Laura Dean Bennett
Staff Writer
On Third Avenue, just down the way from the Pocahontas County Opera House and Discovery Junction, sits a little parcel of land dedicated to the “growth of the community,” if you’ll pardon the pun.
The Grow Appalachia Community Garden, or “the Community Garden,” as most folks call it, is the happy result of a partnership between two local organizations, Grow Appalachia, of Berea, Kentucky, which financed the garden through grants written by Linwood Alive!
Grow Appalachia has now financed and started four organic community gardens in Pocahontas County. Linwood’s garden was the first to be established, then came Green Bank, Marlinton and Durbin.
The project is managed by a team of dedicated community volunteers, including Grow Appalachia’s Steve White, Pocahontas County extension agents Luci Mosesso and Greg Hamons, and Father Arthur Bufogle, who shepherds the Catholic churches in the county.
“We are happy that the partnership between our Grow Appalachia community gardens, WVU Extension and the West Virginia Food and Farm Coalition is having a positive impact on these communities,” Steve White, Site Coordinator of Grow Appalachia, said. “A lot of local people invested time and energy to get these gardens going. Hopefully, we’ll have even more enthusiasm next year!”
The garden offers residents from all walks of life a chance to learn and share gardening skills.
They enjoy the sense of accomplishment of a successful growing cycle and reap the benefit of having fresh produce and flowers – all while enriching their lives with new friendships.
Miriam Ayres enjoys acting as a sort of unofficial ambassador for the garden and for Marlinton.
Ayres, who spent most of her life “in libraries in big cities,” is thriving as a first-time gardener. She can often be found tending her plot in the garden, or just strolling past of a morning, coffee cup in hand.
And Ayres said she’s met a lot of interesting people at the garden.
Hikers and cyclists who travel the Greenbrier River Trail notice and compliment it. Wandering tourists who are gardening enthusiasts request a tour, and even locals stop by to ask to which house it belongs.
“I enjoy meeting and chatting with passersby,” Ayres said. “Although I grew up in a rural area, I spent most of my life in big cities among books.
“This is the first time I’ve really gardened.”
Ayres, originally from Brazil, came to the U.S. 30 years ago to do her graduate work in literature.
She and her husband, Robert Myers, met at New York University in Manhattan. In the last 16 years, the couple divided their time between New York and Beirut where Robert, a literature and theater professor at the American University in Beirut, directs the Center for American Studies and Research.
Ayres was a professor of English studies at New York University for 27 years.
After spending months in New York, during the height of the COVID outbreak in 2020, Miriam and Robert left the city, looking for a more quiet and, hopefully, safer existence.
While visiting with his sister in Reston, Virginia, they decided on their next move, which brought them to West Virginia.
“We chose Marlinton because of its natural setting, the railway and its history,” Ayres said.
They’ve been living in town for a year, both working online from home.
An intense and humorous person who describes herself as a “chatterbox,” Ayres stopped in at The Pocahontas Times office to buy the weekly paper and began extolling the virtues of the community garden.
When the couple first moved here, almost exactly a year ago, Ayres noticed the garden right away.
It was too late in the season to start last year, so Ayres just kept her eye on the garden, marveling at how so many things kept growing even after the first frost. She made plans to be part of the gardening community this year.
Like Ayres, who first thought the garden was privately-owned, many town residents still mistake the garden for private property and miss the opportunities it offers.
But word is spreading. All eight plots are being cultivated this year.
“We’re learning as we go along,” Mosesso said. “The perfect location for it is near Discovery Junction, where a lot of people are congregating and will be able to enjoy it.
“It’s a real bright spot in town.
“And it’s nice watching an eclectic group of people getting to know each other there,” she added.
The gardeners are: Father Bufogle; the “Forest Girls,” as Ayres has styled them, Hannah Scrafford, Brianna Gibson and Danielle Luckenbauer; Gail Boyette; Margaret Worth; Pat Wilfong; Sam Gibson; Crystal Rohrbaugh; and, of course, Miriam Ayres.
“It’s just teeming with greenery – and, now, there are loads of fresh vegetables and flowers,” Ayres said. “The garden is always full of butterflies and buzzing with bees. It’s like a Winslow Homer painting.”
Ayers likes taking photos of flowers and butterflies, weeding and harvesting what she’s growing: tomatoes, squash, radishes, collard greens, parsley, green onions and cilantro – her okra and eggplant have yet to yield.
The garden grows more than vegetables and flowers. It’s a breeding ground for friendships.
Brianna Gibson, a Forest Service Wildlife Technician – one of Ayres’ “Forest Girls,” meticulously tends a variety of crops.
“This is such a great program,” Gibson said. “Before moving here, I worked in Tanzania as a Peace Corps Volunteer, doing community agricultural work, but my experience is entirely in the animal husbandry side of agriculture – not gardening or farming.
“Despite my lack of a green thumb, I attempted gardening – with very little success,” she chuckled. “Then I moved here and heard about the community garden.
“I thought this would be a great opportunity to try again – this time with the help of some friends.
“With four of us working together, our garden plot is thriving.
“One of our group – Hannah Scrafford – is a ringer,” Gibson laughed. “She’s a ‘professional’ gardener with six years of experience.”
Scrafford, an enthusiastic agriculturist who planned the Americorps’ plot, shared gardening wisdom with her fellow gardeners.
“Hannah could examine collard greens that looked diseased and determine, ‘no, they’re healthy and they’re going to be delicious… they’re so good that the bugs want to share them with you,”’ Ayres laughed.
“Or she’d tease us about ‘weeding out our own dinner’ when we were getting rid of what we thought were weeds, but turned out to be purslane.
“We ended up planting six different types of tomatoes, corn, pole and bush beans, zucchini, white scallop squash, pumpkins, three types of cucumbers, butternut squash, sunflowers, okra, collards, broccoli, green onions, serrano and biquinho peppers, beets, basil and dill,” Gibson said.
Another gardener is Crystal Rohrbaugh, a manager and administrator who has a special talent for tomatoes and is generous about sharing them.
The land for the community garden is owned by the Town of Marlinton and, although the garden is only about a quarter of an acre, divided into eight plots, it’s making a big impact on our little town.
“When I saw the beautiful garden that Grow Appalachia and Linwood Alive! got going up in Linwood, I knew we had to have one here in Marlinton,” Mosesso said.
“I learned a lot about gardening while getting an agricultural degree, but mostly, I’ve learned from making mistakes.
“This garden is for people of all abilities to learn together. Everyone is welcome to participate in the community garden.
“Anyone interested in participating in next year’s community garden, should call me at the extension office,” Mosesso said.
“And if we have such a big response that we need more space, it’s quite possible that the town will allow us to expand,” she added with a smile.
The number for the Pocahontas County Extension Service is 304-799-4852.