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Here at Denville Medical, our commitment is to you and your health. We are committed to improving your quality of life by effective treatment and therapy, catered specifically to your needs. Unlike some of our competition, we take a team approach to your treatment plan working together as a unit to provide the best possible care for our patients.
It's easy to start your healing journey at Denville Medical. It all starts when you contact our office to make an appointment. From there, we set you on a course to recovery through a three-step process:
Meet the Doctor: During your initial doctor consultation, we will talk at length about what challenges you're currently facing. From there, we will speak about your goals and what you want to accomplish together. The first conversation with your doctor is crucial and lays the groundwork for a life-changing experience at Denville Medical.
Craft a Customized Treatment Plan for Your Recovery: Some medical and rehabilitation centers in New Jersey apply the same treatments to all patients, regardless of their needs and goals. At Denville Medical, we don't subscribe to the "one size fits all" model. Instead, we rely on our seasoned team of doctors and physical therapists, chiropractors, acupuncturists and specialists to find the right solution to your unique situation.
Start Feeling the Relief: Our hard work and commitment to recovery will pay off through our personalized work together. With the help of our skilled doctors and chiropractors, you can finally start living the life you want to live - all on your own terms.
At Denville Medical & Sports Rehabilitation Center, we are proud to provide holistic and wellness care that changes lives. Whether your body needs Chiropractor, physical therapy, acupuncture, or needs to see a specialist, we can help.
Here are just a few of the customized therapy services we offer to help our patients live with passion and confidence:
At Denville Medical, your licensed physical therapist's goal is to maximize your body's structure and increase its overall function for long-term health. To accomplish this, our physical therapists combine traditional and innovative techniques focused on increasing muscle strength and improving the body's range of motion. Our goal is to discover the root cause of your pain or mobility problems. That way, we can address the true reason why you need physical therapy, and work towards achieving long-lasting relief.
Of course, we understand that every patient is different. Your doctor can provide expert care in an encouraging environment by creating a customized treatment plan for you using modern, evidence-based research.
Chiropractor is a common service offered at Denville Medical, often combined with our physical therapy, sports medicine, and acupuncture treatments. When delivering a whole wellness and body approach, chiropractic treatments generally focus on the musculoskeletal and nervous systems. Our chiropractor's primary focus is to aid in adjusting your body's proper structure by improving nerve function and removing imbalances.
Our goal is to work together as a team to get you maximum medical improvement. To determine which chiropractic techniques and treatments are suitable for you, our chiropractors will conduct an initial evaluation to dig deep into your medical history, previous treatments, diagnostic tests, and current conditions. During your first consultation, be sure to ask any questions you may have. Once we agree on your customized chiropractic program, we will begin treatment as soon as possible.
Our patients typically feel relief during their initial visit. Although a reduction in pain is not an indication that the condition is gone, relief is the first step. As the chiropractor adjusts and manipulates your spine and joints, many feel a sense of relief as circulation is restored. A number of our patients admit to experiencing an increased range of motion after their first visit and increased function as they continue their care.
A single migraine can ruin your entire day. Migraines stem from irregular muscle contractions in the neck and head area. Anything from loud music to a bright computer screen can trigger these painful headaches. Fortunately, your chiropractor may be able to help provide an escape from the pain without surgery or drugs. Migraine symptoms include:
After speaking with your Doctor of Chiropractic, he or she may recommend treatments like trigger point therapy, which is a neuromuscular massage. Trigger point therapy boosts blood flow and releases pressure from compressed nerves in your body.
Whether you work in an office 40 hours a week or have to lift heavy items in a warehouse, neck pain is common across all people and professions. Neck pain is debilitating and can be caused by a range of issues like poor posture, work injuries, and harmful sleeping positions. These issues often strain your neck muscles. If you notice any of these symptoms, it could be time to consult with a chiropractor:
Chiropractor helps by relieving nerve and disc pressure. These nerves and discs are located between your vertebrae. After identifying the underlying cause of your pain, your chiropractor may use a combination of treatments to provide relief.
