There’s a hedge — a living fence — of sunflowers, cosmos, Russian sage and black-eyed Susans. Inside, around the beds of tomatoes, eggplant, peppers, raspberries, greens, herbs and flowers, a handful of squatting volunteers are picking.

I came to pick, too. I check in at a small shed; a woman named Leslie hands me a cutting knife, some rubber bands and an orange plastic bin with a few inches of water in it. “We have an order for mizuna,” she says. “Twelve bunches, for a restaurant.”

It’s sunny and warm, on one of the last days of summer. Someone is picking thyme, and the earthy scent rises as we pass. “Should I cut the flowers off the basil or leave them?” another volunteer asks Leslie as we head to a row of light green pointy leaves. “If you leave a couple of inches of the mizuna it will grow back for another cutting,” she tells me. “There’s still time.”

We could be on a market farm in Argyle, or a sprawling field in Columbia county. We’re not. We’re in a one-acre haven in the middle of Schenectady, a few blocks from Brandywine Avenue, in sight of State Street.

This is Roots & Wisdom’s Fehr Avenue Neighborhood Garden, a slice of fecund beauty in the middle of a city. Inside the living fence it’s all peace and beauty and life and nutrition.

It’s also an educational experience for some 30 teens, urban, rural and suburban, who work in the garden over the summer through Schenectady County’s Job Training Agency.

The kids plant, weed and harvest produce at the Fehr Avenue site, a horticultural center in Central Park, a potato patch next to Vale Cemetery and an “edible playground” in the Orchard Street Park in the Vale neighborhood. They volunteer at the city’s free lunch program, at safe houses, at the Schenectady Inner City Ministry’s food pantry. They spent a day helping at an organic farm in Knox that grows vegetables for regional food pantries, learning about larger-scale farming by picking hundreds of pounds of cucumbers and weeding endless rows of vegetables.

“It took some kids an hour to weed a row of potatoes, that’s how big it was,” Leslie said. “It was hard work.”

Leslie is Leslie Wiedmann-Herd, who brought the ideas of Roots & Wisdom to Schenectady after spending time at the Boston area Food Project, a 19-year-old program that combines urban agriculture with social justice issues. The Food Project works with hundreds of teens and volunteers to grow some 250,000 pounds produce that they donate to shelters and sell at farmers markets and through Community Supported Agriculture shares. But the biggest part of the Food Project’s mission is to grow future leaders by giving teens responsibility and meaningful work.

Leslie recruited Christine Horigan and Debbie Forester, and the union of the three women’s strengths — organic gardening, fund-raising, conservation and community activism — gave rise to Roots & Wisdom in Schenectady.

Now in its third year, Roots & Wisdom survives mainly through lots of small grants, in-kind gifts and support in land and equipment from the county and city. They sell produce at the St. Luke’s and the downtown farmers markets, to Cella Bistro restaurant, the Niskayuna Co-op, Niskayuna Central School District, and the Honest Weight Co-op in Albany. And they sell harvest shares to about 25 families, who prepay in the spring for produce, and visit the Fehr Avenue garden weekly for pick up.

“We want people to come to the garden,” Chris says. “We want people to be a part of it.”

Selling at the Tuesday market, in the parking lot of St. Luke’s Church between Albany and State streets, is more about community service than profit, Chris says. The neighborhood, near the Fehr Avenue garden, has limited access to fresh produce and a high percentage of people on federal assistance. “St. Luke’s, the food pantry — that’s about growing food for our neighbors in need,” she said. “The kids see where the food they grew is going, and how that can make a difference.”

Contrast that to the Thursday market at City Hall in downtown Schenectady, where office workers stop by with money to spend. Roots & Wisdom joined that market late, after it had signed up all the growers it needed. So the kids sell “value-added” products — organic tea spiced with herbs from the garden, natural soaps enhanced with Roots & Wisdom’s lavender, and fresh and packaged herbs.

“The two markets are fundamentally different,” Chris says. “Downtown offers us exposure, and the kids can explain what we’re all about. It’s great PR for us.”
The markets also offer the teens employment skills, marketing their own work, teaching visitors about organic and locally grown food.

But do people at the St. Luke’s market or the SICM pantry know what to do with the food Roots & Wisdom grows? I ask Leslie, because I’m not sure what to do with 12 bunches of mizuna, and I’m a gardener myself. “I tell everyone just treat it like spinach,” she says of the mizuna, kale, chard and the other greens they grow. “Everyone knows spinach.”

Leslie and Chris say most of the teens who work in the garden start out not knowing anything about gardens or vegetables, not knowing a weed from a tomato seedling. “For some it’s very new. Some have never eaten fresh vegetables,” Chris says. “Others say their grandparents had gardens.”

After a few weeks, though, the kids are comfortable enough to act as tour guides for school groups and others who visit the garden.

The kids are all back at school now, but they’ll get together for a reunion this fall. In the meantime, the remaining harvest is being handled by volunteers, by Roots & Wisdom’s sole employee, Carlin Churchill, and by Leslie, Christine and Debbie.

The volunteers also learn from being in the garden. Mary Held said she got involved through her son. Now she has a harvest share, and comes out weekday mornings to help pick. And while she loves being in the garden, and the produce, herbs and flowers she gets, she said she felt really rooted the day she sat in a small group, cleaning potatoes.

“I just felt a connection,” she said. “I could have been a pioneer.”

If you want to get out into the garden, Roots & Wisdom still needs volunteers on Monday and Thursday mornings to pick produce. And this Wednesday, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, everyone’s invited to help harvest the potato field next to Vale Cemetery, off Brandywine.

For more information, call 792-1622 ext. 286 or email DigIn@rootswisdom.org.

This Greenpoint column appeared in the Gazette’s print edition Sunday on the Environment page.