At the corner of Main Street and Shaker Hill Road in Enfield Village sits an apartment building, and next to the building is a parking lot for the residents. Between the lot’s asphalt and the sidewalk is a narrow grass border.
For years, that little patch of lawn and a couple of ornamental trees were the extent of the greenery at the busy four-way stop. But three years ago, Angela Gow moved into one of the apartments, and as soon as spring emerged, the parking lot began a steady transformation. That first spring, she started planting flowers and tomatoes.
“Each year it just grows a little bit more,” Gow said in an interview.
This summer, people driving by know to stop and say hello and receive whatever Gow is harvesting. She often places vegetables into grateful arms reaching out a car window.
The garden now consists of several raised beds, more than a dozen pots and buckets for tomato plants, flowers planted in tubs and pots and in the ground. Around the post that holds the Main Street and Shaker Hill Road signs are petunias and datura, with its long, white, trumpet-shaped blossoms. A stern, black-painted street lamp is surrounded by tall sunflowers, like gentle protesters around a cop in uniform. At the far corner is a small fabric pavilion, the lot’s only shade, which Gow calls her “she shed.”
For Gow, 56, the garden serves multiple purposes. First, it’s an old pastime. She grew up gardening with her parents, who still live in the same home on Poverty Lane in Lebanon. She progressed from “weed hauler” to “weed puller, and then I got to plant,” she said.
It’s also a kind of spiritual practice. “It’s very calming, very soothing,” Gow said. “And you can be very artistic with it.”
She works a couple of jobs, loading packages overnight at UPS and running a small cleaning business. Gardening is for pleasure.
And people appreciate what she does, beautifying a corner of her village. Even in early afternoon on Thursday, a steady stream of cars passed through the intersection, a sign of the Upper Valley’s continued growth. The garden’s value to passers-by is inestimable.
“I think it’s great,” said Jerry Judd, who lives in another of the apartments in Gow’s building. “When I got here it was nothing, just a little piece of grass that the town mowed.” Outside his door is a pot of herbs that Gow planted that Judd picks from to cook with.
Most important, the garden gives Gow a reason to be outdoors in the summer. The season is so brief, and she doesn’t want to let it slip by without enjoying it. Her cat, an orange and white “22-pounder” named Topaz, follows her around and sleeps in the sun.
Gow gets her plants at Edgewater Farm in Plainfield. Every year, there are more tomato varieties to choose from. This year, Gow opted not to choose and got more than 15 varieties. In addition to such classics as Early Girl, Beefsteak and Big Boy, she planted Cherokee Red, Black Beauty, Pineapple, Lemon Ice and Oxheart, which is pinkish, heart-shaped and big, “a pound or better,” Gow said.
Among the flowers are fuschia, gazania, zinnia and orange Mexican sunflowers, in addition to the others mentioned above.
But vegetables are the main event. Gow gives them to other residents of her building, but the garden produces more than they can consume, so people driving by reap some of the harvest.
“We don’t hold up the four-ways too bad,” she said.
Next year, Gow hopes to place a box at the garden from which people can pick up vegetables to take home.
“You need a tomato, you need anything, you’re more than welcome,” she said.
When she started the garden, Gow hauled four watering cans from her apartment. At first she turned down her landlord’s offer of a hose, then reconsidered. The plants grow thirsty on the sweltering pavement.
So far, the only plant that hasn’t quite worked out for Gow is squash, which didn’t like the confines of the raised beds or the hot asphalt. Next year, she’s planning to plant summer and pattypan squash on the other side of the parking lot, facing the Mascoma River.
And so the garden grows.
Alex Hanson can be reached at ahanson@vnews.com or 603-727-3207.