Have you been suffering from sharp pain that shoots down your back to your lower legs? If so, you might have sciatica. Your sciatic nerve is the longest nerve in your body. Sciatic pain begins when your sciatic nerve is pinched or trapped, or you have underlying conditions like spinal stenosis or a herniated disc. Symptoms of Sciatica often include:
Proper Chiropractor can relieve your pain in a gentle, natural way. Since your pain is unique, your treatment plan should be too. Therapies include ultrasounds to reduce swelling, cold therapies to minimize inflammation, and adjustments to restore your vertebrae's alignment.
Joint pain from conditions like Arthritis can strip the joy out of simple activities that we enjoy every day. Fortunately, if you're looking for a non-invasive way to ease joint pain, your chiropractor may be able to help. Great Chiropractor will maximize the functionality of your joints with techniques like ultrasounds, cold laser therapies, and joint manipulation. Usually caused by various forms of Arthritis, age, and injuries, symptoms of joint pain include:
If joint pain affects your daily life, contact a licensed chiropractor to begin treatment ASAP. Your chiropractor will develop a customized plan around your pain to address the root cause of your discomfort.
Our hips serve many functions, from bearing weight to running. Since they're engaged in just about every way we move, hip problems can have serious consequences. Like neck pain, hip pain is very common â so much so that more than 58% of Americans are living with it, according to the CDC. Hip problems are usually caused by injuries or osteoarthritis, though normal wear and tear over time is also a contributing factor. If you notice any of these symptoms, an appointment with a chiropractor may be in order:
Since any joint in the body can be misaligned, like your hip joint, working with a chiropractor could be best for long-term relief. Any joint in the body can be out of alignment, including the hip joint, and it can cause severe pain, discomfort, and limited range of motion. Treatments in your personalized plan may include chiropractic adjustments, stretching, and exercise therapy.
Your spine comprises a litany of moving parts that must work together for healthy mobility. Spinal discs are just one of these parts, which act as cushions between your vertebrae. When you have a herniated disc, the bones in your spine grind against each other, causing intense pain. Also called a slipped disc, this back problem is very common and can be caused by wear and tear with age or traumatic events like car accidents. Keep an eye out for the following symptoms of a herniated disc:
After your chiropractor evaluates your spine for overall functionality, they will develop a personalized treatment plan for ongoing care. Common treatments for herniated discs include spinal manipulation techniques like flexion-distraction and therapeutic exercises.
At Denville Medical, we aim to serve you with long-lasting quality of life through personalized chiropractic treatments in New Jersey. The path to a pain-free life begins with a customized treatment plan tailored to your body and needs. We start with your first evaluation, where our experts dig deep into your medical history, current condition, your overall health goals and perform diagnostic tests. From there, we'll create your plan and help you hit your milestones every step of the way until your quality of life is improved.
If you're sick and tired of living with painful limitations, we're here to help you break free. No surgery. No addictive medicine. Only comprehensive Chiropractor, crafted with health and happiness in mind.
Answer : While some chiropractors rely on outdated techniques to treat patients, our team uses a combination of tried-and-true methods and modern strategies, including:
Answer : During your first visit with our physical therapist, we will complete a series of tests and screenings to establish a baseline for your care. You can expect to complete stability screenings, strength tests, and computerized range of motion tests. These tests ensure your doctor understands how your muscles are functioning. Once complete, your therapist will create a custom treatment plan for your physical therapy, so we can move forward with your care. During your time at Denville Medical, you should expect adjustments to your treatment plan as you make progress.
Answer : We get this question a lot, and we can certainly understand why. Unfortunately, we cannot provide you with an exact answer because every patient has different needs relating to their injuries and issues. Your level of stability and functionality depends on your condition, your goals, and your motivation to heal. For acute pain, patients typically experience relief in 2-3 weeks. Patients with forms of chronic pain usually feel optimal results after their first full course of therapy (4-6 weeks). Since our goal is to achieve maximum medical improvement, our doctors continuously monitor your progress and adjust treatment accordingly.
