Newroz: a brief history and a new beginning
So, you may be wondering... "What does 'Newroz' even mean?"
Perhaps you checked out our 'about' page and learned that it means "new day" or "new sun" in Kurdish. Or still yet, you may be asking, "We have a garden?! Here? At Gordon?"
We are the members of Newroz, Gordon's Community Garden, located behind Barrington Center for the Arts.
The garden was originally founded in 2008 as a division of the ASF (Advocates for a Sustainable Future). Jonathan Zoba, an art major at Gordon College was one of the first directors and dubbed it the Gordon Garden. His original purpose in founding the garden was to have students get involved and be around the garden. He wanted a place where students could meet each other, be unified, and create a context for conversation. We recently met up with Jon, asking more about his purposes in cultivating the garden. He stated, referring back to the hunter gatherers and first farmers, "The point of agriculture is to produce a foundation for culture. It wasn’t until farming that you got written language, poetry, everything else." With the continuation of the garden, we seek to continue his simple but powerful vision for intentional community founded on agriculture. Jonathan's newest project is the garden school, founded with his brother, Ben Zoba, and he plans to give students out of high school a growth year where they will be able to learn horticulture and spend time thinking about their future plans.
During April of 2017, a new garden director was appointed-- Grace Shelton, a rising sophomore with firsthand experience with gardening. She grew up on a farm in her hometown in Turkey, working alongside goats, chickens, and many fruits and vegetables. When she moved to Hamilton in 2014, she continued to help out with gardening through intermittent opportunities and never forgot the joy and authenticity of the interaction between human being and land. So when she got the opportunity to work for the Gordon College community garden, she was more than happy to cultivate a culture of sustainable farming here in Wenham.
From the beginning, Grace's goal has been to interact with her community and hear their input. When she decided to give the garden a new name, she conducted a student poll before settling on a final name. With the aid of GCSA (Gordon College Student Association), she set up a "Question of the Week" in Gordon's dining hall, asking students whether they would prefer the name "Newroz" or "Gordon College Community Garden." Newroz won the overwhelming vote of 532 out of 620 total students. With the introduction of the new name, Grace showed that her main vision for Newroz was to encourage greater innovation and community engagement.
Upon first seeing the state of the garden, Grace decided to lay down a practical plan to start restoring what was left behind. Grace contacted a friend, Alden Drake, who had extensive knowledge on gardening and woodworking. She spread news of the garden by word of mouth and email. She also began to visit financial services and physical plant to coordinate resources for the big project.
Grace and Alden decided that the two aspects that stood out the most were the corrugated wire fence and the overgrown garden beds. They decided to divide the task of de-fencing, re-fencing, and dealing with the weeds into four separate work days with the help of Gordon students.
What follows next will be three blog posts based around the theme of rehabilitation-- of restoring the basic foundation to the garden so that we can begin planting once more.
Feel free to click through each post and witness the steps we took in restoring Newroz so that it would ring true to its new name. At the end of your reading, come see the work that we're doing by attending one of our upcoming events or by giving us a hand during one of our work days.
(If you would like to read more about our vision, visit the 'About Us' tab)
