Berwick Community Garden

In the late summer, the Berwick Community Garden is overflowing with produce. All 47 raised beds have trellises arching over of them, with vines crawling up and fat tomatoes and beans hanging down.

Over the past two years, the Berwick Community Garden has gone from an idea to a flourishing community space. Created in part with a Community Action Grant from the Community Resilience Partnership, the garden shows what can be accomplished with local talent, creative fundraising, and community passion.

Finding the project champion

In 2023, Berwick was ready to enter a new phase. A developer bought the former Prime Tannery property in 2019, remediated the brownfield, and was beginning to build housing and commercial buildings. Berwick was looking for projects to complement the vibrant downtown revitalization created by the new complex.

Berwick enrolled in the Community Resilience Partnership with the help of their Regional Coordinator at the Southern Maine Planning and Development Commission in 2023. The same year, a town committee called Envision Berwick, comprised of volunteers appointed by the selectboard with the goal of implementing the town’s comprehensive plan, started a subcommittee focused on sustainability and rural character.

At an early meeting, the subcommittee discussed the potential for a community garden. Amrita Cottrell, one of the committee members and a master gardener herself, saw an opportunity to step up.

“This just utilized all my interests and my creativity,” Cottrell said.  

James Bellissimo, Berwick’s Director of Planning and Development, said that the value of Cottrell taking the reins of the project was immeasurable for the town.

“The big thing for any project is finding a champion for a project,” Bellissimo said.

Overcoming roadblocks

First, Cottrell found a suitable location for the garden: a sunny spot at the site of the old Estabrook School. Cottrell applied for and received a 20-year land use agreement from the town for the parcel.

Then, Cottrell hosted a community meeting to ask Berwick residents what features they wanted in the garden. She also visited a dozen community gardens in the area and asked for input on what things worked and what didn’t. Through her research, she learned to be proactive about protecting against “critters” with a fence and gravel ditch.  She also adapted an accessible and sustainable garden bed design, made with pressure treated lumber lined with galvanized roofing.

With the pieces in place, Cottrell applied for and received a Round 3 Community Action Grant.

“If we hadn’t gotten that, I don’t know if the project would have gone forward,” Cottrell said.

But planning is one thing; building is another.

The Berwick planning board found that, because the location of the garden near the fire station was part of an approved Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) permit, the project required a permit amendment. That approval also required additional conditions --namely a privacy fence, which was out of the garden’s budget.

Cottrell, municipal leaders, and the planning board worked to amend the conditions of approval, so the cost of building a privacy fence wasn’t on the garden.

"Things can get done when stakeholders get together to solve problems,” Bellissimo said.  

Luckily, Cottrell’s husband Dennis Jackson is also a retired hydrologist and was able to volunteer his expertise to work with the DEP. Still, the delay meant the garden wouldn’t be set up in time for the 2024 growing season.  

But when a community has their heart set on a project, its residents find a way. Selectboard member Tom Wright offered his yard for Cottrell to build the raised beds while they waited for approval. By fall, they moved the beds to the permanent site downtown.

Building accessibility

Right from the start, Cottrell focused on an important challenge: wheelchair accessibility.

Cottrell worked with accessibility advisor, Enock Glidden, and determined that the garden needed to adjust the slope and create a hard pack surface so wheelchair users could easily navigate the space. As an added benefit, the hard pack surface makes it easier for wheelchairs and is easy to maintain. Cottrell also built two prototype wheelchair-accessible tabletop style raised beds.

She reached out to local contractors who donated time, equipment and materials to shape the land into the right configuration to build the garden. In addition, she raised funds from private donors, organizations like the Burpee Foundation, New England Grassroots Environmental Fund, and Quimby Foundation, as well as corporations like Hannaford, Kennebunk Savings Bank, and Home Depot.  

“My philosophy is that people are inherently wanting to be generous. If you give them an opportunity without pressure, with their time or talents or funds, they rise to the occasion,” Cottrell said.

Gardening to build resilience

In only its second year in their permanent location, the Berwick Community Garden has grown very lush and productive. Cottrell attributes that to a little bit of magic and good growing practices.

The garden encourages regenerative growing, makes their own compost, plants with pest management in mind to avoid chemical pesticides, applies mulch to reduce water use, and more. They educate their gardeners on sustainable growing practices, too.

Cottrell also worked with the National Resources Conservation Service and Xerces Society to develop a pollinator pathway for the garden.

Resilience goes beyond ecology, though. The garden donates produce to local residents through its food programs at House of Hope, Table of Plenty, and Big Love, One Community. In addition, once a week during the growing season, garden volunteers distribute free food grown in the garden to four neighborhoods in Berwick in a farmer’s market style “take what you need” program.

Last year, the Berwick Community Garden donated about 2,000 pounds of produce. This year, with additional partnerships and a new “Plant-a-Row” program that encourages residents to donate extra produce from their personal gardens, they’re hoping to double that.  

Cottrell also brings students of all ages to the garden. Through the Berwick Recreation Department’s Summer Camp, the community garden developed a program for kindergartners called “Let’s Grow Together” that incorporates gardening, music, and art. Cottrell also partners with the local high school to teach gardening to the alternative education students through its Multiple Pathways program. The community garden received a donation of gardening supplies from Walmart that will help expand the program so that the students can learn to grow food from seed to harvest.  

Gardeners across the state are taking notice. The Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association included the Berwick Community Garden on their 2026 Gather & Grow farm and garden tour series.  

“We have always wanted to be a model for what communities can do to encourage more resilience, more healthy living, more community engagement, and more environmental stewardship. It's been an amazing process to steward,” Cottrell said.