If we could offer you one piece of advice, it would be not to settle for mediocre medical treatment and therapeutic options. If you're looking for a team of doctors and therapists who work together and take an interdisciplinary approach to healing, Denville Medical & Sports Rehabilitation is here for you. Contact our office today to learn more about how we can help you achieve your chiropractic goals and live your life, pain-free.
Dear Residents,Right now, farm stands display bushels overflowing with freshly-picked, local fruit and vegetables, especially ‘Jersey’ tomatoes! Rich in flavor, tenderness, and juiciness, vine-ripened tomatoes from New Jersey are the best in the world!Randolph enjoys a rich farming history. Randolph’s first citizens made their living directly or indirectly (millers, blacksmiths, storekeepers, tanners, coopers) from the land. This way of life was characteristic of rural America in the 19th century....
Dear Residents,
Right now, farm stands display bushels overflowing with freshly-picked, local fruit and vegetables, especially ‘Jersey’ tomatoes! Rich in flavor, tenderness, and juiciness, vine-ripened tomatoes from New Jersey are the best in the world!
Randolph enjoys a rich farming history. Randolph’s first citizens made their living directly or indirectly (millers, blacksmiths, storekeepers, tanners, coopers) from the land. This way of life was characteristic of rural America in the 19th century.
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Fertile Randolph land provided local farmers with an abundance of vegetable and grain crops, peach and apple orchards, and dairy farms. In 1806 – the first year records were kept – the municipal tax assessor identified one-hundred farms in Randolph.
While barely a handful of these farms still exist today, it is only natural that Randolph would someday have its own community garden. The number one past time in the United States, gardening was already very popular in Randolph.
The introduction of a community garden in Randolph epitomized residents identifying a new recreational opportunity, forming a committee of interested volunteers, researching the options, and seeing it through to completion. The community garden movement began with the victory gardens during World War II, when Americans began growing fruits and vegetables in backyards, empty lots, even rooftops to supplement rationed foods.
Randolph’s community garden committee was formed in 2011 and was tasked to evaluate other local municipal community garden efforts and to determine if there was a sustaining interest in Randolph for a community garden. Analysis of other municipal community gardens included the size and number of planting beds, what resources are provided, whether the garden should be organic, and fencing requirements. Years of volunteer effort resulted in the inclusion of a community garden in Randolph Township’s 2016 Parks and Recreation Master Plan followed by site selection in the soon-to-be-developed Veterans Community Park.
Randolph’s community garden is located in the new Veterans Community Park on Calais Road. Veterans Community Park has been recognized with the Morris Park Alliance facility award in 2022 and the New Jersey Recreation and Park Association (NJRPA) 2023 Excellence in Design Award for a Multi-Use Facility in 2023.
Opened in 2020, Randolph’s community garden consists of 168 organic planting beds, each measuring six feet wide by fourteen feet long. Members of all ages and all skill levels from beginners just getting started with gardening through experienced master gardeners each pay a $40 annual fee per planting bed to cover all the expenses of running the community garden, including garden tools, mulch, compost, and water. More than just a planting bed rental, your community garden membership affords you an opportunity to meet some great new friends with whom you can learn and share.
New community garden members are required to participate in an orientation program – topics covered include organic gardening best practices, bug and weed control, and gardener expectations. Periodic meetings are held to cover interesting gardening topics, and there are also walk-and-talk programs where gardeners walk around the garden and share gardening experiences and ideas. Gardeners regularly review bug reports from Rutgers University.
The community garden has proven to be an excellent addition to Randolph’s already extensive list of successful recreation opportunities and has grown to include a pollinator garden in 2021. The garden is also home to blue bird houses, a seed-sharing cabinet, and park benches to enjoy the serenity of the garden with a neighbor and an ice tea. In the spirit of giving back, gardeners have partnered with the Randolph Food Pantry and the Interfaith Food Pantry providing hundreds of pounds of fresh produce annually.
Gardening is considered exercise by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and getting involved with a community garden is an enjoyable means of producing your own food while sharing your gardening passion and expertise with your neighbors.
Please contact the Randolph Township Department of Parks and Recreation at 973-989-7081 to learn more about Randolph’s community garden.
