When Kelly Slippey moved to West Lancaster Jewels eight years ago, a friend told her about the neighborhood’s secret garden. “She took us over here and we were just like blown away,” Slippey says. “You wouldn’t know it’s here, unless you knew it’s here.”
Sandwiched between Bay Street and two alleys was quite a garden. The space had tidy rows of vegetables and two apple trees at the side. It was surrounded by grass paths and protected by a fence dotted with cascading roses. Spreading over four building lots, the garden looked more like a farmette in a neighborhood with little public green space.
For decades, this space has provided food and community: first as Depression-era victory gardens and then as a couple’s hobby. It’s now Lancaster’s newest community garden. At Bay Street Community Garden, people continue to grow, learn and connect. Lancaster plans to use what happens here as a model to create more gardens throughout the city.
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Art and Jean Bernd grew vegetables, fruit and flowers in their four-lot garden in the West Jewels neighborhood. When they moved, they sold the space to Lancaster city, asking for it to remain green space. It’s now a community garden.
Shauna Yorty
Long-time garden
When Art and Jean Bernd moved to the neighborhood in 1960, neighbors filled the empty lots with plants. The high school sweethearts met in Schuylkill Haven and relocated to Lancaster after Art graduated from what’s now Thaddeus Stevens College of Technology. They grew a few tomato plants and spring onions in their small backyard and expanded to a friend’s yard, Art Bernd says. They started gardening in a corner of the open space after buying it from a neighbor in the late 1970s. Over the next 15 years, they bought the remaining parcels. The last was topped with grass and a wash line open for the neighborhood to use.
Art planted and Jean harvested and processed. Here, he grew perennial crops like asparagus and strawberries and rotated annual crops such as potatoes, tomatoes, corn, onions, cabbage, beans and more. He harvested plenty and is especially proud of picking tomatoes as early as June 16.
“I could come home from a frustrating day in the shop,” he says. “I could fight with the weeds. It was a relief to me. It was a productive hobby.”
In the decades Art Bernd filled his garden with plants, he kept each of the four building lots separate with plants and fences.
Art Bernd
Produce helped feed their family of four. They shared extra with neighbors at Redeemer Lutheran Church or Water Street Mission. After Art Bernd retired as a mechanic, he had even more time to devote to his large garden.
Over the years, there was pressure to sell the plots to pay bills or provide much needed parking. But they continued gardening until the couple, now in their mid-80s, was ready to move. They sold the garden to the city in 2023, asking for it to remain green space.
He remembers seeing cows grazing in what’s now Golden Triangle Shopping Center. He’d rather not see their garden paved over.
“Once you do that, it almost never comes back,” he says. “It’s gone.”
Lancaster’s health bureau would like to see more community gardens throughout the city. There have been a few raised beds or smaller spaces for growing but Bay Street is different: a large, city-owned space devoted to community gardening, says Craig Walt, Lancaster’s bureau chief of health.
“We’re very interested in continuing to work with the community for potentially other gardens or other things that improve healthy food access,” he says.
Lancaster, and in particular, the garden’s West Lancaster Jewels neighborhood, is dense, Walt says.
“This is one of the main reasons why, when the city was approached, it was like, of course we want to figure out any way we can preserve this green space and keep it available for the community,” he says.
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Kelly Slippey, right, and her kids Nellie Slippey, 6, and Esben Slippey, 4, help weed on a Wednesday work day.
Bay Street Community Garden has annual flowers such as zinnias.
Spencer Shambaugh oversees the garden for Lancaster Recreation Commission.
Other than vegetables and fruit, the Bernds’ treasured roses are still growing along the new fence. The roses are cuttings from Art Bernd’s grandfather’s home he transplanted to his mother’s garden and then here as their garden expanded.
Plant stakes at Bay Street Community Garden.
Shauna Yorty harvested red beets on a Wednesday work day at Bay Street Community Garden.
Banana peppers grow at the Bay Street Community Garden.
Andrew Phillips, left, Shauna Yorty, Craig Walt and Kelly Sippey weed Bay Street Community Garden.
