultural uses, City Manager Mike Bollhoefer said.
The ordinance could help other small farms sprout in the city, he said.
“What’s more fresh and local than right out your front door,” asked Bollhoefer, who laments the dearth of local produce at area farmers markets including Winter Garden’s.
The new ordinance figures to immediately benefit Matthew’s Hope and another nonprofit, Shepherd’s Hope, which also has plans for a small farm.
But the change might create some competition for the Bekemeyer family, who have a 20-acre farm on East Story Road.
The city permitted the family’s growing operation under a “grandfather” clause included in Winter Garden land-use codes.
The Bekemeyer farm, which once grew nothing but oranges, dates back to 1920 when the family patriarch used a mule and hoe to clear out pine trees and rattlesnakes for citrus trees.
The grove was decimated three years ago by citrus greening, a tree-killing bacterial disease spread by a tiny flying insect, and the family repurposed its acreage.
It now grows and sells beets, blueberries, broccoli, collard greens, peppers, radishes, tomatoes, turnip greens and youpick strawberries from November through the spring.
The city’s new rules also allow for seasonal farm stands.
Billue said Matthew’s Hope intends to sell its produce to Winter Garden restaurants and plans to set up a farm stand.
Perhaps some customers will be people in the brick-walled neighborhood across from the farm on Ninth Street.
John Bekemeyer, son of George Bekemeyer, 89, who still lives on the farm and often tends to the crops by pulling weeds, welcomed the ordinance and competition.
“After all, the city’s name is Winter Garden,” he said.