Now more than ever, it is important to stay informed. On the front page of our Township website there is a button labeled “Stay Informed!” If you click on it, you can sign up for Township information broadcast systems and view news, events, and emergency notices.
If I can assist you in any way, please reach out to me. My contact information is located on the Township website. Stay safe, and enjoy everything that Randolph has to offer!
Regards,
Lou Nisivoccia
Mayor, Randolph Township 2023
“Small things count,” read a headline in the tiny, insistent pamphlet published by the National War Garden Commission in 1919. The pitch made gardening a civic duty.And though the illustrations were cute, the text was urgent: “Prevention of widespread starvation is the peacetime obligation of the United States. … The War Garden of 1918 must become the Victory Garden of 1919.”The victor...
“Small things count,” read a headline in the tiny, insistent pamphlet published by the National War Garden Commission in 1919. The pitch made gardening a civic duty.
And though the illustrations were cute, the text was urgent: “Prevention of widespread starvation is the peacetime obligation of the United States. … The War Garden of 1918 must become the Victory Garden of 1919.”
The victory garden movement began during World War I and called on Americans to grow food in whatever spaces they could — rooftops, fire escapes, empty lots, backyards. It maintained that there was nothing more valuable than self-sufficiency, than working a little land, no matter how small, and harvesting your own eggplant and tomatoes.
That idea resonates as trips to the grocery store become fraught with fears of coronavirus exposure, and shoppers worry that industrial agriculture could fail them during a pandemic.
When victory gardens came back to prominence during World War II, newspapers and magazines gleefully documented national gardening initiatives, with Life Magazine publishing full-page images of “pretty girls in becoming shorts” digging the ground in 1943.
It looked like a stunt, but so many people took the movement to heart that, at one point, it’s estimated that home, school and community gardeners produced close to 40 percent of the country’s fresh vegetables, from about 20 million gardens.
As the war ended, and lawns took over American backyards, those earnest posters of cheery home gardeners and fierce-looking vegetables became a relic of wartime scarcity — until a few weeks ago.
With panicked shoppers cleaning out stores, and basic foods like dried beans and potatoes becoming increasingly difficult to track down, even those with no gardening experience are searching for do-it-yourself YouTube videos on how to build a raised bed.
On the first day of spring, home gardeners planted seeds and saplings. Savvy nurseries rushed to get their inventories online so shoppers could pay in advance and make contactless, curbside pickups. Bags of potting soil sold out. Corn, sorghum, squash, kale and cabbage seeds moved fast.
“Like every seed company, we’ve had a huge uptick in sales,” said Nate Kleinman, who lives and farms in southern New Jersey (where nurseries and farming supply stores have been classed as essential businesses).
“People seem to be preparing for some serious disruptions in the food supply. I’m not alone in feeling concerned with how this may go down,” he said.
Mr. Kleinman co-founded the Experimental Farm Network in 2013, a nonprofit in Philadelphia, that connects amateur farmers, gardeners, plant breeders and researchers, and also sells organic seeds.
When Mr. Kleinman put up a call on his social media for planting “Corona Victory Gardens,” alongside an image of Superman, Batman and Robin gardening on the cover of a 1943 issue of “World’s Finest Comics,” he heard back almost immediately from 1,000 eager gardeners. The majority of them were amateurs, looking for seeds, lumber to build raised beds and basic information about soil and how to grow food, he said.
“The war-garden model was inspiring for a lot of people, because there were all these huge forces at work around the globe that were out of their control,” Mr. Kleinman said. But he added that the term “victory garden” makes some modern farmers cringe because of its military connotations, and its use during the internment of Japanese-Americans, many of whom were farmers themselves.
The group didn’t want to build a new movement around the old term, and decided to call themselves the “Cooperative Gardens Commission.”
The victory garden program may be more than a century old, but “the parallels right now are pretty stark,” said Rose Hayden-Smith, the author of “Sowing the Seeds of Victory: American Gardening Programs of World War I.”
