Fenway Victory Gardens are in good hands, thanks to him
(Photo by Helen Banach)
Mike Mennonno unlocks the gate and lifts a sagging arbor of roses to enter his garden plot in the Richard D. Parker Memorial Victory Gardens.
Nine years ago, Mike Mennonno moved home to Indiana to take care of his father who was dying of lung cancer. He tended to his father, but he also did something else that would have a lasting effect on his life: he took over his father’s garden.
Now the 42-year-old leads others to gardening as the president of the Fenway Garden Society. In the same way gardening had a therapeutic effect for his father during his retirement, the hobby became a way of healing for Mennonno as he dealt with his dad’s illness and death.
His goal now is to pass on gardening’s therapeutic power while raising the profile of the seven-acre Richard D. Parker Memorial Victory Gardens, better known as the Fenway Victory Gardens.
“I look at it like a little village,” said Mennonno, “with all the pros and cons of village life.”
Mennonno is making strides to modernize the organization. Volunteer participation is up, the application process for a garden plot is now online, and the Fenway Garden Society Facebook page has posts almost daily. The Fenway Victory Gardens were the subject of a recent article for National Geographic Education.
Mennonno, whose day job involves working in the student finance department at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology, oversees the care of the Fenway Victory Gardens’ 500 plots, tended to by more than 300 gardeners.
Gardening has become so integrated into Mennonno’s life that his hobby sometimes infiltrates his speech.
“There is no instant, add-water-community,” said Mennonno. “Community takes constant cultivation.”
When Mennonno moved to Boston after his father’s death, he was introduced to the Fenway community through the Fenway Garden Society.
“It was where I set down some roots. It’s been my motivation to pay it forward,” he said.
His enthusiasm is effective. “I feel like a part of something just going down there,” said Murray Kohn, a new gardener who just received his own plot.
As the Fenway Victory Gardens continues to change, the first garden that inspired Mennonno also has evolved. The fountain he installed after his father’s death is still there, maintained by one of his brothers, but his mother removed the hedges that once made it – to neighbors at least - a secret garden.
Thinking back on his father’s gardening, Mennonno smiled and said, “He was wonky about it. He had his graph paper and plans, his mini-Versailles; he was very meticulous about it. My interest was therapeutic.”
This article is being published under an arrangement between the Boston Globe and the Boston University News Service.
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