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Senior Garden
Now in its 43rd year, Senior Garden is a unique quarter-acre garden that provides members individual areas to grow their own vegetables and flowers. Senior Garden’s approximately 45 members grow radishes, lettuce, spinach, zucchini, beans, tomatoes, strawberries, acorn squash, and flowers and tend apple, fig, and pear trees from April to September. Members are free to take home all the produce they grow.
Senior Gardeners appreciate the exercise, fresh air, tranquility, and pride of accomplishment that come with gardening. A sign near the garden’s gate promises, “Don’t grow old, grow vegetables.”
Every Wednesday, Senior Garden’s members meet for lunch at picnic tables under a white tent. They celebrate birthdays, trade jokes, discuss gardening techniques, and boast about their grandchildren in a setting that seems suburban, if not rural. Occasionally, the group organizes trips to other gardens or the Philadelphia Flower Show.
In summer, Senior Gardeners open their gate to the public on alternating Saturdays so members can answer questions, share experiences, and display prized vegetables and flowers. Since many members have gardened for decades, their collective experience represents hundreds of years of practical expertise.
Senior Garden members are expected to participate in some organizational committees and volunteer occasionally to maintain flowers and vegetables that are distributed to all members.
Senior Garden is open Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 9 am to 12 Noon. The garden is located in the southwestern quadrant of Queens Botanical Garden, near the College Point Boulevard gate, about a five-minute walk from Main Street and fairly close to QBG’s Crommelin Street parking lot.
For more information, call 718-886-3800, ext. 525. |