A fresh look

After the short stay of Sims Garden’s previous tenants, Ian Hazelhoff and Gaby Spangenberg have big plans for the community garden.

“I think that the people who were here before us did a really great job with the garden and getting it started,” Spangenberg said. “I’m excited that we’re coming in right now … I think there’s so much room to grow, and I think we can definitely do that.”

Catherine Sims, the “Plant Lady of Homewood,” gardened on her home’s property for decades and left it to the city in her will. Located on Highland Road, the lot is now a community botanical garden and a Southern Environmental Center Ecoscape partner.

The new caretakers graduated from Sewanee: The University of the South. Hazelhoff received his degree in biology with a focus on systems biology. He said he is “more of the scientific guy. I know how to make the plants grow.”

“I came into it wanting do something that was ecosystem/biology-centric,” Hazelhoff said, “and Gaby is more of a public health savant.”

Spangenberg was director of the Sewanee Community Engagement House and a Bonner Scholar. Both opportunities gave her the chance to gain experience performing community outreach and engagement. She also received her degree in ecology and biodiversity, so she knows her way around plants as well.

Making the garden handicap accessible is one of the goals Spangenberg is most excited about. She hopes to build or raise money for raised flowerbeds that would allow people in wheelchairs to garden.

She also plans to eliminate a fence and stairs that divide the garden and prevent people in wheelchairs from accessing parts of it. Doing so will also make it easier for parents to push strollers around and for the elderly to navigate.

“The garden as it is now is beautiful and wonderful, but what we’re really looking at is fundamentally tweaking it so that it becomes a vehicle people are proud of and want to use in their everyday lives,” Hazelhoff said.

Even with all their plans, Hazelhoff said the garden’s success will come down to how engaged they are with the Homewood community and Birmingham.

One of the things Hazelhoff is excited for is growing a food forest based on berries and fruit along the garden facing Highland Road. There are blueberries, peaches and plums now, but Hazelhoff said they’re “a little too sparse.” 

Hazelhoff and Spangenberg will reorganize and plant more edible plants in a way that allows them to help each other thrive. For example, pairing apple trees and raspberries helps the raspberries to thrive by providing them shade from direct sunlight.

“In the grocery store, [fruits] are some of the expensive items. In a lot of underserved neighborhoods, people won’t buy them because they are expensive,” Hazelhoff said. “But if people can understand that they grow well here under the right conditions, then maybe they’ll come here when we’re doing a plant giveaway and plant them [at their own homes].”

When Hazelhoff and Spangenberg are not at their day jobs, at Red Mountain Park and Clarus Consulting Group, respectively, they are tending the garden before and after work and on weekends.

The couple hopes to make the garden a tool for educating the community about sustainability through community engagement events and workshops in the garden. Many of these workshop ideas are still in the works, but Spangenberg already knows she wants to host workshops on beekeeping, composting and eradicating invasive plants, as well as “looser” workshops where people can learn how to make drinks or snacks with food found in the garden.

“This place is a phenomenal urban garden in the midst of one of the hottest neighborhoods in Homewood,” Hazelhoff said. “What that showed me was a chance to really impact people and show them where their food comes from and how to use their own backyards to accomplish some of those things.”

The first few months of their work will be simplifying the garden and removing things that shouldn’t be there, such as invasive plants like Chinese privet and Japanese climbing fern, while simultaneously engaging with the community.

Spangenberg said she will reach out to schools, camps, after-school programs, churches and senior centers for the first couple of months at the garden, in addition to daily garden work. 

“We really have a lot of exciting plans for the place, and it’s my confidence that those plans will be fleshed out in the coming months,” Hazelhoff said. “We have a really positive horizon here.”

 For more information on the garden or Friends of Sims, email simsgardens@gmail.com.