The first such push started in the context of another pandemic, the influenza outbreak of 1918. “You have to remember, we lost more Americans to the flu than we did to the battlefield,” she said.
Gardens flourished on the home front because people were eager to build their own community-based food security, and to cultivate something beautiful and useful in times of great stress and uncertainty, Ms. Hayden-Smith said.
But ask any farmer — gardening is hard work, growth is slow and yields can be unpredictable.
In 1943, The Times ran a story on the disappointments and failures of the millions of first-time gardeners who had thrown themselves into planting gardens without much experience, and were now hesitant to invest in insecticides or soil tests.
“The First Year Is the Hardest,” the headline assured readers, but it wasn’t assuring enough. A year later, The Times reported that “no amount of warning will make people plant their Victory gardens again this year unless they are convinced that they are really needed.”
The craze slowed down. Millions of gardens were abandoned.
On Wednesday, there were about six inches of snow on the ground outside Albany, where Leah Penniman works as the farm manager of Soul Fire Farm, but next week, she and her team will build a vegetable garden for a refugee family in nearby Troy, N.Y.
Ms. Penniman, the author of “Farming While Black,” stressed that provision gardening wasn’t new, not even a century ago when the federal government partnered with private organizations and grass-roots efforts to promote gardens in pamphlets, posters and short films.
“What we stand for now is what our elders and ancestors have always stood for,” Ms. Penniman said. “To free ourselves, we must feed ourselves.”
Soul Fire Farm builds about 10 large gardens a year for households, schools, churches and communities in need of fresh food, providing the labor, lumber, soil and coaching to complete each project.
After sending out an email on Monday to remind people of the program during the pandemic, Ms. Penniman said she had already received 50 requests — the demand for five years’ worth of gardens in a single day.
“In some ways we’ve been preparing for this all our lives as organizers and as small-scale farmers,” she said. “As we see the systems we’ve come to rely on show their cracks, we are called to rise to the moment.”
Eating in New York City
New Jersey got a little taste of spring fever Wednesday afternoon, even though the calendar claims it’s still early winter.Thanks to warm air flowing in from the southwest, temperatures have soared into the 60s in many areas of the state, and the mercury reached a balmy 70 degrees near Atlantic Ci...
New Jersey got a little taste of spring fever Wednesday afternoon, even though the calendar claims it’s still early winter.
Thanks to warm air flowing in from the southwest, temperatures have soared into the 60s in many areas of the state, and the mercury reached a balmy 70 degrees near Atlantic City, according to preliminary data from the National Weather Service.
If that reading holds up at the end of the day, it will be the warmest Jan. 4 on record at Atlantic City International Airport in the Pomona section of Galloway Township. The current record is 68 degrees, set in 1950.
The airport isn’t the only hot spot Wednesday afternoon. Egg Harbor Township, also in Atlantic County, hit a high of 71 degrees, and at least nine other towns or sections of towns in central and southern New Jersey have reached highs of 69 degrees, as of 2 p.m., according to automated temperature data from the Rutgers NJ Weather Network.
Those places are Berkeley Township, Cedar Bridge, Hammonton, Howell, Oswego Lake, Piney Hollow, Toms River, Wall Township and Woodbine.
Heavy cloud cover has kept some parts of northern and central New Jersey in the low to mid-60s Wednesday afternoon, putting other daily records out of reach.
As of 1:55 p.m., the warmest temperature reading at Newark Liberty International Airport on Wednesday has been 66 degrees. That’s 2 degrees shy of tying Newark’s record high for Jan. 4, set in 2000.
Trenton Mercer Airport in Ewing has reported a high of 63 degrees on Wednesday, which is far short of its record high of 68 degrees for Jan. 4, also set in 2000.
New York City’s Central Park tied its record high for Jan. 4 when the temperature there rose to 66 degrees in the afternoon, according to the National Weather Service’s regional office in New York.
Temperatures in New Jersey are expected to retreat into the 50s on Thursday, followed by a noticeable cooldown on Friday, Saturday and Saturday, with daytime highs returning into the 40s and overnight lows falling into upper 20s to low 30s, according to forecasts from the National Weather Service.
