The Blaine Avenue Community Garden in Cleveland’s Hough neighborhood is starting to draw more crowds in with its unique attractions and the fun activities it hosts.
One of the most notable features of the garden is its six feet tall, four feet wide hand-built mud oven, which is used to bake fresh pizzas that visitors to the garden can enjoy. The oven is a domed structure made of stacked stone, slapped mud and a few well placed firebricks, and was built in June, thanks to a merger of the urban gardening movement and community spirit.
Elle Adams, garden organizer, laughingly said, “People can’t figure out what it is. Some people think it’s a beehive. One person asked us how our “well” was doing.”
Yesterday afternoon, a group of about four dozen people including children gathered at the garden to enjoy foil wrapped baked potatoes and corn cooked in the oven, while the kids enjoyed watching a paper mache dragon from the Possiblitarian Puppet Theater.
Adams, 50 and a native of the Bronx in New York, started the garden after dreaming of owning her own community garden since 2008. It comprises four parcels from the city’s land bank program, which has given her a four year lease. An $8,700 grant from Reimagining Cleveland allowed her to clean the site, buy a shipping container for storage, lumber, soil and tools. Another $5,000 from Neighborhood Connections allowed her to hire a professional to make the oven building an educational program for children and adults.
There are now 15 adult gardeners participating and an equal number of children gardeners.
Margot Youngs, a volunteer, said of Adams, “She’s the inspiration. She’s opportunistic about creating relationships.”
