Oxford Community Garden planted and waiting for volunteers

By Don Rush

A handful of volunteers showed up late in the morning of May 31. The sun was hot and though not yet noon, the temperature was well over 80 degrees. They were there for one reason: they wanted to help Dawn Medici plant a garden, Oxford’s Community Garden.

Established in 2021 with the help of a $10,000 grant from the Four County Community Foundation, Oxford’s Community Garden is located at the very south end of Seymour Lake Township Park, 2795 Seymour Lake Road. It is run by Medici who is the Recreation Supervisor for Oxford Township Parks and Recreation.

“This is our third year,” Medici said before most of her volunteers showed up to work. “The garden is 100 yards by 10 yards.”

In the garden volunteers planted rows and rows of tomatoes from Cherry to Romas, green peppers, red peppers, jalapeno peppers, green beans, lettuce, herbs, yellow squash, zucchini and 27 rows of cucumbers.

Harvest from the gardens goes to help a number of local food programs including the Wednesday Free Meals at Immanuel Congregational Church, Meals on Wheels, Hope Senior Apartments and Lakepoint Community Church’s Veterans Ministry.

“We didn’t weigh how much food we harvested last year,” she said, adding, “But we will this year.”

Many of the plants planted last week were grown from seeds donated from Tractor Supply Company. Flats of plants, potatoes and onion sets were donated by Harvest Time Farm Market.

“Oxford Community Schools provided the green house for us to grow the seeds,” she said, “We started the seeds in April. We started pretty much everything from seed. And, what looked sketchy, like our lettuce didn’t do too well, we replaced them with the plants from Harvest Time.”

This past Sunday, Scout Brandon Harris built trellises for the garden as part of his Eagle Scout project.

She said she is always looking for volunteers to help weed, water and then harvest.

“To volunteer we have an online registration to sign up, or they can call our office to be put on the list,” she said.

The web address to volunteer is: www.signupgenius.com/go/10C0C44ACAC2BABF5C52-oxford1

The Parks and Recreation phone number is 248-628-4801.