Although no major snowstorms are expected anytime soon, the weather service says there is a chance of some light snow in northwestern sections of New Jersey Saturday evening and possibly again on Sunday night or early Monday morning.
In early January, high temperatures in our region normally range from 40 to 44 degrees and lows typically range from 25 to 27 degrees.
Thank you for relying on us to provide the local weather news you can trust. Please consider supporting NJ.com with a subscription.
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In April, we were so starved for life and living that we saved a sprouted cooking onion, named it the Hope Onion, and grew it in a vase indoors where we could watch its pale roots get long and tangled. Meanwhile, The New York Times called us “scallion nation,” and people on the Internet thought we all should be victory gardeners again.At the ...
In April, we were so starved for life and living that we saved a sprouted cooking onion, named it the Hope Onion, and grew it in a vase indoors where we could watch its pale roots get long and tangled. Meanwhile, The New York Times called us “scallion nation,” and people on the Internet thought we all should be victory gardeners again.
At the Fenway Victory Gardens on a recent Sunday in May, Brenda Velez, in overalls and a mask, was working her plot.
“I got my seeds ready,” Velez said. “I’m ready to go.”
There are real victory gardeners in Boston already — 405 of them, down on the Fens, tending 15-by-25-foot plots where their own onions have deep roots in the historic ground, where the radishes are up, the lilacs in bloom, and the resurrection in full swing.
Community gardens have been allowed to remain open during the shutdown, and this of course includes the Fenway Victory Gardens. Established in 1942, it is the nation’s oldest surviving war garden. On the original 7.5 acres along the Muddy River, just one block from Fenway Park, it endures.
During World War II, the Fenway Victory Gardens was one of 49 planted all over the city, including on Boston Common. A neighboring piece of land on the Fenway was even maintained as a “model victory garden” by the Globe, which published lengthy front-page articles about its progress.
Victory gardens famously produced 44 percent of Americans’ wartime fruits and vegetables. Some 2,600 families participated in Boston, 20 million nationwide, according to “To Dwell Is to Garden: A History of Boston’s Community Gardens” by Sam Bass Warner Jr.
“I can’t even tell you how exciting it is to be part of that [history],” said Velez, 54, a visual merchandiser who designs store displays and whom the pandemic has forced out of a job.
“I feel like this is another war, a different one. We’re still there [at the Victory Gardens]. We’re not going anywhere,” she said. “We’re still out there with Mother Earth, making the most of things.”
Americans have gardened through many of the great crises in our history, and those without their own land have planted on public property.
During the depression of the 1890s, Mayor Hazen Pingree created potato patch gardens for Detroit’s unemployed. In Boston in 1895, 52 men and two women each harvested some 20 to 55 bushels of potatoes on land the Industrial Aid Society for the Prevention of Pauperism secured, Warner wrote. Similar efforts were restarted during the Great Depression — relief gardens, thrift gardens.
Unlike the victory gardens of World Wars I and II, these gardens are little known today. Poverty is light on propaganda, heavy on potatoes.
Many temporary gardens — glorified and not — simply vanished after the time of need. Not on the Fens, where gardeners adapted to peacetime, mounting a successful campaign at the mayor’s office and shifting production from food to flowers.
“As far as is known, there is no identical project in this country,” late cofounder Richard D. Parker wrote in a typescript preserved at the Massachusetts Historical Society. “It is indeed an outstanding privilege to have a garden in The Fenway.”
Many of today’s gardeners live nearby, in small homes made even smaller by stay-at-home advisories. Christine Nelson, 34, a pharmacist, told me her victory garden is actually bigger than the Fenway apartment she shares with her husband.
Walking the Victory Gardens’ narrow, wood-chipped lanes is an intimate affair. One peers not into conventional community garden plots, but into the vast outdoor living rooms of the little-apartment people. There are couches and benches and chairs, and lawns as smooth as area rugs. Shiny bric-a-brac catching the thin, early morning sun. A statue of Jizo, the Japanese splinter-removing god. All kinds of things, a vast collection — every gardener’s own mark.
