Tending community

Now the idea is catching on in suburbs like Ashland, where volunteers are installing a grid of 56 gardening plots in Stone Park, within walking distance from the town center and senior housing.

They’re not just doing it for the homegrown tomatoes, but for the companionship that comes with digging and weeding side by side.

“I’ve always wanted a garden,’’ said Lucille Allen, who has lived in Ashland for 44 years but felt a sense of community unravel as her children grew up and her neighbors moved away.

“Now I know everyone,’’ she said, laughing.

Ashland’s garden, which offers raised and in-ground beds that can be leased annually for $25, already has a waiting list for its first season.

Long-established community gardens - like those in Concord, Lexington, Southborough, and Westborough - are either expanding or watching their waiting lists grow, and efforts to launch shared growing spaces are underway in Upton and Holliston.

Valerie Burns, president of the Boston Natural Areas Network, which oversees 40 community gardens in Boston, reports that more and more people from the suburbs are contacting her for advice.

“We began to see an increase in inquiries last summer,’’ she said, “and those inquiries have continued to come from suburban communities.

“Gardening is just exploding.’’

But the proliferation of community gardens in suburban areas, where many homes sit on acres of open land, may seem mystifying.

The explanation for their appeal, many gardeners say, may be rooted in the range of their benefits, from economic to environmental and even political.

First, there are cost considerations: While gardening is hard work, a flow of fresh vegetables can be a welcome prospect at a time when food prices are high and a recession is casting its shadow over the country. “We don’t want to pay $3.50 for a pound of tomatoes,’’ Allen said.

And then there is the “local foods’’ movement, which seeks to bridge the gap between producers and consumers.

“Food is being hauled for thousands of miles and it’s not even that great tasting,’’ said Cynthia Whitty, one of the garden organizers in Ashland. “You can learn to grow your own food locally, and it’s going to taste a lot better, and you’re going to know where it came from.’’

Harvard’s community garden, now in its second year, was founded by a group of residents who shared this concern. The group was “interested in sustainable community and organic food,’’ explained Weezie Potter, one of its members. “The theory being that in the future, when all the oil has run out, you’ll need to know how to grow your own food.’’

But the motivation that gardeners most frequently voice is not so political. Whether they have plants in the ground and are battling weeds, or whether they are, like the Ashland gardeners, just getting started and still wrestling with rototillers, many cite the social and educational opportunities that community gardening presents.

Indeed, for suburban gardeners, community does not refer simply to the clustered, communal location of their plots, but also to the human connections and interdependent relationships nurtured along with their vegetable crops.

Ashland’s garden is still under construction, taking the place of a skateboard park that was dismantled last year. During a recent visit, the wooden frames of raised beds lay scattered across the site, and groups of volunteers huddled in tight circles, debating plot location and soil composition. But the group planned around community from the beginning, choosing to set up their plots in the popular park just blocks from Ashland Center.

Janet Platt has her own garden and is involved in two community gardens in Boston. She said her work as a member of Ashland’s Community Garden Steering Committee is all about people.

“I want to be involved in this because I want to know who else in Ashland likes to garden, and I want to meet them,’’ she said.

The result of such meetings is a camaraderie and spirit of shared education that cuts across age, culture, and class.

“People come from different cultural backgrounds, and they have different ways of approaching their plots, so it’s a nice way for people to connect over a common interest,’’ said Marcella Stasa, chairwoman of the Upton Land Stewardship Committee and one of the organizers behind her town’s new garden.

Situated on an acre of town conservation land, Upton’s garden has six completed raised beds, with another six to 12 planned later this year or next, depending on funding.

Holliston is in the process of building its new community garden, and already has four applicants for 10 plots, said Donna Kramer, chief of the town’s Agricultural Commission.

Rosemary Johnson started St. Luke’s Organic Garden in Westborough roughly 14 years ago. Inspired by her Catholic parish’s call to, as she puts it, “reorient our thinking to be better stewards of creation,’’ she set up the garden on land leased from St. Luke the Evangelist Church.

Now, there is a waiting list for its 36 plots. Johnson attributes the growth in demand to the “growing awareness that we have to make changes in our lifestyles, that we have to challenge ourselves to change.’’

Part of what motivated her to start the garden, she said, were the six weeks she spent as an apprentice on an organic farm in the early 1990s. There, she asked her mentor how she could best contribute.

“She said to me,’’ Johnson recalled, “ ‘Go home, go home to your own community, and make some changes.’ ’’

While most suburban community gardeners may not be motivated by such ideals, they are, it seems, reaping more than fresh produce when they tend their gardens.