COMMUNITY AT ROCKHILL GARDENS CELEBRATED
WEST ROCKHILL >> When Stan and Nancy Hagberg moved a decade ago to the Community at Rockhill, they weren’t sure they would be able to have a garden anymore.
The garden they have now, though, is bigger and more productive than the one they had at their previous home, they said.
“We basically become vegetarians during the summertime,” Stan Hagberg said. “We just eat from our garden.”
On Oct. 5, a celebration to showcase the resident gardens and sustainable dining practices was held by Cura Hospitality, which last year began providing dining services at the retirement community in West Rockhill Township. Strings of lights, booths with food samples, harp music by Rachel Johnston and local wines from Unami Ridge Winery greeted attendees.
“It’s really to bring awareness to what the residents here are doing,” Executive Chef Curtis Law, a Souderton resident, said. “We have a lot of new residents that are moving in that maybe don’t know about the garden process that they have down here.”
The event also helped highlight the Community at Rockhill’s campus, he said.
— Executive Chef Curtis Law, a Souderton resident "It’s really to bring awareness to what the residents here are doing."
“There’s such beautiful grounds here and it’s nice to get people out walking around to see what this campus has to offer,” he said.
Produce and flowers for the event came from the nearby Detweiler farm, Law said.
“We get all our tomatoes and peppers in season from them,” he said.
Kitchen and food scraps from the dining services are taken twice a week to composting bins at the gardens, he said.
Starting next spring, the dining services department will also start growing produce in the Rockhill gardens to be used for the meals it prepares, he said.
“Tomatoes, peppers and herbs is what we’re gonna start with,” Law said.
Growing the food in the gardens will allow residents to see the whole process of where the food comes from, he said.
Along with the kitchen scraps, leaves gathered in the fall and grass clippings are used for the composting, Hagberg said.
“It takes about three years to run the cycle,” said Fred Koons, another of the Community at Rockhill gardeners.
The composting materials now being put into the bins will probably be used in 2021, he said.
Layering of the materials helps in developing the compost, Koons said.
“The leaves go on top,” Hagberg said. “That doesn’t smell or anything. People are afraid about compost. That doesn’t smell because it’s covered.”
Pointing out a section of the gardens that included zinnias and other flowering plants, Koons said, “People who want to harvest them come out and take a bouquet and take it back with them.”
Koons also pointed out other plants, including snowberries — “They’re not edible,” he said — and ferns including papyrus and a banana plant.
Hagberg said his wife suggested they make raised beds for the garden, which has been working better than attempting to grow plants in the rocky clay soil in the area.
“The nice thing about raised beds is you never lose your soil and your soil is always nice and light,” he said.
In July, he added a battery-operated device that makes a sound that only deer can hear.
“Since we’ve had that in place, we haven’t had any deer issues,” Hagberg said. “Now, does that keep them out? Well, I don’t know if it does or not, but I can say that since we’ve had that, we’ve had no trouble with deer.”
Some of the gardeners have in the past been discouraged by deer eating the plants, he said.
Gardening doesn’t take a lot of time, but it does require a regular routine, including weeding three to four times a week, rather than letting it go for weeks, Hagberg said.
The rainy summer wasn’t a problem for the raised beds, he said.
“They dry out a lot quicker,” he said.
In hot seasons, the raised beds also dry out quicker and would then have to be watered, he said.
This year’s produce from the garden included lettuce, tomatoes, cabbage, broccoli, onions, beans, peas, beets, carrots, zucchini squash, summer squash, rhubarb and strawberries, he said.
“The end of May, beginning of June, we usually harvest 20-25 quarts of strawberries, so we have strawberries all the time, for breakfast and for supper and sometimes my wife freezes some,” Hagberg said.
“We’ll eat lettuce from April through the end of June,” he said, “and then the middle of September through frost.”
His wife cans tomato juice from the garden, he said.
“We’ll spend probably six to eight hours a week in the garden, and sometimes a little more when we’re getting started, but it’s well worth it,” Hagberg said. “We just enjoy fresh vegetables.”