BELFAST - A new handicap-accessible garden at the Starrett Children’s Center has yet to receive a single visitor in wheelchair. But to hear the preschool’s director Linda Stec talk about it, the project, which she describes simply as the “accessible garden,” is very much living up to its name.

As it turns out, the same modifications that put gardening within reach of person in a wheelchair make things easier for lots of other people, too.

“A lot of gardening happens when you’re bending over,” she said.

Stec stands around 6-feet tall. Some of the children at SCC are half that height. When she was researching designs for the garden, Stec found that even the heights of wheelchairs varied significantly. She got some ideas from the only other accessible gardens she could find in Maine, the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens in Boothbay, which has elevated and beds and vertical planting columns in its Sensory Garden.

Most of the planters in the Starrett Children’s Center garden are elevated above the ground more than the average raised bed. The most striking of these are a set of table-height wooden planters built by a former SCC parent, John Lacasse.

Stec and company used stacks of tires, hay bale planters and traditional pots to split the difference between the taller beds and a ground-level garden, bringing the flowers and vegetables within standing reach for children, and making an easier bend for adults.

The idea of an accessible garden has been on Stec’s mind for years, she said, but despite success with other grants, she hadn’t been able to find a match for this one. The answer ended up coming from a local source — a $5,000 grant from St. Margaret’s Church in Belfast.

The money was enough to lay the groundwork for the garden at the Starrett Children’s Center and also at its sister school on Route 137, Belfast Area Children’s Center. Additional funding came from a Community Transformation Grant from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Both gardens have benefitted from volunteer work and in-kind donations.

The BACC garden went in first using a simple design of tall raised beds, separated by wide walkways that Director Monica Wing said will eventually be covered in paving stones. As of last week, beans, tomatoes, celery, cucumbers, potatoes, peas and a variety of herbs were coming up. 

“Basically the things the kids want to eat fresh and raw, and the things we can use in the kitchen,” she said.

The garden at Starrett Children’s Center had a similar range of vegetables with some flowers mixed in. It’s also easily visible from the road, which has meant a lot of inquiries, particularly on Fridays when the Belfast Farmers’ Market sets up shop across the shared parking lot at Waterfall Arts. On those days, Stec said she’s talked to people curious about the hay bales with seedlings popping out of the top. Lifelong gardeners have been drawn over by the standing height planters.

Stec isn’t given to hyperbole, but she described the public interest in the garden — “from high school students on up” — as unprecedented in her 30-plus years at the center.

“I’ve met more neighbors since I put it up than in all the years of us being here,” she said.

Ethan Andrews can be reached at news@penbaypilot.com