The Community Garden

There is an empty piece of land at the end of Rata Street, in Auckland. For years it had only rubbish and a few old tires. Then, last spring, a few neighbors had an idea.

"We don't have much money," said Mrs. Patel, "but we have a lot of time." They collected forty dollars, some seeds and a lot of old tools. There were six people on the first Saturday: two students, a retired teacher, a young couple and Mrs. Patel. They cleaned the land, built some beds with old wood and planted tomatoes, beans, lettuce and zucchini.

For a few weeks, nothing happened. Then the rain came, and then the sun, and then everything grew. Too much, in fact. By January there were hundreds of tomatoes. There was lettuce everywhere. And the zucchini! Every morning there were more zucchini. Big ones, small ones, zucchini the size of a baby.

"How many zucchini can six people eat?" asked one of the students. "Not this many," said the teacher. They made zucchini soup, zucchini bread and zucchini cake. Their neighbors stopped answering the door.

So they had another idea. On a Saturday in February, they put a table on the street with a sign: "Free Vegetables. Take What You Need." A lot of people came. An old man took a few tomatoes and left a bag of lemons from his tree. A mother with three children took a lot of lettuce and some beans. Nobody took much zucchini.

Now the free market happens every Saturday. There are twenty gardeners, not six. There is still too much zucchini. But there are many more people to eat it.