Tour offers scenic stroll through 20 years of the Dr. John Wilson Community Garden

Town garden digs into past to plant seeds for the future

Fred McCormick
The Valley Echo
August 27, 2024

Dr. John Wilson Community Garden Manager Lucille Nelson tends to production plots in the town-owned garden, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary with walking history tours and a production at the White Horse. Photo by Fred McCormick

Beneath the soil of the Dr. John Wilson Community Garden, countless seeds have found ample nourishment to flourish as lush vegetation, yielding bountiful harvests of healthy food for area residents. The process of nurturing new life for the benefit of the community is a repeating metaphor for the town-owned garden, which is digging into its past to celebrate its 20th anniversary.

A series of three walking tours, from 10 a.m. - 11:30 a.m., Saturday, Sept. 7, 14 and 21, will offer a deep dive into the history of the garden, kicking off a Friends of the Community Gardens fundraising initiative supporting its educational programming and a new facility to replace its aging barn.

The tours will be led by Diana McCall, who managed the operation for 15 years. Tickets are $20 and available at bmtcommunitygardens.org.

“We’re going to take a look at how one man’s idea grew into a thriving ecosystem,” said McCall, who was introduced to the garden and its namesake in 2005. “There will be some Dr. Wilson stories, because he was an amazing human and I love honoring and celebrating him.”

Before passing away in 2016 at the age of 99, Dr. John Wilson was a prominent resident of Black Mountain, where he lived for nearly half of his life. The pediatrician and son of medical missionaries operated a private practice in town for more than a decade before volunteering his services in refugee camps around the world.

Locally, the evening primroses maintained by the master gardener below his home overlooking Lake Tomahawk became a popular attraction in the 1990s, when Wilson worked with the town to beautify the adjacent park. The beds he built on and around his property served as a predecessor to the current garden, which he established in 2004 through an agreement with the town.

Dr. John Wilson founded the Black Mountain Community Garden in 2004 with the belief that local residents needed a place to grow food and access agricultural education. The garden was named after him in 2011. Photo courtesy of the Town of Black Mountain

McCall discovered the fledgling program, which consisted of 30 plots and 12 gardeners, the following year.

“I had heard about what was then called the Black Mountain Community Garden because we were living on the Warren Wilson College campus as dorm directors,” said McCall, who grew up in a family that grew its own food on 50 acres of land. “Unbeknownst to me, this garden I had heard about was a five minute walk from my house, and I stumbled upon it one day when I was on a walk. It felt like we had been led to this house that was so close to this wonderful garden.”

McCall, who brought her culinary and garden backgrounds to the program, became the garden’s first intern before assuming management duties two years later. The Town of Black Mountain made the position a permanent one in 2010, when approximately 4,000 square feet of the property were designated as donation beds. Members were required to dedicate five feet of their plot for the purpose of donating the produce to residents in need.

“I don’t know if there is another town in the country that pays for a full-time garden manager, which is something we’ve now had since 2022,” McCall said. “This is a statement by the Town of Black Mountain that a community garden is something they value, as a government, and I think that should be shared far and wide.”

The garden was named after Wilson in 2011 and grew in size and membership under McCall’s leadership, as more than 100 gardeners tended to crops by 2020. The program, which formally adopted biointensive and biodynamic practices a decade ago, donates thousands of pounds of produce each year.

“A lot of the magic of the community garden comes through its incredible community partnerships,” McCall said.

The Dr. John Wilson Community Garden is celebrating its 20th anniversary in its current location throughout September, when the Friends of the Community Gardens will host a series of walking tours and a celebration at the White Horse. Photo by Fred McCormick

Utilizing an asset based community development model, which recognizes strengths, gifts, talents and resources of partners, the garden has fostered relationships with local nonprofit organizations and educational institutions, including Bounty & Soul, Warren Wilson College, N.C. Outward Bound and others.

Those connections endure to this day, as the garden now boasts 85 plots maintained by more than 100 families and individuals, according to Lucille Nelson, who succeeded McCall in 2022. The current manager inherits a vision conceived by Wilson and developed by her predecessor.

“I’ve never met anybody like Diana. She has an incredible capacity for connection, information and work, in a way that gets things done,” Nelson said. “She built this program over 15 years, so it was overwhelming when I first stepped in.”

The Black Mountain native coordinates the efforts of hundreds of volunteers each year, while overseeing its composting initiative, maintaining more than 100 fruit and nut trees and over 5,000 square feet of production space. The garden’s educational outreach includes workshops and a thriving internship program, in which Nelson participated in 2018.

“Our internship generally runs March through October every year, and our interns provide steady work on the production beds,” she said. “They work approximately 10 hours a week, and we try to raise enough money every year to fund two intern positions.”

Those educational programs, which allow interns to cultivate experience in growing food and supporting food security efforts, are an important aspect of the garden’s work, Nelson added.

The Friends of the Community Gardens, a nonprofit established in 2022, supports those initiatives. The organization’s goal is to raise $20,000 through its Dr. John Wilson Community Garden 20th Anniversary Celebration, which will culminate with a play, silent auction and raffle at 5 p.m., Sunday, Sept. 22, at the White Horse.

The money raised will support the garden’s internship program and educational workshops, while establishing a seed fund to build a new facility.

“We already have something really good here, but the goal is finding ways to do it better for everybody involved,” Nelson said. “We want to keep our volunteers feeling happy and fulfilled, while keeping our gardeners connected and supported.”

As the community garden plants the seeds for future growth, the month of September is a time to commemorate its history as a community asset, according to McCall.

“Over the years, I’ve had people with no connection to the garden come ask me how things were going there. People have told me they feel comfort and solace just from walking through it,” she said. “You don’t have to be a member or contribute to benefit from the garden, just visiting it is a special experience and we’re looking forward to sharing that while we celebrate this milestone.”