Art Bernd’s apple trees continue to produce in his garden, which is now Bay Street Community Garden.
Kelly Slippey, right, and her kids Nellie Slippey, 6, and Esben Slippey, 4, help weed on a Wednesday work day.
Bay Street Community Garden has annual flowers such as zinnias.
Spencer Shambaugh oversees the garden for Lancaster Recreation Commission.
Other than vegetables and fruit, the Bernds’ treasured roses are still growing along the new fence. The roses are cuttings from Art Bernd’s grandfather’s home he transplanted to his mother’s garden and then here as their garden expanded.
Plant stakes at Bay Street Community Garden.
Shauna Yorty harvested red beets on a Wednesday work day at Bay Street Community Garden.
Banana peppers grow at the Bay Street Community Garden.
Andrew Phillips, left, Shauna Yorty, Craig Walt and Kelly Sippey weed Bay Street Community Garden.
Art Bernd’s apple trees continue to produce in his garden, which is now Bay Street Community Garden.
The first growing season
Lancaster bought the property for $150,000. City staff were still trying to find a garden manager by the time the 2024 growing season started. Neighbors didn’t want to see the space go unused in the meantime.
With permission from the city and liability waivers, a group of neighbors dug in. They had no funding, no plants and no on-site water. A group of about a dozen split up the chores over the week through the growing season, even during heat waves.
“We were pulling hoses from other people’s private water hookups, which was kind of a nightmare,” says neighbor Shauna Yorty. “And then filling up watering cans and walking them over, like a bucket brigade. It was really bad. It was so hot and dry last year.”
They brought in donated plants. A neighbor made tomato stakes. Without a leader and despite the odds, the group grew crops to take home and share. They also shared knowledge: how to preserve hot peppers with fermentation, how to grow and use medicinal herbs and what to cook with all of that Swiss chard.
Slippey, another neighbor, appreciates the garden for more than the herbs and zinnias she brings home. Here, her children Nellie, 6, and Esben, 4, have space to roam.
“Compared to our tiny backyard, this feels like a mansion to them,” she says. “They can just run and explore and taste things and touch things and smell things.”
Here, neighbors young, old and in between have a guaranteed meet-up to work together for the common good.
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This year’s garden
By winter, Lancaster Recreation Commission had a five-year contract to manage the space, $60,000 a year for staffing and operating expenses. Commission recreation specialist Spencer Shambaugh held meetings to learn what people wanted. They started planting in April, adding a similar mix to what Art Bernd planted, plus extra flowers, herbs and perennial fruit such as raspberries and elderberries.
A neighbor with a Burmese background planted a corner with melons, cilantro and more. There’s a language barrier for many of the gardeners to learn more about this area, but that space still provides.
The city, with help from sponsors, covers capital costs. The department of public works replaced a perimeter fence with extra gates and added a water hydrant.
Soil testing discovered levels of lead as well as arsenic in one corner, possibly from pesticide residue from the space’s victory garden days, Walt said. Luckily, that was an area covered in grass, not edible plants. The area was encapsulated with pavement and could be the site for a new storage shed and pavilion.
Other than vegetables and fruit, the Bernds’ treasured roses are still growing along the new fence. The roses are cuttings from Art Bernd’s grandfather’s home he transplanted to his mother’s garden and then here as their garden expanded.
On Wednesday work days, volunteers show up to weed and harvest. There’s also monthly Saturday workshops to learn how to do things like make salsa. They take home what they need. This year, Shambaugh’s brought 115 pounds of leftover produce to the rec’s senior center.
He’s also excited for people to learn how they can grow in their own yards as well as connect with others.
Next year, some plots will be available to rent and there are plans to create handicapped-accessible raised beds. The rest of the land will remain as a community garden, open to all.
Meanwhile, at Calvary Homes Retirement Community in Manheim Township, the Bernds are adjusting to their smaller space.
“Since we lost the garden, the biggest crisis has been her grocery budget,” Art Bernd says.
The garden’s compact, but there’s space to plant tomatoes, cucumbers, Romaine lettuce plus rows of yellow beans and beets.
“I still go out and get dirt under my fingernails,” he says.
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