“A lot of people refer to it as a large backyard,” said Gerald Cooper, 77, who is keeping busy building a brick patio in the back of the plot he’s had for more than 20 years.
“I’m there every day, five or six hours at least. Even when there’s rain, I’ll think about going. I usually debate about whether to go down there in the rain or stay in the apartment and clean it up,” he said. “I usually go down there in the rain.”
The gardens are not unchanged. Veterans say there’s a kind of uneasiness now, with old friends and neighbors in masks, 6 feet or more away. Some are converting their plots back to their original purpose.
“Before the pandemic we had a lot of gardeners that were raising perennials, flowers, and some herbs,” said Elizabeth Bertolozzi, Fenway Victory Gardens president. “[Now] people are really determined to do some additional vegetable gardening, because every little bit helps and they’re just concerned that maybe they could put their plots to better use.”
Rick Richter, vice president of the Victory Gardens, is planting an all-vegetable crop for the first time. He’s got 150 tomato plants started in his small apartment.
“I’ve got grow lights all over the place and plants all over,” Richter, 64, explained from home. “It’s going to be a little jungle in here, so I’m really hoping for some warm weather pretty soon.”
The Trustees of Reservations, which manages 56 Boston community gardens (although not the Fenway Victory Gardens, a nonprofit on city land), reports a surge in requests for plots this spring. Applications have doubled. And even in good times, there are not enough plots to meet demand.
“The major role of food access is of course highlighted in this economically insecure time,” said Michelle de Lima, who is the engagement manager for The Trustees’ community gardens. “[But] I don’t think realistically the majority of those people are [gardening] because they have no other way to get food. I think they’re doing it because they’re going a little crazy and they need something positive and hopeful in their lives.”
Zachary Nowak, a historian of urban agriculture and a Harvard College fellow, agreed.
“As far as victory gardens becoming the source of everyone’s food, I don’t know,” he said. “But those people … who just grow flowers and flowering bushes … are giving a much more important gift to the rest of us in the city — and that’s just hope, straight up.”
Scott Zak is one such victory gardener. The 58-year-old Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center nurse grows only flowers in the sunbaked plot he’s had for 25 years: marigolds, zinnias, nasturtiums, and three colors of statice: purple, white, and blue.
He works in the organ transplant unit, so he cannot bring flowers into the hospital, but sometimes he’ll take pictures for his patients.
He said that even in a non-COVID-19 unit, the situation at Beth Israel is very tense.
“It’s horrible. Everything you see on TV is accurate,” he reported. “We were having a meeting among nurses and other staff members — kind of, like, get in touch of how we’re dealing with stress — and the social worker says, ‘Does anyone have any ways of dealing with stress?’ Everyone kind of looked at each other, like, not really, you know, just grin and bear it. And then one of the nurses said, ‘Well, Scott, you have your garden, don’t you?’ ”
Gardens created for war have become a refuge from a new plague and new problems.
“It doesn’t mean to say that you go there and you forget that everything is happening,” explained Marie Fukuda, 54, a victory gardener on the Fens and a project coordinator at Massachusetts General Hospital. “But it’s a reminder that there’s a pace of things that will continue regardless of whether we continue — and although that sounds weird, it’s also very comforting.”
After 24 years, “I can go out there and the same pesky weed that drives me crazy is coming up at around the same time it always does,” Fukuda said.
In springs and summers past, Seth Kilgore, a 64-year-old John Hancock Financial Services employee, could be seen walking from the garden to his South End apartment with a bucketful of fresh-cut flowers: peonies, zinnias, sunflowers.
Daffodils are his favorites, and over the past two decades he’s accumulated a large collection. Many are hand-me-downs from other victory gardeners who have moved out or moved on.
This spring there were flowers, but no gardener.
“We’ve missed the daffodils this year,” Kilgore said. His wife’s at high risk, so he hasn’t been down to his garden at all. “But there’ll be other years.”
Gene Tempest is a Cambridge-based writer and historian. Read more of her work at genetempest.com and get in touch at [email protected].