Public Works Employee Honored for Environmental Efforts

On a hill behind the , an environmental group officer dumped the compost. A teenage student raked it. But it was a city employee who paved the way to three new organic gardens in Greenbelt.

That person, Lesley Riddle of the , was given the Green Man Award for assisting a local environmental group to create three gardens that demonstrate organic growth.

“She put a shot in Greenbelt’s arm of new energy,” said Bob Cahalan, a founder of the CHesapeake Education, Arts and Research Society (CHEARS), which presented the award and organized the seventh annual Green Man Festival taking place Saturday and Sunday near the community center. The event brings together volunteers, artists and musicians to engage the community with nature and highlight environmental concerns in the area.

Just a short walk from center stage, where Riddle received the award, volunteers tended one of the three gardens. The other two are located at Springhill Lake and Schrom Hills Park, and together they are the Three Sisters Gardens.

“Part of the reason to do the project was to unite the parts of Greenbelt,” said Maggie Cahalan, a CHEARS co-founder and Bob Cahalan’s wife.

When CHEARS proposed the garden project, the city council turned to Riddle, the assistant director for parks and grounds. Through her position, she manages public land and she also has a background in organic land use practices, landscaping and horticulture.

From there, Riddle helped with the design of the gardens, implementing organic practices and served as a liaison between CHEARS and other city groups who might have been impacted by the project.

“She held our hand ... and held us back when we tried to do too much,” Maggie Cahalan said upon presenting the award. “She combines having a solid knowledge ... and love ... of plants.”

“It’s a cool day,” Riddle said. “I’m really honored.”

Some of the food grown at the Community Center garden since it was planted last spring has been donated to the Reel and Meal event, a monthly film series at the that explores environmental and social justice issues. But Maggie Cahalan said the main purpose of the three gardens is to teach others to provide for themselves in the most environmentally friendly way possible.

For example, the Three Sisters Gardens are built with square angles to maximize the growth potential. They are also raised up by mounds of compost piled and raked on top of grass and uprooted weeds.

Joel Cahalan, 40, Maggie and Bob Cahalan’s son, said this tactic, compared to digging up the ground, allows the compost to heat more quickly and create more nutrients for the plants. He owns his own farm in Schellsburg, Pa.

Ann Dunne, 72, of Greenbelt, who volunteered at the garden on Saturday, tends her own personal garden, but she is still picking up new lessons through the Three Sisters project. “With planning, I could put a lot of different plants together and get more from it,” Dunne said.

“This has been very weird for me to put the weeds back [into the compost],” she added.

Bob Cahalan said Greenbelt has a long history of being environmentally conscientious. He cites the walkways that wind through green areas allowing pedestrians to avoid roads as an example.

Over time, Greenbelt has moved away from that direction, he said, but “we want to rediscover what the founders of Greenbelt were trying to do.”