Darlington Volunteer Community Garden

05/15/2025

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05/08/2025

What a waste.

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10/11/2024

Here are photos from the last dying gasps of the vanquished community garden this year. It should be at the peak of its Fall production but it is flatlined. Looks like the fickle finger of Jack Frost got here really early and wiped out some selected plants. It's a curiosity that only some of the plants were killed. Nothing ever grew in the beds that were supposedly part of the Gardening Class for Home Schoolers. The remainder are back to growing w**ds. The tools that were new this spring are still out in the open and/or sitting in a bucket of water. Vegetables are rotting in the compost bin or on the ground. These are your taxpayer dollars going to waste. What used to be a thriving productive garden for the local volunteers and food pantries is now a big waste. Congratulations Harford County.

09/28/2024

Garden update. Had to go to Francis Silver Park today. So I stopped by the Community Garden. It's mostly abandoned. Only a few beds are actually growing anything but w**ds now. Looks like two, maybe three beds were planted by people who rented a bed. The remainder of the beds either have volunteer plants from last year's garden or are growing w**ds. But here is a clear indicator of what happens when no one is in charge and takes responsibility for day to day operations. The hand tools, which were brand new in May, are sitting out in the open. And worse yet the small hand tools are sitting in the bottom of a bucket in water. Not only is the garden wasted, but now so are the tools. Way to go Harford County.

08/04/2024

Here we are on August 3. Same view as months ago. Wasted on w**ds. Hundreds of dollars worth of tools laying on the ground. Wheel barrow full of mosquito larvae. To be honest, some beds have been planted with vegetable crops. And somebody is doing a little w**ding. Emphasis on little. But more than half the garden is still empty, except for w**ds. And we are wondering WHY Harford County Parks and Rec thought this was a good idea? The garden was at its pinnacle of performance for the past three years. But they took it over from the Dublin Darlington Rec Council after a decade of operation by our local Rec Council. Please share this and make some noise.

07/16/2024

UPDATE - DARLINGTON VOLUNTEER COMMUNITY GARDEN IN FRANCIS SILVER PARK 7/16/24 by Jane Howe
You are getting this update because I talked to you, one on one, back in May when this hostile takeover began – OR - you have plugged in since then.

Here is the very brief synopsis:
• After 10 years of production, the Darlington Volunteer Community Garden was abruptly “taken over” from the Dublin Darlington Rec Council by Harford County Parks and Rec on May 3, 2024
• Harford County made garden raised beds available for rent. Then they found out what we already knew.
• After only a few of the beds were rented, Harford County had to w**d the beds – TWICE. Only about a dozen tomato plants were in the ground as of July 11th.
• As of yesterday, July 15, 2024, it was announced that “volunteers” from the Harford Center would be managing the garden from now on.

Of course, there is plenty more fact and detail to fill in the gaps between these bullet points. And we have an archive of photographs. But the bottom line is that Harford County commandeered the take over of a community garden at its pinnacle of production. Then the garden lay idle until someone figured out that it was being squandered.

I was the designer, builder and manager of this garden for over a decade. It was a program of the Dublin Darlington Rec Council. I didn’t know the COUNTY could even do something like this to a successful program. But here we are.

Having talked to a great number of people in the past few months, there are many opinions and serious advice. We have a pretty good idea of how this all unfolded, and it’s not pretty. We have not yet gone to the press with this although several people have suggested it as the next step.

What is needed now? If you have learned something that the Dublin Darlington Rec Council should know, please contact me [email protected].

Meanwhile, Harford County Parks and Rec needs to comply with the Rec Presidents Council on a document that specifies rules and regs. What are the published rules? ALSO the Law Department needs to complete the Memorandum of Understanding between the Presidents Council and the 20 members who are still waiting for a final version.

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